How to Check a Chicago Property for Building Code Violations

If you own a building in Chicago, or you are about to, the city keeps a public record of every building code violation its inspectors have cited. Checking an address takes a few minutes, is free, and does not require an account. This post walks through the two official tools, explains what the status labels mean, and covers what the records do not tell you. It is part of our guide to building code violations in Chicago.

Where Chicago keeps building violation records

The Chicago Department of Buildings inspects buildings and cites code violations. It publishes those records in two places, and both are free.

• Search Building Department Records. The Department of Buildings search tool looks up a single address. The city describes it as returning address ranges, building attributes, building permits, code enforcement case activity, inspections, and alleged code violations for that address.
• The Building Violations dataset. The City of Chicago Data Portal publishes every violation issued by the Department of Buildings since 2006 as a searchable table. The city's own description of the dataset says it is updated daily.

The search tool is the quicker way to see one building at a glance. The dataset is better when you want the detail: the exact wording of each violation, the inspector's comments, and the dates.

How to look up an address on the data portal

1. Open the Building Violations dataset and switch to the table view.
2. Filter the ADDRESS column. The city writes addresses as the house number, a direction letter (N, S, E or W), the street name, and an abbreviated street type such as ST, AVE or BLVD, all in capital letters. Matching that format finds more rows than typing the address the way it appears on your mail.
3. Sort by VIOLATION DATE so the newest citations are at the top.
4. Read VIOLATION STATUS for each row, then VIOLATION DESCRIPTION and VIOLATION INSPECTOR COMMENTS to see what was actually cited.

If nothing comes up, try the street name alone and scan for your house number. Corner buildings sometimes carry the address of the other street, and some records list an address range rather than a single number.

What OPEN, COMPLIED and NO ENTRY mean

Every violation row carries one of three statuses.

• OPEN means the city has not recorded that violation as corrected. It can be recent, or it can be an old item that was fixed but never re-inspected.
• COMPLIED means the city recorded that violation as corrected.
• NO ENTRY means the inspector could not get inside to check.

Each row also belongs to an inspection, and the INSPECTION STATUS column (for example PASSED, FAILED or CLOSED) describes the inspection as a whole. One inspection can produce many violation rows, so a single visit can make a building look worse than it is. Read the descriptions before drawing conclusions.

What the records do not tell you

The city is direct about the limits of this data. Its description of the dataset says the records are historical, informational, and should not be relied on for real estate transactions. For a closing, the city points to the title commitment and to enforcement cases in the Circuit Court of Cook County or the Chicago Department of Administrative Hearings, which runs a Buildings Hearings Division.

A few other gaps are worth knowing:

• A clean record is not a clean building. Inspectors cite what they inspect. A building nobody has complained about may simply never have been looked at.
• The data covers the City of Chicago only. Evanston, Oak Park, Cicero and every other suburb run their own building departments. For a property in suburban Cook County, start with the village or city hall.
• Fines and case status live elsewhere. A violation on the list may or may not have become a hearing or a court case. The Department of Administrative Hearings and the Circuit Court of Cook County have the case record, and the amounts, if any.
• The level of enforcement is not in the table. A Department of Buildings supervisor decides whether a set of violations is a warning, an Administrative Hearings matter or a Circuit Court matter, and that decision is what determines the path. Our post on what happens after a citation explains the levels and the two venues.

If the property has open violations

Open violations do not mean you have to do any one thing. The usual paths are:

• Correct them. Hire a licensed contractor, pull the permits the work needs, and ask the Department of Buildings to re-inspect so the record changes. The Building Permits dataset shows permits already issued for an address.
• Get a professional opinion first. A contractor can price the repairs, and an attorney can tell you where any hearing or court case stands and what it requires of you.
• Sell the property as it is. Houses sell with open violations regularly. The buyer takes the condition into account, and the title company looks for recorded liens and open enforcement cases before closing. The purchase contract says who handles what.

Each path has costs, and the right one depends on the building, the violations, and what you want to do with it. It is worth getting more than one number before you decide.

Frequently asked questions

Is it free to look up building violations in Chicago?

Yes. Both the Department of Buildings search tool and the Building Violations dataset on the city's data portal are free and do not require an account.

Does COMPLIED mean the building has no problems?

No. It means the city recorded that specific violation as corrected. The record only covers what inspectors cited, so a building can have issues that were never inspected.

Does this search cover buildings outside Chicago?

No. Both tools belong to the City of Chicago, so they stop at the city limits. Every suburb runs its own building department, so for an address in suburban Cook County or a collar county, the village or city hall is where to start.

One option if you would rather not take on the repairs

Some owners decide the repairs are more than they want to take on, and sell the house as it is. Selling to a private buyer is one way to do that, and listing with an agent is another. Our code violations page explains how we look at these houses, and there is no fee or obligation to ask for a number.

About this article: it is general information written by a home buyer, not by a lawyer or a housing counselor. Fair Value Investments (a d/b/a of Probate Professionals of America, LLC) is a private real-estate investor and home buyer purchasing property for our own account. We are not a licensed real estate broker, not a law firm, not a lender, and not a government agency, and nothing here is legal, tax, or financial advice. Any offer is made at our discretion after we evaluate the property; a cash offer, if made, may be below market value. You are free to consult your own attorney, tax advisor, or a licensed real-estate professional before deciding. There is no fee to receive an offer and no obligation to accept.