Chicago Houses Sold in 2025 for More Than Their Valuations Implied. In West Englewood, About 1.7 Times as Much.

An assessment is the Cook County Assessor’s valuation of a property — for houses, 10 percent of its estimated market value. That assessed value is multiplied by the state equalization factor into an equalized assessed value; exemptions are then deducted, and the taxable value that remains is what a tax bill’s share is computed from. We took every arms-length Chicago house sale of 2025 — 11,854 of them — and compared each sale price with the same house’s valuation for the 2025 tax year, before any appeal touched it. Multiplying by ten gives an implied market value for comparison, not a price the office ever quoted. A ratio of 100 percent means that implied value matched the buyer’s price. Across the 11,719 sales that map to a community area, the median is 81 percent: valuations run behind the 2025 market. How far behind depends a great deal on where the house is.

Every community area’s figure, in text

Median valuation as a share of sale price, 2025, areas with 50 or more usable sales: Near North Side 99.4% (88 sales); Hyde Park 97.5% (52 sales); Near West Side 89.1% (90 sales); North Park 88.5% (66 sales); Grand Boulevard 88.2% (57 sales); South Lawndale 88.0% (128 sales); Bridgeport 87.8% (162 sales); Montclare 87.3% (67 sales); Lincoln Park 86.8% (260 sales); Beverly 86.6% (153 sales); West Town 85.7% (394 sales); Forest Glen 85.6% (144 sales); Humboldt Park 85.0% (258 sales); Albany Park 84.9% (153 sales); Clearing 84.5% (142 sales); Norwood Park 84.4% (273 sales); Portage Park 84.0% (361 sales); Irving Park 83.8% (258 sales); East Garfield Park 83.5% (95 sales); Lower West Side 83.4% (95 sales); Lake View 83.0% (220 sales); Jefferson Park 83.0% (182 sales); Mount Greenwood 82.3% (159 sales); Austin 82.2% (463 sales); Garfield Ridge 81.9% (236 sales); Woodlawn 81.8% (107 sales); South Shore 81.8% (213 sales); West Ridge 81.7% (197 sales); West Garfield Park 81.5% (92 sales); North Center 81.4% (190 sales); Edison Park 81.3% (88 sales); Belmont Cragin 81.1% (236 sales); Edgewater 81.0% (74 sales); Morgan Park 80.9% (174 sales); North Lawndale 80.7% (192 sales); Avondale 80.4% (162 sales); Uptown 80.3% (57 sales); Rogers Park 80.0% (69 sales); Logan Square 79.5% (335 sales); Dunning 79.4% (285 sales); Hermosa 78.8% (65 sales); Brighton Park 78.2% (134 sales); Lincoln Square 78.0% (115 sales); South Chicago 77.7% (202 sales); Washington Heights 77.1% (247 sales); Ashburn 76.8% (248 sales); Avalon Park 74.8% (95 sales); Chatham 74.4% (215 sales); West Elsdon 74.0% (77 sales); West Lawn 73.4% (130 sales); McKinley Park 73.0% (90 sales); Roseland 72.8% (418 sales); West Pullman 72.3% (304 sales); Greater Grand Crossing 71.2% (235 sales); New City 70.0% (193 sales); Chicago Lawn 69.2% (236 sales); East Side 69.0% (90 sales); Gage Park 68.7% (90 sales); Calumet Heights 66.7% (132 sales); Auburn Gresham 65.6% (368 sales); South Deering 64.9% (108 sales); Englewood 64.4% (204 sales); Pullman 64.0% (55 sales); Hegewisch 60.4% (78 sales); West Englewood 57.5% (272 sales).

Fewer than 50 usable sales, no median shown: Archer Heights, Armour Square, Burnside, Douglas, Fuller Park, Kenwood, Loop, Near South Side, Oakland, O’Hare, Riverdale, Washington Park.

The areas valued closest to their prices, and the areas furthest below

• Near North Side88 sales99.4%
• Hyde Park52 sales97.5%
• Near West Side90 sales89.1%
• North Park66 sales88.5%
• Grand Boulevard57 sales88.2%

• South Deering108 sales64.9%
• Englewood204 sales64.4%
• Pullman55 sales64.0%
• Hegewisch78 sales60.4%
• West Englewood272 sales57.5%

The pattern lines up with where prices have moved fastest. Our recorded-sales reporting found South and West Side house prices rising from a low base at some of the fastest rates in the city — Englewood’s median recorded house price, about $25,000 in 2019, reached about $120,000 by 2025 — and assessments are updated on a schedule: Chicago was last reassessed for tax year 2024, so the 2025 valuations mostly reflect the market as the Assessor measured it then. Where prices kept climbing after that measurement, the valuation fell behind the price. West Englewood’s median 2025 buyer paid about 1.7 times the house’s implied valuation; buyers on the Near North Side paid almost exactly the implied value.

