Study finds Kaegi has improved fairness in Cook County property assessments

Assessor Fritz Kaegi has “clearly improved” the fairness of Cook County’s property tax assessment system over his two terms, according to a new study crediting his office with reversing problems that led to the overvaluation of lower-priced homes and the undervaluation of high-priced homes.

Those changes brought the office “within industry standards” for fairness in assessing homes “for the first time in years,” according to the report by University of Chicago professor Christopher Berry.

Now up for a third term, Kaegi has certainly made the system more fair by treating more homeowners equally, but has not necessarily become more accurate, the report said. Compared with sales prices, residential properties “are increasingly under-assessed on average,” it found.

Berry, director of the U.