Suburbs w/ highest and lowest property taxes (Chicago, Oak Park: sales, real estate)

[4122]

Everyone knows in Illinois, property taxes are very high. Which suburbs have high taxes for the area and which suburbs do you think are low for the area? Here are some suburbs I think have low or high property taxes:

High:
Libertyville
Gurnee
Oak Park
Flossmoor

Low:
Oak Brook
Downers Grove
Barrington

[numberfive]

Here's a sortable list* of suburbs where you can see the lowest and highest tax rates (business or residential).

It actually paints a different picture of the suburbs that may surprise you. For the suburbs you listed:

Originally Posted by 4122

High:
Libertyville - #297
Gurnee - #210
Oak Park - #204
Flossmoor -#29

Low:
Oak Brook - #361
Downers Grove - #364
Barrington - #380

Looks like they're all lower than average except for Flossmoor; that's the only suburb in your lists that truly has a high property tax rate.

This is just rates though, those rates translate into wildly different amounts. I'd rather pay 4% on a $200k home than 3% on a $400k home, unless the home gains per year outpace taxes.

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* The sorting feature doesn't work in Firefox, but it does in IE and Chrome.

[My Kind Of Town]

It's interesting to me that Oak Brook's residential tax rate is and has been considerably lower than all other Chicagoland suburbs and yet is not seeing the same type of recovery in real estate prices as nearby communities. Just goes to show that taxes alone don't make or break a market.

[numberfive]

Originally Posted by My Kind Of Town

It's interesting to me that Oak Brook's residential tax rate is and has been considerably lower than all other Chicagoland suburbs and yet is not seeing the same type of recovery in real estate prices as nearby communities. Just goes to show that taxes alone don't make or break a market.

Which suburbs are you using in your comparison?

When I checked on real estate trends here (just add the city names below the line graphs), you can see the recovery is equally as anemic in many suburbs. I picked the ones the OP used, and they all have about the same growth rate (with Flossmoor being the worst of the bunch).

Also, isn't Oak Brook mainly commercial/business? The tax revenue would be coming from industry, so they wouldn't have to tax residents as heavily.

[chet everett]

As concerns Oak Brook, the specifics of what portions of town are taxed at the lowest rate correspond to the relatively small area that is served by D53, that is under half of the total population of Oak Brook's already tiny population, so not even 4000 residents -- https://www.city-data.com/city/Oak-Brook-Illinois.html Other portions of town are served by districts like Elmhurst D200, Downers Grove D58, and others that have higher tax rates.

Further, the comments about "mainly commercial/business" are incorrect as the majority of the highly valued shopping district comprising Oakbrook Center Mall is actually part of the Salt Creek D48 that serves mostly unimpressive parts of unincorporated Elmhurst / Villa Park and the less desirable areas of Oakbrook Terrace -- Elementary School District, Salt Creek School District 48, Illinois

I would also caution that whenever anyone is comparing TAX RATES it is easy to forget that even if there is no municipal tax for operations in a town like Oak Brook (largely due to the way a portion of that sales tax revenues flow directly back to municipalities in Illinois -- most of Oak Brook is in DuPage Co and this is as good an explanation as you'll find about the complexity of sales tax -- https://www.dupageco.org/Finance/29442/ ). Municipal operation costs are dwarfed by the costs of pensions (http://www.oak-brook.org/DocumentCenter/View/1837) and the signifacnt expenses of running high quality schools with very small class sizes -- BUTLER SD 53: Class Size . The driver for "leveling down" the property taxes that are used to fund Butler Elementary D53 (as well as Hinsdale D86, that also serves towns like Hinsdale, Burr Ridge, Darien, etc) is the relatively HIGH VALUE of each of the properties (including very costly homes...) in the taxed area. Thus TAX BILL for a multi-million dollar home is STILL in the tens of thousands per year...

[numberfive]

Originally Posted by chet everett

As concerns Oak Brook, the specifics of what portions of town are taxed at the lowest rate correspond to the relatively small area that is served by D53, that is under half of the total population of Oak Brook's already tiny population, so not even 4000 residents -- https://www.city-data.com/city/Oak-Brook-Illinois.html Other portions of town are served by districts like Elmhurst D200, Downers Grove D58, and others that have higher tax rates.

Further, the comments about "mainly commercial/business" are incorrect as the majority of the highly valued shopping district comprising Oakbrook Center Mall is actually part of the Salt Creek D48 that serves mostly unimpressive parts of unincorporated Elmhurst / Villa Park and the less desirable areas of Oakbrook Terrace -- Elementary School District, Salt Creek School District 48, Illinois

I would also caution that whenever anyone is comparing TAX RATES it is easy to forget that even if there is no municipal tax for operations in a town like Oak Brook (largely due to the way a portion of that sales tax revenues flow directly back to municipalities in Illinois -- most of Oak Brook is in DuPage Co and this is as good an explanation as you'll find about the complexity of sales tax -- https://www.dupageco.org/Finance/29442/ ). Municipal operation costs are dwarfed by the costs of pensions (http://www.oak-brook.org/DocumentCenter/View/1837) and the signifacnt expenses of running high quality schools with very small class sizes -- BUTLER SD 53: Class Size . The driver for "leveling down" the property taxes that are used to fund Butler Elementary D53 (as well as Hinsdale D86, that also serves towns like Hinsdale, Burr Ridge, Darien, etc) is the relatively HIGH VALUE of each of the properties (including very costly homes...) in the taxed area. Thus TAX BILL for a multi-million dollar home is STILL in the tens of thousands per year...

