By Harsha N Hegde
What does “No Change” mean in a Cook County Board of Review decision, and why do some property tax appeals receive it?
We analyzed the Board of Review’s recorded reasons for unsuccessful single-family residential appeals from 2020 through 2025. The analysis compares appeals filed by individual homeowners with appeals filed by attorneys.
The data shows substantial differences in the recorded reasons assigned to the two groups. It does not explain why those differences exist.
For the broader comparison of appeal volumes, success rates and median reductions, see our analysis of DIY vs. agent appeals in Cook County.
What does “No Change” mean in a Cook County Board of Review decision?
A No Change result means the Board of Review did not reduce the property’s total assessed value. For this analysis, an appeal was counted as No Change when:
- the recorded result was
No Change; and - the Board of Review total assessed value equaled the Assessor total assessed value.
The Board also publishes a no-change reason and description. These are broad administrative explanations, not detailed accounts of what evidence was submitted or why particular evidence was accepted or rejected.
Recorded reasons for unsuccessful DIY appeals
The following table shows the reason recorded for each unsuccessful appeal filed as Individual/Pro Se.
| Recorded no-change reason | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | Total | Share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Comparable properties, recent sale and/or property characteristics | 18,829 | 16,585 | 21,859 | 20,751 | 24,723 | 26,490 | 129,237 | 96.32% |
| Failed to follow BOR rules or provide evidence supporting a decrease | 142 | 406 | 631 | 294 | 233 | 297 | 2,003 | 1.49% |
| No documentation beyond the complaint form | 1,934 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 6 | 1,949 | 1.45% |
| Subject’s recent sale supported a higher value | 42 | 24 | 31 | 32 | 206 | 141 | 476 | 0.35% |
| Cost, income, market data and/or appraisal | 58 | 37 | 47 | 91 | 42 | 61 | 336 | 0.25% |
| Condominium/cooperative analysis | 15 | 6 | 26 | 9 | 17 | 8 | 81 | 0.06% |
| Prior PTAB matter or prior BOR action | 3 | 0 | 5 | 3 | 0 | 3 | 14 | 0.01% |
| Administrative remedy | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | less than 0.01% |
| Blank description | 15 | 5 | 8 | 8 | 26 | 13 | 75 | 0.06% |
| Total | 21,041 | 17,068 | 22,609 | 21,190 | 25,248 | 27,019 | 134,175 | 100% |
The dominant recorded reason was an analysis of comparable properties, a recent sale and/or property characteristics. It accounted for 96.32% of DIY no-change cases across the six years.
The no-documentation category changes sharply after 2020. It appears in 1,934 DIY cases in 2020, but only 15 cases in total from 2021 through 2025. The public data does not explain this discontinuity.
Recorded reasons for unsuccessful attorney-filed appeals
The following table applies the same analysis to appeals recorded as Attorney.
| Recorded no-change reason | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | Total | Share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Comparable properties, recent sale and/or property characteristics | 58,556 | 37,742 | 55,259 | 54,414 | 57,267 | 59,679 | 322,917 | 77.96% |
| No documentation beyond the complaint form | 5,236 | 3,181 | 5,973 | 6,484 | 5,588 | 4,631 | 31,093 | 7.51% |
| Blank description | 368 | 444 | 5,040 | 5,236 | 5,320 | 6,504 | 22,912 | 5.53% |
| Failed to follow BOR rules or provide evidence supporting a decrease | 1,377 | 1,373 | 2,251 | 2,470 | 2,301 | 2,311 | 12,083 | 2.92% |
| Cost, income, market data and/or appraisal | 894 | 607 | 1,806 | 1,423 | 1,260 | 2,353 | 8,343 | 2.01% |
| Condominium/cooperative analysis | 749 | 417 | 1,950 | 873 | 1,064 | 1,912 | 6,965 | 1.68% |
| Administrative remedy | 4,447 | 1,698 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 6,145 | 1.48% |
| Subject’s recent sale supported a higher value | 239 | 44 | 325 | 264 | 638 | 675 | 2,185 | 0.53% |
| Prior PTAB matter or prior BOR action | 115 | 83 | 381 | 555 | 263 | 185 | 1,582 | 0.38% |
| Total | 71,981 | 45,589 | 72,985 | 71,719 | 73,701 | 78,250 | 414,225 | 100% |
Comparable-property, sale or characteristic analysis remained the largest category for attorney-filed appeals, accounting for 77.96% of no-change cases.
