The Chicago Residential Landlord and Tenant Ordinance (RLTO) requires that a Chicago Landlord in a non-owner occupied building or in an owner-occupied building of more than six units must notify a prospective tenant in writing of any code violations in the building which have been cited during the previous 12 months and of any pending code enforcement proceedings. The same disclosure must be made in writing when the lease is renewed.

However, a recent Illinois appellate court case created and exception where rather than entering a new written renewal lease, the tenant simply continued to occupy the apartment after expiration of the initial lease. Under Illinois law, this situation created what is called a “month to month tenancy”. The recent appellate decision held that a month to month tenancy does not constitute a “renewal” for purposes of RLTO and thus no code violation notice is required.

Feel free to contact an experienced Illinois landlord attorney at Logan Law, LLC if you have questions about RLTO or any other area of the laws governing landlords and tenants.

The new TILA-RESPA Integrated Disclosure (TRID) Rule went into effect October 1, 2015 and is already delaying residential real estate closings. TRID requires loan documentation consisting of two new forms: the Loan Estimate and the Closing Disclosure to ensure compliance. These new forms consolidate the TILA-RESPA forms and are meant to give consumers more time to review the total costs of their mortgage.

The Loan Estimate is due to consumers three days after they apply for a loan, and the Closing Disclosure is due to them three days before closing. However, the three day rule is only applicable if the disclosure is delivered personally. If the disclosure is delivered any other way, the Rule “deems” the disclosure was made three business days later, making the disclosure period six or more days before the closing.

Because there are huge potential penalties to mortgage lenders if they do not make the required disclosures on a timely basis, mortgage lenders are interpreting the new rules very conservatively and are adding additional days for the disclosures as a cushion. Thus, rather than using three days before closing as a cutoff, the cutoff for a particular transaction might be 7 – 10 days or more.

Feel free to contact an Illinois attorney experienced in handling all aspects of real estate closings for both buyers and sellers at Logan Law, LLC if you have questions about sale of your Chicago area real estate or any other area of the laws governing the purchase or sale of real estate.