What you actually pay in property tax: Highland Park vs Deerfield

Two towns, one high school district, and about $2,000 a year between them on a $750,000 home. The certified rates say the shared high school explains none of that gap, and a fire district explains most of it.

Buyers compare Highland Park and Deerfield constantly, and for good reason. The towns sit next to each other in Lake County, they share Township High School District 113, and a family can be happy in either. The tax bills are not identical, though, and on a North Shore purchase the difference is real money every single month.

The headline numbers

For tax year 2025, certified by the Lake County Clerk in April 2026, a Highland Park owner-occupant runs about 2.7 percent of market value a year and a Deerfield owner-occupant about 2.9 percent. On a $750,000 home that is roughly $20,000 a year in Highland Park and roughly $22,000 in Deerfield. Both towns sit in Lake County, which is what makes the difference between them the solid part of this math: about $2,000 a year, or roughly $175 a month. On a $1.2 million home the gap runs closer to $3,200 a year, about $275 a month. Treat the single-town figures as a band rather than a point, roughly $17,000 to $23,000 in Highland Park and roughly $18,000 to $25,000 in Deerfield, because the spread between addresses inside one town is wider than the gap between the towns.

Those are estimates, and the spread within a town is wider than the spread between the towns. Two houses on the same street can carry different bills because of exemptions, assessment history, or improvements that were picked up on one and not the other. That is why we pull the actual tax history on any property before you write an offer. The listing sheet's tax line is last year's bill, and it can move.

Why the rates are what they are

Both towns feed Township High School District 113, and that shared district contributes exactly nothing to the difference between their bills. Its rate is 2.45 per $100 of equalized assessed value on both sides of the line for tax year 2025. Highland Park's own municipal rate, 0.882, actually runs a shade above the Village of Deerfield's 0.874. Most of the gap is structural and sits in fire protection: Deerfield addresses carry a separate Deerfield-Bannockburn Fire Protection District levy of 0.703 per $100, which is about 88 percent of the entire difference, while Highland Park funds its fire department inside the city levy. Deerfield SD 109 adds another 0.235 over North Shore SD 112 and the park districts add 0.048, while Highland Park's North Shore Sanitary District levy of 0.144 pushes back the other way. Elementary school spending is a real part of the difference and it is the smaller part. All of these are certified Lake County rates per $100 of equalized assessed value for tax year 2025, and you can add them up yourself.

One quirk that surprises people moving from other states: Illinois property taxes are paid in arrears. The bill you pay this year covers last year. At closing the seller credits the buyer for taxes that have accrued but have not been billed yet, and the credit is negotiated in the contract. Get that line right and you start ownership with the taxes handled. Get it wrong and you eat a bill for months you did not own the house.

What to do before you offer

• Pull the property's actual tax history from the Lake County assessor, going back three or four years.
• Check which exemptions the current owner claims. A senior freeze that disappears when you buy can move the bill sharply.
• Your purchase price does not reset the assessment. Illinois has no reassessment on sale, and the state Supreme Court has held that assessing one home at its sale price while similar homes are valued by mass appraisal violates the uniformity clause. Your sale enters the county's sales ratio study and becomes one comparable among many in the next cycle's valuation of the whole neighborhood.
• What does move the bill is the calendar and the exemptions. Lake County's next countywide reassessment is 2027. The seller's general homestead exemption, senior homestead exemption, and senior freeze all come off when the house changes hands, a home improvement exemption expires four years after the work was finished, and levies rise on their own schedule.
• Run the monthly number with taxes included before you fall for the house. We do this on every showing sheet.

If the assessment looks high against comparable homes, you can appeal it, and in Lake County the window and the evidence rules are specific. That is a separate article, but the short version is that appeals are winnable with the right comps and a clean presentation. We have walked clients through it.

Want the real numbers on a specific address in either town? Send it over and we will pull the history and run the monthly cost with current rates. It takes us about a day.

Written by the Gimbel Group at Compass. Figures last checked July 27, 2026. Questions about your specific situation: 847-530-3704 or erik.gimbel@compass.com.