Homewood-Flossmoor's Tax Rate Runs on a Sawtooth, and 2026 Is the Reset Year

What does a 16% tax rate actually tell a buyer comparing a Flossmoor listing with a Chicago condo, where the 2025 average rate is 6.853%? On its own, it tells you less than it appears to. The Cook County Clerk's 2025 tax rate report, released September 23, 2026, puts Flossmoor's average composite rate per PIN at 16.025700 for tax year 2025. Homewood's is 15.497640.

Those figures are real, but they're a snapshot from one point in a cycle. In Cook County's south suburbs the rate rises and falls on a three-year rhythm set by reassessment. The bills on listings this fall come from the high end of that rhythm. The south and west suburbs are being reassessed right now for tax year 2026, with those bills payable in 2027.

The rate on this year's bill is the peak of the cycle

A composite rate is the sum of the rates from every taxing district that serves a property. Each district's rate is roughly its levy divided by the total taxable value of all property inside that district. When reassessment pushes values up, the denominator grows and the rate drops. In the years between reassessments, levies keep rising while values stay put, so the rate climbs back.

Here is that pattern in both villages, taken from four years of Clerk reports:

In the 2023 reassessment year, Flossmoor's average rate fell 23.27% and Homewood's fell 22.87%. The rates then rose for two straight years. Flossmoor's 9.59% jump for tax year 2025 is the latest step up. Tax year 2026 is the next point where the cycle resets.

In 2023 the rate fell and bills went up anyway

A drop in the rate during a reset year has not meant a smaller bill. For the south and west suburbs as a whole, the average tax rate fell from 13.853% for tax year 2022 to 10.986% for tax year 2023. Over the same period, the region's average single-family tax bill rose 15.13%, from $6,182.10 to $7,117.41.

The Clerk's 2023 Tax Rate Report explained it this way: "The overall Assessed Value in the south and western suburbs increased by 27.4%. This contributed to a 20.7% reduction in the average composite tax rate in this region. A lower tax rate will offset the impact of assessment increases."

The key word there is "offset." A lower rate makes up for higher assessments, and it doesn't automatically do more than that. What decides the size of your bill is how your home's share of the total taxable value shifts, together with how much the districts levy. In that cycle, residential assessed value grew faster than the 27.4% regional average. On a comparison before appeals, Class 2 residential assessed value in Bloom Township rose 43%, from $318.95 million to $456.59 million. In Rich Township it rose 54%, from $361.40 million to $556.45 million. Homewood and Flossmoor sit largely in Bloom and Rich.

The bill tells you more than the rate does

Since the rate swings with the cycle, the dollar figure is the better number to compare across neighborhoods. The Clerk's 2025 report models an average single-family home in each region for tax year 2025:

• South & West suburbs: average estimated market value of $243,150 at an 11.862% average rate, for a $7,553.08 bill
• Chicago, South: $187,400 at 6.853%, for a $3,206.06 bill
• Chicago, North: $370,150 at 6.853%, for a $7,000.87 bill

The average suburban home in the Clerk's model is worth about two-thirds of the average North Side Chicago home, yet its modeled bill is slightly higher. The Cook County Treasurer's August 2026 analysis tells a similar story with medians. For tax year 2025, the median homeowner bill in the combined South and Southwest Suburbs rose 3.4% to $6,468. Chicago's median rose 3.2% to $4,597.

These are regional averages. Inside Homewood, the taxing districts include parts of Bloom, Bremen, Rich and Thornton townships and School Districts 152½, 153, 154 and 161. That means two homes in the same village can carry different composite rates. The Clerk says plainly that an individual rate "may be higher or lower depending on combination of taxing districts servicing a property." The bill tied to a specific PIN is the only number that fits a specific house.

The 2026 reset adds a new variable through commercial appraisals

This cycle brings something new. On May 26, 2026, Cook County announced that the Assessor and the Board of Review had agreed on a single method for handling tax rates during the tax year 2026 reassessment of the south and west suburbs. The HF Chronicle reported the change locally in July. The change grew out of a December 11, 2024 audit by Josh Myers Valuation Solutions. The audit found that the two offices had historically handled real estate taxes very differently when valuing commercial property.

