Chicago --- Cook County Assessor Joseph Berrios announced on Wednesday that all assessment notices sent to residential and condominium owners will now include the property’s market value.

"My goal as Assessor is to ensure that properties are fairly assessed and that the impact of the volatile real estate market is reflected in the values," Berrios said. "Including the market values on the notices will allow homeowners to determine with certainty, whether their proposed assessments are fair and equitable."

The revised notices were mailed to over 23,000 single family homeowners and 5,000 condominium owners in Leyden Township today.

Reassessment notices contain proposed values that will be reflected on second-installment tax bills, which will be due in the fall of 2011. However, the time to file appeals on these proposed assessments is now. The deadline to file appeals for properties located in Leyden Township is January 18, 2011.

"Placing the market value on the notices is the first step to increasing transparency and further improvements will be made to the notice when we begin next year’s reassessment," Berrios said.

Berrios plans to unveil a very detailed and descriptive assessment notice for the 2011 reassessment. Some of the features of next year’s notice will include an assessment and appeal history, sample comparables for a property, any Recorder of Deeds transactions and a payment history for the property.

Each year the Cook County Assessor’s Office reassesses one-third of the nearly 1.8 million parcels of property located in Cook County. This year, the Assessor’s Office is reassessing properties in the townships located in north and west suburban Cook County.　

"Revising the reassessment notice and including the market value will help homeowners determine if they should file an appeal," Berrios said. "I will make additional improvements to the notice and also continue to look for ways to make the assessment process easier to navigate and understand for all Cook County taxpayers."