Efficiently find and prospect Scavenger Sale properties

Chicago Cityscape’s Scavenger Sale Portal is now live. The Portal’s map and table — free for everyone to use — show 31,209 properties that have three or more years of unpaid taxes and they are easy to discover using the Portal’s search and filter features.

First, if you think you’re going to want to bid on a property, you need to register in person at the Cook County Treasurer’s office by Friday, February 4, 2022. After you’ve filled out the form and dropped it off with the $100 registration fee, come back to the Portal to start prospecting.

Update: I registered at 1 PM today and it took less than 10 minutes. I waited a couple minutes in line to pay the friendly cashier, and then took the receipt to the “tax desk” around the corner where a staffer ensured my form was filled out correctly.

In this post I’m going to assume you already know how the Scavenger Sale works and that you’re interested in using our Portal to efficiently sift through the list of over 31,000 properties. (If you don’t already know about the sale, learn more in the Portal but the Cook County Treasurer’s own FAQ and rules [PDF] for potential buyers are the most important resources).

By the end of the post, you’ll have found some properties to watch for at the auction and have a way to track the bidding schedule for each one.

Here’s how I recommend using the Portal

Your development idea and proposal will inform the property type to acquire. More than half of the properties are vacant lots (58 percent). Then there are many single-detached houses (15 percent), residential side yards (five percent), and two-to-six flats (four percent). In the remaining 18 percent there are condos and commercial and industrial buildings.

You can filter for just these types of properties using “Filter by property class”:

1. Click into the filter field and search for keywords like “vacant” and “flat” and “industrial”. The resulting list is divided into two parts: The results in the first list are part of our custom groups, which select multiple property classes based on a theme, and the second list are individual property classes that are assigned to properties by the Cook County Assessor.
2. After selecting the property group or class, click the “Apply filters” button. You can use multiple filters at the same time, but you must click the “Apply filters” button to refresh your search.

Layer on more filters, by choosing proximity to transit, which looks for Scavenger Sale properties that are within 1/4 mile or 1/2 mile of a CTA or Metra station, or select CTA bus routes that have higher frequency service.

The majority of properties in the 2022 Scavenger Sale are in Chicago, but most Cook County suburbs also have participating properties. Use the “Filter by city” form to browse and search the municipalities with one or more properties in the sale.

The number in parentheses indicates the approximate number of properties in the sale in that municipality. This filter allows you to choose multiple municipalities.

Click the “Apply filters” button and the map and table will refresh to show only properties in the places you selected.

In Chicago it’s possible to narrow your search to specific community areas — search for one by name with “Filter by ZIP or community area”. Note that most community areas on the north side of Chicago have few to no properties and most of them are condos.

Also in Chicago it’s possible to search by zoning. This will be helpful if you want to only prospect properties that are already amenable to your development plan. Use this filter sparingly as being very specific may significantly reduce the number of properties in your search, or be empty.

I want to mention one more filter: incentives and opportunities. We’ve added these incentives here for some scavenger sale buyers who are familiar with these options and can take advantage of them. You can learn about each of them in Chicago Cityscape’s Incentives Checker but we cannot advise on which ones may be appropriate for your development idea.

Default filters

Every time you load the Scavenger Sale Portal be mindful that there are two filters in place by default: Condos are hidden from view as these are likely occupied by residents and it’s next to impossible to gather information about them; lots smaller than 2,500 s.f. are also hidden from view since there are many sliver lots that cannot be developed.

Why 2,500? In Chicago, new housing can only be built on a property that has a lot area of 2,500 s.f. or larger. (Perhaps you’re interested in a modular house.) You can change this number to any other whole number, or erase it (then click the “Apply filters” button).

Keeping a list for yourself

After using the filters to narrow down the list to a manageable number of properties that meet your development criteria, I recommend exporting the Portal data and importing to a spreadsheet. You can use Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel online for free and both will import the Portal data.

First, however, you need to expand the number of properties shown on the map from 50 to a number that includes all the properties you found. Below the table, click the “50” dropdown menu and choose a number higher than the number of properties that resulted from your filtering (that number is also shown just below the dropdown menu).

Below the filters box, find “Download the data”. These buttons let you export data as a CSV file, for a spreadsheet, or as a GeoJSON file, for a GIS program.

Click on “Export as CSV” and in a moment a small CSV file will be downloaded to your computer. The exported file has all of the data that is shown in the Portal: address, PIN, property type, total delinquency, and bid date.

Import the CSV file to your spreadsheet program and add a “notes” column to record details you learn about each property, as well as your thoughts. The “Bid date” column can be used to sort and show first the properties that will be auctioned first. If your list has properties across Chicago or in different municipalities, there will be several bid dates. But if your list has properties in the same neighborhood they will share a bid date.

Getting into prospecting

Prospecting a property means figuring out what makes that location a good place to develop. You’ll want to research, research, research. Chicago Cityscape makes this easier for many developers and emerging developers by combining 100s of data sources into one.

In the Portal, the addresses and PINs link to that property’s Address Snapshot report on the Chicago Cityscape platform. Each report is regenerated on a daily basis, as many of our data sources are updated every day.

A full Address Snapshot report requires a Cityscape Real Estate Pro membership or a one-time purchase. The Chicago Community Trust is also sponsoring a number of Cityscape memberships, and we are currently accepting applications.

The Address Snapshot can tell you…

• Zoning district and zoning capabilities of any Chicago property.
• Proximity to transit
• Nearby amenities & social infrastructure (libraries, cafés, schools, and medical offices)
• Property sales comps
• Full Incentives Checker — checking our entire database of 32 incentives
• Nearby proposed and new construction projects
• The names of elected officials
• And so much more

Efficiently find and prospect Scavenger Sale properties was originally published in Chicago Cityscape’s Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.