The Assessor’s office granted no reduction to 30,952 Chicago house parcels that appealed for tax year 2025. All but 2,168 later appeared in the Board of Review’s records — and 42.5 percent of those parcels received a reduction there.
37,250 stage-one and 77,942 stage-two house appeals, matched parcel by parcel · tax year 2025At the county administrative level, a property owner can challenge an assessment through two separate offices. The first is the Assessor’s own appeal process, in which the office that set the value reviews it. The second is the Board of Review, a separate three-member elected body with its own filing period; an owner may file there whether or not the property went through the Assessor’s process, and review does not end there either — a Board decision can be taken on to the state’s Property Tax Appeal Board or to court. Neither county office charges a filing fee. The Board opens each township only after the Assessor has completed its work there, so when the same parcel appears in both files for one tax year, the Board record comes from the later stage. That lets us measure, for every parcel our appeal map counted, how each stage ended. It does not establish that the same person filed both appeals — the county’s files track parcels, and “continued” on this page means the parcel, not a person, appears at both stages.
One definition before the chart: “houses” here is shorthand for class 2 residential parcels other than condominiums — detached houses and other small non-condo residential buildings — the same scope as our earlier appeal reporting.
Stage one said no to five appeals in six. Nearly all of those parcels reached the Board too.
The Assessor’s office granted a reduction on 16.9 percent of the house parcels that appealed to it. What happened next is the finding of this page: 93 percent of the turned-down parcels, 28,784 of 30,952, also show a Board of Review filing for the same year, and 42.5 percent of those received at the Board the reduction stage one had refused. Only 2,168 turned-down parcels citywide never appear in the Board’s file. The records do not say why the two stages reached such different results. What they do say is practical: a stage-one rejection was not the end of the process, and more than four in ten of the parcels that reached the Board received a reduction.
Most Board appeals had no stage-one decision on record
The Board of Review recorded appeals involving 77,942 Chicago house parcels for tax year 2025, more than twice the Assessor-stage count. 44,141 of those parcels have no record in the Assessor’s decision file, and 47.6 percent of them received a reduction. Even a stage-one reduction rarely closed the matter: 5,017 of the 6,298 parcels that received one also appeared in the Board’s records, and 2,085 received a further reduction on top of it. Put together, most of the Board’s docket arrived with no stage-one decision on record, and the Board is where most of these parcels’ reductions were granted — which matches what our relief reporting found about where the dollars come off.
Where a stage-one loss was more likely to be the end
- Gage Park106 turned-down parcels29.2%
- Brighton Park226 turned-down parcels21.2%
- Englewood100 turned-down parcels20.0%
- West Pullman151 turned-down parcels18.5%
- Chicago Lawn143 turned-down parcels17.5%
- Near South Side231 turned-down parcels0.9%
- Lincoln Park1,711 turned-down parcels2.3%
- Uptown282 turned-down parcels2.5%
- Lake View1,636 turned-down parcels2.9%
- O’Hare167 turned-down parcels3.0%
“Stopped” means a turned-down parcel that never appears in the Board’s file. It was rare everywhere, and it was not spread evenly: 29.2 percent of Gage Park’s turned-down parcels went no further, against about 2 percent in Lincoln Park and Lake View. Each percentage uses parcels that received no stage-one reduction as its denominator; it does not measure how often owners in an area appeal in the first place. That filing gap, which is far larger, is its own story. Areas with fewer than 100 turned-down parcels are left out; 60 of the 77 community areas cleared that bar.
The Board of Review opened its 2026 appeal season on July 27. Township filing windows open on a rolling schedule, so owners should confirm the current dates for their township on the Board’s dates and deadlines page. The Board does not charge a filing fee.
How we counted
- Stage one: the Assessor’s appeal decisions file (y282-6ig3), tax year 2025, Chicago’s eight townships, class 2 residential parcels other than condominiums (classes 299 and 399 excluded) — 37,276 rows covering 37,250 distinct parcels. A parcel counts as reduced at stage one if any of its rows shows a certified value below the mailed value.
- Stage two: the Board of Review’s decision history (7pny-nedm), same scope and year — 77,942 distinct parcels, the same file behind our appeal map. Reduced means the Board’s recorded result is a decrease.
- The join: by parcel identification number, the county’s permanent per-parcel ID. “Continued” and “stopped” describe the parcel’s presence in the files. The files record the pairing; the order comes from the county’s published calendar, under which the Board opens each township only after the Assessor has finished with it. Community-area figures place each parcel by its coordinates within Chicago’s 77 official community areas; areas with fewer than 100 turned-down parcels are suppressed rather than shown on thin data.
- Two cautions on reading this: we track parcels, not people — the files do not say whether the same person stood behind both filings, or behind either. And the 42.5 percent Board reduction rate belongs to the parcels that appear at both stages; whether the 2,168 that stopped would have fared the same is unknowable from these records. The rates describe what happened, not what would have happened.
- As of: both files retrieved July 27, 2026. Both are live county datasets and can be corrected over time, so a later rerun may differ; the figures above are as of the retrieval date.
Computed by KCM Desk from Assessor and Board of Review appeal records, tax year 2025; published July 27, 2026. If you spot an error, corrections come first.
Related Keep Chicagoland Moving coverage
- Nearly Half of Lincoln Park’s Houses Appealed Their Property Tax Assessments. On the Southeast Side, About One in 24 Did.
- Most Chicago House Appeals Filed Without a Lawyer Won. Most Filed With One Did Not.
- Chicago Houses Sold in 2025 for More Than Their Valuations Implied. In West Englewood, Nearly Twice as Much.