The attorney distribution was more dispersed. No documentation beyond the complaint form accounted for 7.51%, blank descriptions accounted for 5.53%, and the combined rule-or-evidence category accounted for 2.92%.
DIY vs. attorney no-change reasons
| Recorded no-change reason | DIY share | Attorney share |
|---|---|---|
| Comparable properties, recent sale and/or property characteristics | 96.32% | 77.96% |
| No documentation beyond the complaint form | 1.45% | 7.51% |
| Blank description | 0.06% | 5.53% |
| Failed to follow BOR rules or provide evidence supporting a decrease | 1.49% | 2.92% |
| Cost, income, market data and/or appraisal | 0.25% | 2.01% |
| Condominium/cooperative analysis | 0.06% | 1.68% |
| Administrative remedy | less than 0.01% | 1.48% |
| Subject’s recent sale supported a higher value | 0.35% | 0.53% |
| Prior PTAB matter or prior BOR action | 0.01% | 0.38% |
Several observations stand out:
- Comparable-property, sale or characteristic analysis dominated both groups, but represented a larger share of DIY no-change cases.
- The explicit no-documentation reason represented a larger share of attorney-filed no-change cases.
- Blank descriptions were far more common among attorney-filed cases.
- Cost, income, market data or appraisal decisions were also more common among attorney-filed cases.
- The DIY no-documentation series changes abruptly after 2020, while the attorney series remains in the thousands each year.
These are observations about the recorded data. They do not establish why a homeowner or attorney received a particular reason.
What can we learn from these decisions?
For DIY homeowners, the overwhelming majority of no-change decisions were recorded under the broad category involving comparable properties, a recent sale or property characteristics. That indicates that most recorded outcomes turned on valuation-related analysis rather than an explicitly recorded procedural problem.
But the description does not reveal:
- whether the homeowner submitted comparable properties;
- whether the submitted properties were sufficiently similar;
- whether the homeowner relied on a sale, uniformity argument or property-record correction;
- what comparable properties the Board considered;
- why the Board preferred one interpretation of the evidence; or
- whether the same reason was applied consistently across years and representation types.
Likewise, the attorney no-documentation counts show how the cases were recorded. They do not tell us why documentation was absent, whether evidence was submitted through another channel, or whether the reason codes were applied differently to represented appeals.
Important limitations
This analysis should be read as a description of the Board of Review’s published data, not as a finding about homeowner or attorney conduct.
- No-change descriptions are broad administrative categories.
- The data does not include the complete evidence submitted in each appeal.
- A single description can combine several possible reasons. For example, the rule-or-evidence category combines failure to comply with BOR rules and failure to provide evidence supporting a decrease.
- The numeric coding system changed between 2021 and 2022. In 2020 and 2021, many different descriptions used reason code 0. From 2022 onward, the descriptions were generally associated with distinct numeric codes.
- The abrupt decline in DIY no-documentation decisions after 2020 could reflect a change in cases, coding, data collection or another factor that cannot be determined from the published fields.
- Reason categories were effectively mutually exclusive. Across the broader 2022–2025 residential dataset, only two property-years were found with more than one no-change reason code.
- Some cases have a blank reason description.
Methodology
The analysis covers tax years 2020 through 2025 and includes detached single-family residences, split-level homes, and individually owned townhomes and row houses in Cook County property classes 2-02 through 2-10, 2-34, 2-78 and 2-95. Condominiums, cooperatives and multifamily properties were excluded.
DIY appeals are records where attorneycode is Individual/Pro Se. Attorney-filed appeals are records where attorneycode is Attorney.
A case was treated as unsuccessful when the result was recorded as No Change and the Board of Review total assessed value equaled the Assessor total assessed value. Each PIN was counted once per tax year within each recorded reason category.
The reason descriptions were grouped by their published text rather than relying only on the numeric codes because the coding format changed over time.
Bottom line
Most unsuccessful DIY and attorney-filed appeals received a recorded reason related to comparable properties, a recent sale or property characteristics. The concentration was much higher for DIY appeals: 96% compared with 78% for attorney-filed appeals.
Attorney-filed no-change decisions were spread across more categories, including no documentation, blank descriptions, appraisals, condominium or cooperative analysis, and administrative reasons.
The public data clearly shows these differences. It does not tell us what caused them.