The Cook County Assessor valued the Chicago houses and two-to-six-flats that sold in 2025 at 81 percent of their sale prices, at the median, and the homes resold within two years at 60 percent. Every community area’s figure, with resales set apart. Second reading, September 30, 2026, with corrections to the July version.
We mapped all 77,942 Chicago house appeals from tax year 2025 against 446,354 house parcels. Filing runs about 12 times higher on the North Side lakefront than on the Southwest and Southeast Sides - and the low-filing areas win more often when they file.
Cook County's last two property tax deadlines ran late, and the county says the next will too. CPS says it is short $250 million; the Treasurer's office says at most $80 million. Either way, the schools are borrowing while they wait.
The flames took 30 hours; deciding who could rebuild took three years. The 1872 march on the Common Council, the businessmen's relief ledger, the fire-limits compromise, and the class map it drew.
The Great Chicago Fire, mapped: how it crossed the river twice, the 30-hour timeline, the disputed toll, the deadlier fire the same night, and where it survives in daily Chicago.
Ten Chicago bars licensed to serve until 4 a.m., every one a short walk from the 24-hour Red Line. Verified against city licence records and each bar’s own posted hours, with the ones that shut at two flagged.
Chicago’s deed and permit records for January through April 2026: median prices 18 to 29 percent above the same months of 2023, the low of the last five years, in all three types of home, and new-construction permits at a five-year high. In July we printed a 22 percent rise in sales; after the county added 1,914 sales to 2025, the same comparison reads 6 percent down. Both readings are shown, next to the national figures and the margins printed beside them. Corrected September 30, 2026.
Chicago's assessment roll opened at $49.46 billion and closed $3.85 billion lighter. Commercial property holds 39 percent of the city's assessed value and collected 86 percent of the reductions. Against its own value it was cut 17.0 percent; residential 1.3. Why that is not the whole story.
We read every Cook County Board of Review decision on a Chicago house for the 2025 tax year. Appeals filed without an attorney won 59.5% of the time; appeals filed with one won 38.9%. The gap holds in every price bracket and all five years we checked.
Chicago tests its beach water every swimming day and raises a yellow flag when the reading hits 1,000. We counted 9,524 lakefront tests since 2021. The flag flies at 63rd Street seven times as often as at North Avenue, and it is not a north-south story.
