An Illinois man living in an unincorporated suburban community outside of Chicago received an extremely high tax bill that threatened to evict him from his modest 1950s home.
Darryl Lloyd bought the three-bedroom, one-bathroom home in 2006, and according to him, the home’s current market value is just over $180,000.
But when Cook County assessed the home at $1 million, officials required him to receive over $30,000 in property taxes this year, FOX 32 reported.
Last year, Lloyd paid $1,800 — meaning the county increased its tax bill by 3,811 percent from what it was twenty years ago.
“I was literally devastated when I saw that increase,” Lloyd said of the bill he received days ago. I see 960 square meters. I don’t have a second floor. I don’t have a basement.’
Pictured: Darryl Lloyd’s Chicago Heights home, a property he insists is worth $180,000, nowhere near the $1 million county tax officials assessed it for. As such, he was initially hit with a $30,000 property tax bill.
An extract from the tax bill that Lloyd received in the mail, showing that his property was valued at just over $1 million
The houses in his neighborhood are also modest, causing even more confusion on his end.
“Nothing here is worth … $1 million,” Lloyd said, adding, “I’m going to have to go with a relative or something. You know, I can’t afford it.
But before throwing in the towel, Lloyd decided to fight it out, believing there must be some sort of misunderstanding or mistake.
He made the trip to the Cook County Tax Assessor’s Office, an effort that proved fruitless and frustrating.
I said, “let me go downtown, to the assessor’s office.” And, at that point, I showed them my taxes and I told them I had a significant raise, and they were like, ‘everyone’s taxes go up,'” Lloyd said.
The tax assessor’s office admitted guilt only after the local Chicago FOX affiliate contacted them on Lloyd’s behalf.
“This property has been incorrectly assessed due to a permit being inadvertently applied to the property. We will be processing a corrected tax bill for this property in the coming weeks, ensuring that the homeowner will ultimately pay the proper amount in property taxes,” a representative from the office told FOX 32.
Lloyd isn’t alone – he’s just one property owner who got the media attention.
This shows the dramatic increase in property tax since 2004, when Lloyd lived at this address.
Now that he knows his tax bill was sent by mistake, Lloyd, pictured outside his home, said: “If it’s happened to me, it’s probably happened to other people. I’d like to see immediate action .’
The Cook County Treasurer’s Office produced an analysis that found the county assessor incorrectly calculated land values for more than 4,400 homes in Chicago’s south and southwest suburbs.
The overassessments were made on properties located on larger parcels of land and the errors were discovered too late before the tax bills were printed and mailed.
“If it happened to me, it probably happened to other people. I would like to see immediate action,” Lloyd said.
Lloyd is now waiting for a certificate of error, though the assessor’s office did not give an exact timeline.
Lloyd’s ranch-style bungalow shown from the side. There are three bedrooms, one bathroom
The hidden cost of rising property taxes is forcing Americans in many states, red and blue, to pack up and move.
A Florida woman was shocked to receive a 174 percent property tax increase on her dream home this year, from $2,700 a year to $7,400.
She had to put her house back on the market after sinking most of her savings into it.
And many longtime Colorado residents are also selling their homes as pandemic-era transplants drive up property values — and tax bills rise just as quickly.