Fritz Kaegi Just Priced Your House. Pat Hynes Will Send You the Bill.

The 2026 reassessment of Cook County's south and west suburbs is landing in mailboxes right now — signed by an assessor who lost his job in March. Here's what's still open, what's already closed, and why the number on that notice is not what you think it is.

On St. Patrick's Day this year, Cook County homeowners did something Cook County homeowners almost never do: they fired the assessor.

Lyons Township Assessor Pat Hynes unseated two-term incumbent Fritz Kaegi in the Democratic primary, 317,969 to 287,955. Kaegi conceded that night at a Rogers Park tavern decorated with more campaign signs than shamrocks. Hynes celebrated at a pizzeria in Hodgkins. Very Chicago.

Hynes faces Libertarian Nico Tsatsoulis on November 3. No Republican filed. Cook County has never elected a Republican assessor. You can do that math yourself.

So here's the strange situation every south and west suburban homeowner is sitting in right now: the reassessment notice on your kitchen counter was produced by an office that is about to change hands. The values Kaegi's models set this summer will show up on tax bills in 2027 — bills that will land while Pat Hynes is running the office.

And in between those two things, there's a window. For some of you it's already shut. For a few of you it closes in less than three weeks.

First: what actually happened this year

Cook County reassesses one-third of itself every year on a three-year cycle. 2024 was the City of Chicago. 2025 was the north suburbs. 2026 is the south and west suburbs — the first time this region has been touched since 2023.

That's roughly a third of 1.8 million parcels: Oak Park, River Forest, Riverside, Berwyn, Cicero, Stickney, Lyons, Palos, Bremen, Orland, Proviso, Worth, Lemont, Calumet, Thornton, Rich and Bloom townships. If you live in La Grange, Western Springs, Brookfield, Tinley Park, Oak Forest, Orland Park, Palos Heights, Maywood, Berwyn or a few dozen other towns — this is your year.

Notices went out on a rolling schedule from April through the fall. Each one gives you a new estimated fair market value and a deadline that is usually about six weeks later.

Six weeks. In summer. When half the county is in Michigan.

The number on the notice is not your tax bill

This trips up everyone, so let's do it in plain English.

Your notice says something like $475,000. That is not what you owe. It's not even close. Here's the chain:

1. Estimated market value — what the Assessor's model thinks your home would sell for. Say $475,000.

2. Assessed value — residential property is assessed at 10%. So $47,500.

3. Equalized assessed value (EAV) — the state multiplier gets applied. With a multiplier around 3.0, that's roughly $142,500.

4. Exemptions come off — the Homeowner Exemption knocks $10,000 off your EAV. The Senior Exemption knocks off another $8,000.

5. Then the local tax rate hits what's left.

That last step is the one nobody controls. Your assessment determines your share of the pie. Your school district, village, park district and county determine how big the pie is. You can win an appeal and still see your bill go up if your taxing bodies raise their levies. Both things are true at once, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.

Where the Assessor came in low — and where he came in high

Here's the part almost nobody bothers to look up. The Assessor publishes, township by township, what homes actually sold for in 2025 next to what his model estimated for 2026. The gaps are not small, and they don't all run the same direction.

Oak Park Township (notices May 6)

Property type	2025 median sale	2026 Assessor estimate
Single-family	$596,000	$559,000
Condos	$200,000	$204,000
Small apartment buildings	$615,000	$594,000

Lyons Township (notices July 23)

Property type	2025 median sale	2026 Assessor estimate
Single-family	$462,000	$418,000
Condos	$225,000	$218,000
Small apartment buildings	$463,000	$405,000

Palos Township (notices June 3)

Property type	2025 median sale	2026 Assessor estimate
Single-family	$395,000	$399,000
Condos	$245,000	$225,000
Small apartment buildings	$455,000	$651,000

Read that last row again.

In Palos Township, the median small apartment building sold for $455,000 last year. The Assessor's 2026 estimate for that same category is $651,000 — about 43% higher. If you own a two-flat or three-flat in Palos Hills, Worth, Bridgeview or Hickory Hills, that is not a rounding error. That is a number worth a phone call.

Meanwhile in Lyons Township, single-family estimates came in roughly 10% below what homes actually sold for. Which is a different kind of interesting, and we'll get to why in a minute.

Fun wrinkle: Lyons Township's assessor is Pat Hynes. The guy about to run the county. His own township's appeal window closes September 3.

What's still open right now

This is the actionable part. Print it, screenshot it, text it to your neighbor.

Assessor appeals still open:

• Lyons Township — deadline September 3, 2026

• Bremen Township (Tinley Park, Oak Forest, Midlothian, Country Club Hills, Markham, Posen, Hazel Crest) — notices mailed August 12, deadline September 24, 2026

• Northfield Township — September 4, 2026

• Barrington Township — September 23, 2026

• West Chicago Township — August 21, 2026 (that's this week)

Board of Review appeals open August 3 – September 1, 2026:

• Oak Park, River Forest and Riverside townships

• Norwood Park, Rogers Park, Evanston and New Trier townships

Still to come this fall: Lemont, Worth, Calumet, Proviso, Orland, Thornton, Rich and Bloom townships. If you're in one of those, your notice hasn't been mailed yet. Watch for it.

Missing the first deadline is not the end

Here's what most homeowners don't realize: you get two bites.

The first is with the Assessor's Office. The second is with the Cook County Board of Review, a completely separate elected body with its own calendar. If your Oak Park appeal window closed on June 18 and you did nothing, you are not finished — the Board of Review window for Oak Park is open until September 1.

Appeals are free. You do not need a lawyer. You can file online.

