2012 It was generally a good year for Chicago landlords. Rents increased and vacancy rates were low. Compared to 2010 and 2011 when there was a high amount of landlord-tenant legislative activity, 2012 was a pretty tame year for landlords. Although a number of bills were presented to the Illinois legislature, not many new laws were passed, Similarly, at the County and the municipal level, there was lots of smoke related to Cook County’s attempt to require landlords to accept Section 8 tenants. In Chicago, the city counsel proposed protections for tenants affected by foreclosure and municipalities like Skokie and Evanston worked on toughening their landlord registration and inspection requirements, but none of the measures passed.
Month: December 2012
Cook County orders 2012 winter eviction moratorium
For information on the 2013-2014 moratorium, click here!
In the spirit of the holiday season (or at least so they don’t look like the Grinch), the Circuit Court of Cook County generally provides tenants with an early Christmas present at this time of year. Presiding Judge E. Kenneth Wright, Jr. has entered General Order 2012-04 ordering the annual Cook County shut down of the Cook County Sheriff’s enforcement of eviction orders. Per the general order, the Sheriff of Cook County has been ordered to cease the execution of orders for possession beginning today, December 17, 2012 and to resume evictions effective January 2, 2013. For landlords, this is a little lump of coal. It means that eviction orders are stayed from enforcement and no tenants will be forcibly evicted or removed from their properties for just over a two week period from now into the new year.
The order goes on to direct
Notice of code violations and utility shut offs under the CRLTO
Landlords of tenancies covered by the Chicago Residential Landlord and Tenant Ordinance must make a number of disclosures to prospective tenants before entering into a lease. One such required disclosure, found in Section 5-12-100 of the CRLTO, is the notice to lessees of “conditions affecting habitability”.
Section 100 imposes two written disclosure requirements. Section (a) deals with code violations and section (b) deals with utilities. The ordinance requires that the disclosure be made before a tenant initially enters into a lease or before the tenant renews a rental agreement. That means landlords must constantly be aware of these disclosures whether the lease is new or being renewed. Some “Chicago” lease forms (remember, there is no such thing as a “standard” Chicago lease) provide a space for the information right on the form but many (most) do not. Landlords without a form for this information should prepare one (we commonly provide such a form when we assist landlords with their lease drafting and review) and make sure it makes it into the tenant’s hands when the lease is offered.
Smoke ’em if you got ’em? Smoking policies for landlords
A friend of mine in the real estate industry called me the other day and asked me if it is legal for a landlord to prohibit smoking in an apartment. She was concerned about fair housing laws, and with good reason. Real estate agents need to be extremely careful about what they put into a listing for lease to make sure it does not violate those fair housing laws. Luckily, smoking is not classified as an immutable characteristic of birth and “smokers” are not a protected class under fair housing, so a landlord can implement a “no smoking” rule.
What happens after getting an order for possession?
So, the landlord has served a notice, waited the notice period, filed a lawsuit, went to court, and had a trial. At the end of the trial, the court awarded the plaintiff-landlord an “order for possession”. The order for possession is a court order granting possession of the real estate that is the subject of the forcible entry and detainer lawsuit back to the landlord. It means the landlord “won” the case and is entitled to recover possession of his real property.