I've had a lot of clients ask me recently what trending is and what it will mean to their bottom line.

I like to think of trending as a "mini-reassessment" of real estate values for tax purposes.  The township assessor is directed (by the State) to analyze all the recent sales disclosures within a particular "neighborhood" and determine if there has been an upward or downward trend in market values.  The assessor is to then apply an equivalent influence factor to the enitire neighborhood thereby bringing values current with the market.

Obviously, people tend to believe that this is just a tactic to raise taxes.  My experience and profession lead me to look at it from a different perspective. After the 2002 general reassessement, people were shocked at the increases they saw in commercial real estate tax and many homeowners were also forced to absorb large increases, particularly in northern Lake County.  This is really a result of such a long period between reassessements.  In the 2002 case it had been 7 years since the previous assessment.

What I feel trending will do is create smaller and less noticeable adjustments to market value over the period between re-evalutions thus eliminationg the "shell shock" that has typically come with a large scale reassessment.

The big question I have for property owners is this: would you rather have annual adjustments to your real estate tax or one larger one every 7 or 8 years??