The "mainly commercial/business" comment was pertaining to population density -- it's about half of some of the suburbs the OP listed like Libertyville and Gurnee. Oakbrook reports over half their tax revenue is from sales tax, but that's besides the point.

It is not a typical Chicago suburb in that regard.

The OP is addressing property taxes specifically, and per the link I cited above, Oakbrook falls much lower on the scale due to the lesser percentage of property taxes drawn. An Oakbrook home that is valued in the multi-millions in your example will pay substantially less than the exact same valued home in Libertyville, Gurnee, etc.

Oakbrook:

Median real estate property taxes paid for housing units with mortgages in 2013: $10,047 (1.3%)
Median real estate property taxes paid for housing units with no mortgage in 2013: $8,446 (1.2%)

Libertyville:

Median real estate property taxes paid for housing units with mortgages in 2013: $9,168 (2.3%)
Median real estate property taxes paid for housing units with no mortgage in 2013: $8,517 (2.4%)

Gurnee:

Median real estate property taxes paid for housing units with mortgages in 2013: $6,466 (2.6%)
Median real estate property taxes paid for housing units with no mortgage in 2013: $6,196 (2.9%)

That's why Oakbrook shows so much lower on that list -- for someone looking for the lowest tax bill on their $1MM home, they'll save tens of thousands of dollars by choosing Oakbrook over Libertyville or Gurnee.

[My Kind Of Town]

Originally Posted by numberfive

Which suburbs are you using in your comparison?

When I checked on real estate trends here (just add the city names below the line graphs), you can see the recovery is equally as anemic in many suburbs. I picked the ones the OP used, and they all have about the same growth rate (with Flossmoor being the worst of the bunch).

Also, isn't Oak Brook mainly commercial/business? The tax revenue would be coming from industry, so they wouldn't have to tax residents as heavily.

Refer to post #65

https://www.city-data.com/forum/chica...l#post43913592

[aga412]

Originally Posted by chet everett

As concerns Oak Brook, the specifics of what portions of town are taxed at the lowest rate correspond to the relatively small area that is served by D53, that is under half of the total population of Oak Brook's already tiny population, so not even 4000 residents -- https://www.city-data.com/city/Oak-Brook-Illinois.html Other portions of town are served by districts like Elmhurst D200, Downers Grove D58, and others that have higher tax rates.

Further, the comments about "mainly commercial/business" are incorrect as the majority of the highly valued shopping district comprising Oakbrook Center Mall is actually part of the Salt Creek D48 that serves mostly unimpressive parts of unincorporated Elmhurst / Villa Park and the less desirable areas of Oakbrook Terrace -- Elementary School District, Salt Creek School District 48, Illinois

I would also caution that whenever anyone is comparing TAX RATES it is easy to forget that even if there is no municipal tax for operations in a town like Oak Brook (largely due to the way a portion of that sales tax revenues flow directly back to municipalities in Illinois -- most of Oak Brook is in DuPage Co and this is as good an explanation as you'll find about the complexity of sales tax -- https://www.dupageco.org/Finance/29442/ ). Municipal operation costs are dwarfed by the costs of pensions (http://www.oak-brook.org/DocumentCenter/View/1837) and the signifacnt expenses of running high quality schools with very small class sizes -- BUTLER SD 53: Class Size . The driver for "leveling down" the property taxes that are used to fund Butler Elementary D53 (as well as Hinsdale D86, that also serves towns like Hinsdale, Burr Ridge, Darien, etc) is the relatively HIGH VALUE of each of the properties (including very costly homes...) in the taxed area. Thus TAX BILL for a multi-million dollar home is STILL in the tens of thousands per year...

Caps attack!

[numberfive]

Originally Posted by My Kind Of Town

Refer to post #65

https://www.city-data.com/forum/chica...l#post43913592

Ok, we're talking about two different types of recovery. The growth rates are nearly identical between suburbs. I think your point was that Oakbrook isn't catching up to pre-crash home values as quickly as North Shore suburbs, and I'd agree.

[My Kind Of Town]

Originally Posted by numberfive

Ok, we're talking about two different types of recovery. The growth rates are nearly identical between suburbs. I think your point was that Oakbrook isn't catching up to pre-crash home values as quickly as North Shore suburbs, and I'd agree.

My point was that despite very low property taxes in Oak Brook real estate prices are not recovering nearly as fast as say Oak Park (very high property taxes) so property taxes alone do not make or break a local RE market. If they did, wouldn't you expect the two recoveries to be flipped as Oak Park property taxes steadily increase while Oak Brook's remain relatively low?