What a below-market valuation means at the next reassessment

Within a taxing district, tax shares are relative: a house’s slice of the levy follows its equalized assessed value, after exemptions, against everyone else’s. Before those adjustments enter, a house whose estimated market value sits at half its sale price starts from a smaller share than a same-priced house whose estimated market value matches its sale price. Chicago’s next citywide reassessment is scheduled for tax year 2027, and reassessment means remeasuring values against recent sales. If prices in the widest-gap areas hold anywhere near their 2025 levels, those are the largest gaps in the 2025 files going into that remeasurement. What any of it does to an individual bill is genuinely unknowable from here — levies, exemptions, equalization, appeals and everyone else’s new values all move at once — and this page makes no bill prediction. It measures the size of the gap the next reassessment will be looking at.

One more piece of context sits beside this map. Our appeal-map reporting found that owners in West Englewood file the fewest assessment appeals per house in the city, and that the appeals they do file win at the city’s highest rate. This page adds a third fact: its valuations sit furthest below its own market. We present the three facts side by side and draw no causal line among them; each is measured independently from county records.

If you are checking your own valuation against the market

The ratios above are medians across the sales in each area — from about fifty to several hundred — and the Assessor’s parcel record is public. The Assessor’s property search returns a parcel’s recorded characteristics and its estimated market value by address or PIN — the figure this page compares to sale prices. What a house actually sold for is a separate record: the county’s recorded deeds, which our recorded-sales reporting reads for every community area, and which the Assessor’s own property pages also summarize for comparable parcels. Set beside each other, the two give a house’s own version of the ratio this page computes citywide (81 percent at the median), and this page’s map says what that ratio ran in the surrounding area in 2025 — 57 percent in West Englewood, 99 percent on the Near North Side. The Assessor’s appeals page, as of August 21, 2026, offers its own rule of thumb in its own words: if the characteristics on the notice are correct and the estimated market value “is within 10 percent of what you think your home is worth then it is unlikely that an appeal would change your property’s assessed value enough to significantly affect its property tax bill” — and it states that the office “does not set property tax levies, rates, or bills.” Whether and when an appeal can be filed is the Assessor’s assessment and appeal calendar — township by township, reopened each year; where it differs from this page, the calendar controls. What happened in the aggregate to the house parcels that did appeal is in our two-stage appeal reading, which walks the same county tools for that decision. What these records cannot tell you is whether your valuation is wrong: a house valued below its likely price is the common case in 2025’s files, the ratio is a median and not a rule, and an individual parcel can sit anywhere around it. What they can tell you is the valuation on file, the prices recorded near it, how the two compared across the area last year, and the calendar that governs any appeal.

How we counted

• Sales: the Assessor’s Parcel Sales file (wvhk-k5uv), calendar-2025 sales in Chicago’s eight townships, houses only — meaning class-2 residential parcels other than condominiums (classes 299 and 399 excluded), a county class that also covers two-to-six-unit buildings, which this page calls houses for short, keeping only sales the file itself marks arms-length: no duplicate recording of the same sale within 365 days, no sales under $10,000, no excluded deed types, no multi-parcel sales. A parcel genuinely sold twice in 2025 passes those screens as two transactions; 447 rows are such second sales, each counted as its own observation of a price against the same valuation.
• Valuations: the Assessor’s Assessed Values file (uzyt-m557), tax-year-2025 mailed values — the Assessor’s original figure for each parcel, before any appeal. Every one of the 11,407 sold parcels matched a mailed value. Using pre-appeal values keeps this measurement independent of the appeal behavior we mapped separately.
• The ratio: ten times the mailed assessed value, divided by the sale price, per the county’s 10 percent assessment level for houses; each area’s figure is the median across its sales, shown only where an area had at least 50 usable sales. The citywide median is computed across the 11,719 sales that map to a community area; 135 without a mappable location are excluded throughout.
• What the timing means: Chicago’s most recent citywide reassessment was for tax year 2024, so tax-year-2025 mailed values largely carry that measurement forward, while the sales here run through calendar 2025. The gap measured is the one a 2025 buyer actually experienced between price and valuation; it is not a grade of the Assessor’s accuracy as of the earlier date the office was valuing for.
• As of: both files were retrieved July 27, 2026. The sales file continues to add late-recorded 2025 deeds over time and can be corrected, so a later rerun may show different counts; the figures here are the files as retrieved on July 27, 2026.
• What this is not: a tax bill prediction. Bills depend on levies, exemptions, the state equalization multiplier and everyone else’s values; this page measures valuations against prices and nothing further.

Computed by KCM Desk from Assessor sales and valuation records; published July 27, 2026. If you spot an error, corrections come first.

Related Keep Chicagoland Moving coverage

• Cook County Property Taxes, by the Numbers — the full tax cluster
• Nearly Half of Lincoln Park’s Houses Appealed Their Property Tax Assessments. On the Southeast Side, About One in 24 Did.
• What a Chicago Home Actually Sold For: 241,653 Deeds, All 77 Community Areas, 2018–2026
• Most Chicago House Appeals Filed Without a Lawyer Won. Most Filed With One Did Not.
• 93% of Chicago House Parcels the Assessor Turned Down Appeared at the Board of Review Too. More Than 4 in 10 Won There.