A tax rate matters in a commercial appraisal because of how income property is valued. The Assessor's 2026 Capitalization Rate Policy works like this:

1. Start with net operating income, leaving property taxes out of the expenses.
2. Calculate a "tax load," which is the level of assessment times the equalization factor times the tax rate.
3. Add the tax load to the market cap rate to get a "loaded" cap rate.
4. Divide income by the loaded cap rate to get market value.

A higher assumed tax rate makes the divisor bigger, so the estimated value comes out lower. For south townships, the policy says the 2026 estimated tax rates "will mirror 2023 actual tax rates," using the 2023 equalization factor. The Assessor picked this because 2023 was the last south reassessment year, and that approach performed best in its testing. For commercial valuations, that means the 2026 math runs on a reset-year rate rather than the 2025 peak. The policy makes no prediction about the rates that will actually appear on 2026 bills.

To see how much that assumption matters, here's a rough illustration that uses village averages rather than the tax-code rates the Assessor actually applies. Take a Flossmoor commercial property with $100,000 of net operating income, a 25% level of assessment and a 9.25% market cap rate. At the 2023 rate of 14.110% and the 2023 equalizer of 3.0163, the tax load is about 10.64% and the value comes to roughly $503,000. At the 2025 rate of 16.025700 and the 2025 equalizer of 3.0300, the tax load is about 12.14% and the value drops to roughly $468,000. Using the lower reset-year rate yields commercial values about 7% higher.

Commercial values decide how much of the levy homeowners carry

The Treasurer describes how the levy works. Assessed value sets each property's share of the total tax bill, and when one owner is billed less, others usually pay more. So higher commercial values mean businesses carry a larger share of what Homewood's and Flossmoor's districts levy, and homeowners carry less.

The last cycle went the other way. After the 2023 reassessment of 17 south and west townships, the homeowner share of assessed value was 68% before reassessment and 67% after the Assessor's work. After Board of Review appeals it was 71%, and nonresidential assessed value fell by just over 18% at the Board stage. Countywide, the Treasurer estimates that about $1.9 billion of the $3.3 billion drop in business property taxes from 2021 to 2023 shifted onto residential properties.

Because the Board of Review now uses the same method for first-year appeals, a commercial appeal can no longer win a lower value just by assuming a different tax rate. The method doesn't cap any levy, and it doesn't settle every appeal. The levies are still rising. For tax year 2025, Homewood-Flossmoor Community High School 233's rate rose 12.54% to 5.254820, and School District 161's rose 9.28% to 5.002707. What the unified method does is take one lever for shifting value away from commercial property out of the 2026 reset.

What's posted so far, and what isn't

As of the Assessor's calendar update on October 17, 2026, Bloom and Rich townships had no reassessment notice dates or appeal deadlines listed. The Board of Review shows both as pre-file townships. The group of townships the Board opened on October 8 includes Lyons, Northfield, Stickney and West Chicago, and it closes November 6. Homeowners and buyers can check the Assessor's calendar for Bloom and Rich dates as they're posted.

One more point on timing. The tax year 2025 second-installment bills that came due October 1, 2026 still reflect assessments from the 2023 cycle. The first bills based on the new values are the tax year 2026 bills, payable in 2027.

FAQ

Will Flossmoor's tax rate fall in 2027? In the last reassessment year, both villages' average rates fell by more than 22%. For its 2026 commercial valuations, the Assessor uses 2023 rates as its estimate. The rates that actually appear on bills will depend on the new assessed values and on what each district levies.

Does a lower rate mean a lower bill? Not necessarily. In 2023 the south and west suburbs' average rate fell while the average single-family bill rose 15.13%.

Where can I see the rate for one specific home? The Clerk publishes rates by taxing district and tax code in its 2025 Tax Rate Report. A property's PIN determines which districts apply to it.

This post is general information about how Cook County taxes are calculated. It isn't legal, tax or financial advice, so please confirm the details for your own property with a qualified tax professional or the relevant county office.

When you're underwriting a home or a commercial property in Homewood or Flossmoor, the tax line deserves the same scrutiny as the price. DeMarcus Hunter can pull PIN-level bill history and walk you through how the 2026 reassessment fits into your numbers. Book a Consultation.