Minimizing Your Annual Property Taxes
Property taxes directly impact a business’s bottom line. Unfortunately, your property taxes can be artificially high based on inaccurate information. Clients can find unfairly high taxes to be damaging to their business, frustrating and dispiriting.
We never lose sight of our main goal: Minimizing the annual property tax bill on your properties.
We take this responsibility very seriously – we know how important it can be to a business or investor. Our fees are based on our success. More importantly, though, we have an ethical obligation to advocate on your behalf aggressively and thoroughly. We appeal taxes at the local level (which in Cook County includes both the Cook County Assessor and the Board of Review). We also do not hesitate to appeal further to a state property tax appeal board or file an appeal in a local circuit court. Our goal is results, results, results.
In addition to lowering future property liability, we can return to you taxes overpaid in prior years.
Refund Recovery
In addition to lowering future tax bills, we can often refund to you property taxes paid in prior years. We analyze each property very carefully to see if a refund is available – sometimes going back as far as four prior tax years. We take great pride in finding refunds that other service providers have missed. In many cases, net refunds to clients exceed the sum of two years’ full property tax bills.
Portfolio Management – Regional and National
Certain clients have property portfolios that span over several states or nationally. For them, we make certain that each property gets the advocacy and attention that a local attorney should provide.
We also know clients with large real estate portfolios want assessment efforts clearly and regularly communicated to them. We take pride in the clear and timely presentation of information to our clients – because communication is central to good service.
Pre-Acquisition Analysis
Clients, especially developers, often want a projection of a property’s property tax liability prior to their purchasing a property. This analysis can get complicated as the purchase price itself, temporary vacancy of a building and projected improvements in tenant lease rates can each effect an assessment of a property’s market value. We provide in-depth analysis in a responsive and timely manner – often with no additional charge to the client. In this way, we proactively help in a client’s overall success.