The Assessor's own rule of thumb: if the property details on your notice are accurate and the estimated value is within about 10% of what you honestly think your home would sell for, an appeal probably isn't worth the trouble. Outside that range, or if the notice says you have four bedrooms and a finished basement you've never seen, file.

The three grounds that actually work:

• Wrong description — square footage, class, a garage you don't have, a basement that floods and isn't finished.

• Overvaluation — you have a recent closing statement or sales of comparable homes that say otherwise.

• Lack of uniformity — similar homes near you are assessed lower.

If you're selling: do not use that number as your list price

I want to be blunt here, because I've had this conversation four times this summer.

The Assessor's estimated market value is the output of a mass-appraisal machine-learning model that values roughly 1.8 million parcels at once, using nine years of sales data, without ever walking through your kitchen. It is not an appraisal. It is not a CMA. It is a very sophisticated average.

When Lyons Township single-family estimates come in 10% under actual median sale prices, that is not the county telling you your house lost value. It's the model being conservative across an entire township. Price your home off that number and you will leave real money on the table.

The other side of it: if your estimate came in high — Palos small apartment owners, look alive — that inflated number follows the property to your buyer, who will notice, and who will hand it to their attorney during the inspection period as a reason to renegotiate.

Appeal it before you list. Not after you're under contract.

If you're buying: that tax line is a fossil

The property tax figure on a listing sheet in the south or west suburbs right now is typically the most recent bill — which reflects a 2023 assessment, paid in installments, before this year's reassessment touched anything.

Two things are about to change it, and neither is in your favor:

1. The new assessment hits the 2027 bill. The number you're budgeting from is at least one cycle stale.

2. The seller's exemptions leave with the seller. If you're buying from an 82-year-old couple who've had the Homeowner Exemption, the Senior Exemption and the Senior Freeze for fifteen years, their bill is a fantasy that has nothing to do with yours. This is the single most common closing-table shock I see in Chicagoland, and it is entirely avoidable with ten minutes of homework.

Make your agent pull the property's PIN detail, the new estimated value, and the exemptions currently attached. If your agent doesn't know how, that tells you something too.

The Hynes question nobody can answer yet

Hynes ran on accuracy, restoring trust, and economic development. He's promised more field inspectors, better use of building permit data, and real training for staff. He's spent 30 years in property tax work, including two decades inside the very office he's about to run. He is also the nephew of Thomas Hynes, who was Cook County Assessor from 1979 to 1997 — a detail Kaegi pointedly brought up on his way out the door.

Kaegi, for his part, spent eight years arguing that the real problem isn't the Assessor at all. It's the Board of Review, which he says cuts commercial values far more aggressively than residential ones and shifts the difference onto homeowners. Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas' office found that median homeowners in 15 West and South Side neighborhoods saw bills jump around 30% in a single year.

Here's the honest part: nobody knows yet what this means for your bill. A new assessor changes how values get set. He does not change the levies your school district passes, he does not control the state equalizer, and he does not control the Board of Review. Anyone confidently predicting your 2027 bill right now is guessing.

What we do know: Hynes takes office in December, and his first full reassessment as county assessor will be the City of Chicago in 2027. City homeowners, mark that one down. Your turn is next.

What to do this week

• Look up your township's deadline. Not your neighbor's township — yours. They're staggered by weeks.

• Read the property characteristics on your notice. Errors are common and they're the easiest appeal to win.

• Compare the estimate to real sales, not to Zestimates, not to what your brother-in-law thinks.

• If you're thinking about selling in the next year, know your number before you price anything.

Know your real number

Assessed value tells you what the county thinks. Market value tells you what a buyer will actually pay. Those are different numbers, and only one of them shows up on your closing statement.

I'll pull your comps, your assessment history, and a straight-answer market value for your home — free, no obligation, no drip campaign afterward.

And when you're ready to sell: The Rosenberg Group lists at 1.25% — roughly half the traditional listing side. On a $475,000 sale, that's about $6,000 back in your pocket versus a standard 2.5% listing fee. Every listing includes professional photography, a 3D Matterport tour, and full online marketing. Our Zero Commission Clause means if you find your own buyer, you owe us nothing. And you can cancel anytime — no lock-in, no penalty, no awkward phone calls.

Twenty-five years in this market. Over $100 million closed. Chicago and every suburb around it.

Jason Rosenberg | The Rosenberg Group at Infiniti Properties 312.882.9797 www.jasonrosenbergrealestate.com

Sources

• Cook County Assessor's Office, "Assessment & Appeal Calendar" (updated August 14, 2026) — township mailing dates, appeal deadlines, Board of Review windows

• Cook County Assessor's Office, Oak Park Township Residential Valuations

• Cook County Assessor's Office, Lyons Township Residential Valuations

• Cook County Assessor's Office, Palos Township Residential Valuations

• Cook County Assessor's Office, "Learn about Reassessments" — triennial cycle and 2026 south/west suburban triad

• WTTW Chicago News, "Two-Term Incumbent Fritz Kaegi Concedes to Pat Hynes in Cook County Assessor's Race" (March 17, 2026)

• WTTW Chicago News, "Cook County Assessor Candidate Pat Hynes on Property Taxes, His Vision for the Office" (March 18, 2026)

• Bisnow Chicago, "Hynes Unseats Kaegi In Primary For Cook County Assessor" (March 18, 2026)

• Chicago Sun-Times, "Hynes wins Cook County assessor's race, denies Kaegi third term" (March 17, 2026)

• Ballotpedia, Cook County Assessor general election, November 3, 2026

• Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas' office, study on West and South Side property tax bill increases

This article is general information, not legal or tax advice. Verify all deadlines directly with the Cook County Assessor's Office and the Cook County Board of Review before filing.