Single and multi-family (less than 7 units) property characteristics collected and maintained by the Assessor's Office for all of Cook County, from 1999 to present. The office uses this data primarily for valuation and reporting.
When working with Parcel Index Numbers (PINs) make sure to zero-pad them to 14 digits. Some datasets may lose leading zeros for PINs when downloaded.
Current property class codes, their levels of assessment, and descriptions can be found
on the Assessor's website. Note that class codes details can change across time.
This data is improvement-level - 'improvements' are individual buildings on a parcel. Each row in a given year corresponds to a building e.g. two rows for the same parcel in one year means a parcel has more than one building.
Data will be updated bi-weekly. Rowcount and characteristics for the current year are only final once the Assessor
has certified the assessment roll for all townships.
Depending on the time of year, some third-party and internal data will be missing for the most recent year. Assessments mailed this year represent values from last year, so this isn't an issue. By the time the Data Department models values for this year, those data will have populated.
NOTE: The Assessor's Office has recently changed the way Home Improvement Exemptions (HIEs) are tracked in its data. HIEs "freeze" a property's characteristics for a period of time with the intention of encouraging owners to improve their property without fear of assessment increases.
Historically, the updated, "improved" characteristics were saved in a separate file. However, in more recent years, the improved characteristics are saved in the main characteristics file. As such, the records in this data set from before 2021 do NOT include HIE characteristic updates, while those after and including 2021 DO include those updates.
