Analysis: Tower Lakes home prices down 55 percent over past decade; Property tax rates rose to 5.10 percent

Medium realestate3

Home prices took a dive throughout Tower Lakes between 2007 and 2015, a BlockShopper analysis showed.

The median sale price in the area was $441,198 in 2007, but fell to $200,350 in 2015 -- a difference of 55 percent. At the same time, the median Effective Tax Rate (ETR) rose from 2.99 percent in 2007 to 5.10 percent in 2015.

A home's ETR is its property tax bill divided by its marked value. A $200,000 home with a $3,000 property tax bill would have an ETR of 1.5 percent.

The median ETR in Illinois is 2.3 percent, according to a 2007 WalletHub analysis of U.S. Census data. In Indiana, it's 0.87 percent.

The average $200,000 home in Illinois has a property tax bill of $4,600, versus $1,740 in Indiana.

In Tower Lakes, a $200,000 home would have a bill of $10,200 based on the area's median ETR. Parts of Tower Lakes have an ETR between 4.07 and 11.63 percent.

The area's projected median sale price for 2023 is $90,157, at which time a homeowner will have paid an estimated $199,235 in property taxes on the home since 2007.

The Blockshopper analysis uses real home values, adjusting historical sales prices for inflation. The U.S. inflation rate from 2007 to 2015 was 14.3 percent, meaning a home had to appreciate by more than that to actually increase in value.

The table below compares sale prices and property taxes within Tower Lakes. To analyze the data more precisely, BlockShopper broke up suburbs into neighborhoods.

Neighborhood
2007 Sales
2007 Median Price
2007 Median Property Tax
2015 Sales
2015 Median Price
2015 Median Property Tax
Tower Lakes North
6
$405,132
$11,311 (2.79% ETR)
5
$100,940, down 75%
$11,735 (11.63% ETR)
Tower Lakes East
20
$491,057
$13,020 (2.65% ETR)
17
$220,965, down 55%
$8,993 (4.07% ETR)
Tower Lakes West
8
$343,600
$15,104 (4.40% ETR)
12
$212,566, down 38%
$11,291 (5.31% ETR)

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