# Value a property as part of your due diligence Chicago Cityscape's Property Report is a key tool for valuing any property in Cook County prior to purchase. Specifically, you can find comps and nearby property sales, understand the value-add opportunity, identify financial & development incentives, locate nearby development, and see where amenities & community assets are. To use this guide, first [look up the address](/address.php) and get an Property Report. Once on the Property Report page, it's ideal to select the PIN for that address as the platform can show you more information about that property. ## Six ways to use Chicago Cityscape to value a property ### 1. Comps It's possible to use Chicago Cityscape's real estate transactions data in Cook County to create a comparative market analysis (CMA, or "comps"). Follow this tutorial: 1. In the Property Report, click on "Property Finder" in the Table of Contents to jump down to the many property maps. 2. Locate the "Property sales" section and click the "Load property sales" button. 3. A map and table will load showing the most recent five sales within one block (660 feet) of the address you looked up. There are filters on the right to narrow down the sales to those of the same [property class](http://chicagocityscape.com/guides/propertyclasses.php), are located up to 1 mile away, or were sold in a price range you specify. The property sales data in Cook County goes back to 2014 and the database is updated quarterly. It includes all property sales subject to Real Estate Transfer Tax – and some that aren't subject to RETT – of properties in all real estate sectors. ### 2. Value-add opportunity Every Property Report in Chicago comes with an automated Zoning Assessment. If you chose a PIN-based Property Report (recommended), the Zoning Assessment's Housing Calculator will estimate the number of dwelling units that are allowed (based on the parcel size and the minimum lot area per unit standard). If the existing property has between 1 and 6 units, inclusive, the Housing Calculator will estimate the number of units that can be added to the existing property. Additionally, every Property Report in Chicago indicates if the property is eligible to have an ADU, whether a backyard house or interior apartment. ### 3. Financial & development incentives Incentives Checker is exclusive to Chicago Cityscape and checks if any of ~32 financial & development incentives are available to development at any location in Illinois. We check for the most incentives in Chicago, and the second most in Cook County. In the Property Report's table of contents, click on "Incentives Checker" and then click "Load Incentives Checker". These incentives include Enterprise Zones (where construction material purchases can have state sales tax waived), Tax Increment Financing districts, Opportunity Areas identified by the Illinois Housing Development Authority, and Qualified Census Tracts (QCT) and Difficult Development Areas (DDA) (which are useful to LIHTC developers). [[Incentives Checker]] is also available at the area level in [Place Report](http://chicagocityscape.com/maps). ### 4. Locate nearby development Before you dive in and purchase a property, it helps to know what's going on in the neighborhood. Chicago Cityscape tracks news and development, posting proposed projects, renderings, and articles to our map. In the Property Report, click on "Images, News, & Developments" in the table of contents, and then click "Load images, news & developments". A map and table will appear to show the nearest and most recent postings. ### 5. Amenities & community assets Quickly surmise what amenities and community assets are nearby. Our database will show you restaurants, cafés, schools, medical clinics, bars, libraries and more, all within 1 mile walking distance. There's no need to count them, either, because the number of locations in each category is summarized alongside the map and table. In the Property Report, click on "Amenities & Social Infrastructure" in the table of contents to jump to that section, and then click the "Load Amenities & Social Infrastructure" button. This information comes from OpenStreetMap (a crowdsourced map of the world) and MAPSCorps, a youth jobs & education non-profit based in Chicago. ### 6. Energy benchmarking The City of Chicago requires owners of buildings that have 50,000 s.f. or more space collect and submit energy usage data. This information can be used to understand the current energy efficiency of a building and how that building's usage compares to similar or nearby buildings. In the Property Report, look for "Additional Snapshots" and the "Energy Snapshot" link. Select that link to be taken to the Energy Snapshot that aggregates energy and environmental data of properties at the Property Report location and nearby. The Energy Snapshot has an Energy Benchmarking section that shows the nearest buildings that submitted data to the City of Chicago. Select the building in question or any nearby building to see more details, or use the filters to show only buildigns similar to the building in question. ## Time savings Collecting all of this information into one platform saves time and energy, ensures nothing is forgotten in your due diligence, and offers exclusive features.