The Bears Argued Their Way Down to Your Tax Rate on 326 Acres. They're Still Leaving.

The Biggest News Jason Rosenberg
6 hours ago
7 min read

Thursday at training camp in Lake Forest, George McCaskey and Kevin Warren stood in front of the cameras and said what everybody in this town already suspected: Hammond, Indiana is where the Bears are spending their time, attention, and money. They also promised they won't become the Hammond Bears, which — thanks, guys. Really. That was the part we were worried about.

Every sports desk in the city covered it as a football story.

It isn't. It's a property tax story. And it's the single most instructive property tax story a Chicagoland homeowner is going to get this year, because the Bears just spent three years running the exact play you're allowed to run — and then told you what they thought of the result.

The number nobody put on the graphic

Here's the sequence, and it's worth reading slowly.

The Bears bought the 326-acre former Arlington International Racecourse in early 2023 for about $197 million. The Cook County Assessor eventually pushed the site's value up to $192 million, and the Bears appealed. Their attorney argued for $60 million. The three local school districts argued for $160 million. The Board of Review landed at $124,691,296.

Then came the part that matters. In December 2024, the Arlington Heights Village Board voted 8-0 to set the Bears' bill at roughly $3.6 million a year — because with the grandstand demolished, the vacant site gets assessed at 10% of market value instead of the 25% commercial rate. That's down from the $8.9 million they'd been paying.

Ten percent. Read that again if you own a house in Cook County, because that's your number. Homes here are assessed at 10% of market value. Commercial property is assessed at 25%. The Bears — a $6 billion NFL franchise sitting on 326 acres of prime northwest suburban dirt — successfully argued their way onto the same side of the ledger as your three-bedroom split-level in Palatine.

They cut their bill roughly 60%. They got the homeowner rate. And they are still, as of last Thursday, pointing at Indiana.

What they actually wanted (and it wasn't a discount)

The Bears never said the number was too big. They said the number wasn't certain.

What they've been chasing since 2022 is a Payments in Lieu of Taxes deal — a mechanism that would freeze the assessment somewhere between 23 and 40 years and let them make negotiated payments to the village, the schools, and the other local taxing bodies. Springfield didn't deliver it. Illinois lawmakers didn't pass the lump-sum legislation in the spring session, and by the time the Bears' board voted in June to push the Indiana project forward, McCaskey was describing communication with Illinois legislators as minimal. Warren said flatly that they don't have an offer from the state.

Indiana didn't have to write a bill for the part the Bears cared about most. Indiana wrote its tax caps into the state constitution: 1% of gross assessed value for a homestead, 2% for rental and agricultural, 3% for business. A $300,000 house is constitutionally capped at $3,000 a year before any deductions even apply. On top of that, Indiana guaranteed the Bears a tax assurance and dangled up to $1 billion in incentives, and Governor Mike Braun says the talks are "in the red zone."

Bears fans know exactly how red zone trips tend to go around here. But you get the point: one state offers certainty as a constitutional amendment, the other offers it as a bill that two chambers passed in different versions and still have to reconcile.

Okay — so what does this do to my house?

Three honest answers, in order of how much they'll actually affect your life.

1. Arlington Heights values: calmer than the headlines, and the data is a mess.

If you go looking for what the stadium saga did to Arlington Heights prices, you'll find four numbers that don't agree with each other. Zillow's home value index has the typical Arlington Heights home around $401,000, up 2.4% over the year. Movoto had July 2026 median list price at $495,000 with homes sitting a median of 14 days. Redfin's February 2026 closed-sale median came in at $407,500 — reported as down 18.5% year over year — while Realtor.com's listing data for the same market showed prices up 5.24%.

That's not a market in freefall or a market on fire. That's four companies measuring four different things — closed sales versus active listings versus an algorithmic index — in a village that is really a dozen micro-markets wearing a trench coat. The practical takeaway: no algorithm on the internet knows what your Arlington Heights house is worth, and none of them ever priced in a stadium.

2. The 326 acres get developed either way.

The Bears' Soldier Field lease runs through 2033, and Warren wouldn't commit to a timeline for the ground-breaking decision. Advocates in Arlington Heights are still publicly pushing for the team to come back to the original plan. Meanwhile that land sits next to a Metra station, inside one of the most established suburban markets in the region. Nobody leaves 326 acres of that fallow for a decade. Stadium or no stadium, something large gets built there, and the homes within a mile of it will feel that long before any football gets played.

3. Northwest Indiana is the part actually moving right now.

Over the April–June 2026 window, Hammond's median sale price was $199,891, up 2.5% year over year. Munster came in at $379,793, Crown Point at $329,821 (up 9.9%), Highland at $265,874, and Gary at $129,929 — up nearly 53%. The median Northwest Indiana single-family home sold for $290,000 in April, up 9% from a year ago.

Now the honest counterpoint, because I'd rather you trust me than click me: the research on stadiums and nearby home values is genuinely mixed, and the effects are highly localized and easily swamped by the broader market. Values tend to move meaningfully only when a stadium anchors deliberate mixed-use development — the way The Battery did around Atlanta's ballpark. Buying a house in Hammond because of a stadium that has no groundbreaking date, no finalized site, and no completed financing is speculation with a mortgage attached to it. Buy the house, the block, and the commute. If a stadium shows up, that's a bonus, not a thesis.

And if you're running the border math yourself: Illinois' effective property tax rate is right around 1.88%, tied for the highest in the country, while Indiana's sits near 0.76%. That's a real gap on a real house. It's also not the whole picture — Indiana layers a county income tax on top of its state rate, and Illinois fully exempts Social Security and most retirement income while Indiana taxes it. Retirees and remote workers often win the trade. A 45-minute-longer commute for a job that pays Chicago wages usually doesn't.

The play you're allowed to run

You can't move the state line. You can do what the Bears did, and almost nobody does it:

Appeal your assessment. Cook County gives you two shots — the Assessor's office first, then the Board of Review. It's free, you don't need an attorney, and your township's window opens on a published schedule. The Bears cut their bill roughly 60% doing exactly this.
Verify your exemptions are actually on the bill. Homeowner, senior, senior freeze. They come off when a property changes hands, and they do not reattach themselves out of kindness.
If you're selling, expect the tax line to be the first question. Buyers in 2026 are underwriting the monthly payment, not the sale price. A clean, documented tax and exemption history is a legitimate marketing asset now.
If you're border-shopping, compare the whole number. Purchase price plus taxes plus insurance plus income tax plus what the commute costs you in gas, tolls, and hours. Not the sticker price.

One more thing, since we're talking about bills nobody questions

The Bears looked at a recurring six-figure-per-month expense, decided it was negotiable, and negotiated it. Most homeowners look at a 5–6% commission the same way they look at gravity.

It isn't gravity.

I list homes for 1.25% — roughly half the standard listing side — with professional photography, full online syndication, and a 3D Matterport tour on every listing. My agreement includes a Zero Commission Clause: if you find your own buyer, you owe me nothing. And you can cancel anytime. No 6-month handcuffs, no cancellation fee, no "let me talk to my broker."

Twenty-five years in this market. Over $100 million closed. City and suburbs.

Want to know what your home is actually worth — from a human, not an algorithm that can't decide whether Arlington Heights is up 5% or down 18%? Call me.

Jason Rosenberg The Rosenberg Group @ Infiniti Properties 312.882.9797 www.jasonrosenbergrealestate.com