Chicago Building Code Violations: An Owner's Guide
Chicago's Department of Buildings inspects buildings and cites what it finds. Building code violations in Chicago are public, and one of them can sit on an address for years without anything happening, or it can arrive in the mail with a hearing date on it. This guide covers where a violation comes from, what the city does with it, how to look up any address, and the choices an owner has once something is on the record. It is written for owners, and it points to the city's own pages wherever the details matter.
One note before the guide, because parts of it touch on money owed against a property:
Important notice: Fair Value Investments (a d/b/a of Probate Professionals of America, LLC) is not associated with the government, and our service is not approved by the government or your lender. You may stop doing business with us at any time and may reject any offer. If you stop paying your mortgage, you could lose your home and damage your credit rating. We do not provide foreclosure-rescue, loan-modification, or credit-repair services and cannot promise to save your home or stop a foreclosure. For free help, contact a HUD-approved housing counselor at 1-800-569-4287 or consumerfinance.gov/find-a-housing-counselor.
What counts as a building code violation in Chicago
A violation is a condition an inspector observed and recorded as not meeting the Chicago Construction Codes. It describes the building on the day someone looked at it. It is not a finding about the owner, and by itself it is not a court case.
The Department of Buildings publishes the enforcement process it follows, and two things in that document explain most of what owners find confusing.
The first is what inspectors actually look at. The city says an inspector verifies the complaint and checks for working smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, along with means of egress, including interior and exterior stairs and porches. Those items come up constantly here, because so much of the housing stock has wood back porches and rear stairs.
The second is that violations are not all treated alike. A Department of Buildings supervisor sets the level of enforcement for each set of violations, and the city names three levels: a 20 notice for maintenance items, which is a warning notice; a 50 notice for life-safety violations that are not dangerous or hazardous, which is processed for Administrative Hearings; and an 80 notice for dangerous and hazardous violations, which is processed for the Circuit Court. If you are holding paperwork, the level it names tells you more about what comes next than the violation text does.
How a violation gets on the record: complaints and inspections
Most cases start with a complaint. The city's own enforcement document says the chiefs and supervisors for each bureau review all 311 complaints received at the start of each business day, to decide whether any need to be prioritized for immediate inspection. Complaints come from tenants, neighbors, a ward office, or another city department.
An inspector then goes to the address. When the inspector cannot get inside, the city describes four possible outcomes, chosen on the condition of the building: leaving a notice asking the owner to contact the department for an interior inspection; planning to return later; issuing exterior violations and processing them for Administrative Hearings or the Circuit Court; or closing out the complaint if the basis for it was unfounded. The city adds that if the owner or tenant does not let an inspector in, the Department of Buildings is obligated to get a court order.
That is the practical reason a missed inspection is worth a call back. A closed door does not end anything. It limits the inspector to what can be seen from the outside, and the case moves along without your side of it.
Violations also come out of permit inspections and required periodic inspections, so an owner doing everything properly can still collect items on the record.
How to look up violations for any Chicago address
There are two free ways to see what is on an address, and neither one needs an account. The Department of Buildings has a search tool that looks up a single address and returns permits, inspections, code enforcement case activity and alleged violations. The city's data portal publishes the Building Violations dataset, which holds every violation the department has issued since 2006; the city's description of that dataset says it is updated daily.
Our step-by-step walkthrough of the lookup covers both tools, how the city formats addresses, and what each status label means.
Two cautions come from the city itself. It describes this data as historical and informational and says it should not be relied on for a real-estate transaction. And an empty record is not proof of a sound building: inspectors cite what they inspect, so a building nobody has ever complained about may simply never have been looked at.
What happens after a citation: hearings, court and compliance
Between the citation and any hearing there is a step most owners never see. The city says the Department of Buildings sends violations to the Title Group in the Department of Law, the Collections, Ownership and Administrative Litigation division, which runs title to determine ownership. For a Circuit Court case, the city says that title work includes all title holders, trust holders, mortgage holders, lien holders, the taxpayer of record, and every other party with a recorded interest. For Administrative Hearings it is typically the legal title holder, and may also include other parties in possession or control of the property, whom the Code defines as owners.
That step explains two things owners ask about: why notices can arrive well after the inspection, and why a lender or a co-owner sometimes receives one too.
Once title is complete, the Department of Buildings mails the notices to the responsible owners, and the city says those include both a notice of hearing and a notice of the building code violations. Where the case goes depends on the level of enforcement:
- Life-safety violations that are not dangerous or hazardous go to the Buildings Hearings Division at the city's Department of Administrative Hearings.
- Dangerous and hazardous violations go to the Circuit Court, where, the city says, it has more enforcement options, including case-management dates to monitor the status of compliance, asking for a receiver, and asking for an order to vacate the building.
Our companion post on what happens after a violation is cited walks through both venues and the paperwork each one produces.
Two points deserve to be pulled out of that process document. First, the date is printed on your notice, and a default judgment is entered when the person named fails to appear. Second, a case can end early: among the reasons the city lists for dropping an Administrative Hearings case is that the owner has timely provided proof that they have fixed the violations. Doing the work and documenting it is not a formality. It is one of the recognized ways a case closes.
Fixing violations: permits, contractors and re-inspection
Most repairs that answer a violation need a permit before the work starts. The Department of Buildings says a permit is required before beginning most construction, demolition, and repair work and runs several tracks depending on the size of the job, including an express program built for repair work and small improvements, a self-certification program, a guide written for homeowners and small business owners, and separate demolition permits.
The order that saves money is usually: find out exactly what was cited, hire a contractor who can pull the permit for that work, pull it, do the work, then ask for a re-inspection so the record reflects the repair. Work done without the permit tends to create a second problem, because the missing permit is citable in its own right and it surfaces again when the building is sold.
If the case is already in the Circuit Court, the city assigns a Department of Buildings court inspector to the building. That inspector inspects before every subsequent hearing, reports the current condition to the judge, and recommends repairs to be included in the court order. Their observations are what move a building toward substantial compliance in the court's eyes.
Selling a building that has open violations
Buildings with open violations sell here regularly. What changes is the diligence and the price, not whether a sale can happen.
What a buyer and a title company will want to know:
- Which items are open, and which of them are life-safety items, because that drives both the cost and the venue.
- Whether a case is active, and where. A Circuit Court case involves more parties, since the city's title work reaches mortgage holders, lien holders and everyone else of record.
- Whether anything has been recorded against the property, which the title search turns up.
- What the repairs cost, which is a contractor question rather than a city one.
An owner weighing this has two honest paths: correct the items first and sell a cleaner building, or sell it as it stands and let the price carry the work. Neither is automatically the better answer, and the gap between them is usually smaller than people expect once the permit and carrying costs are counted. Selling a house as-is in Chicago compares the two, including how to compare the net instead of the headline number.
Outside the city limits: suburban Cook and the collar counties
Everything above is the City of Chicago. The city's inspectors, its data portal and its hearing divisions all stop at the city limits, and there is no single region-wide list of municipal code violations. Each municipality runs its own building department, which is why the same problem in two suburbs is found in two different places and handled under two different ordinances.
So the first question for a suburban address is whether it sits inside a municipality at all. Cook County's Department of Building and Zoning handles plan review, permits, inspections and code enforcement in unincorporated Cook County and the Forest Preserves, and publishes both a way to find the jurisdiction of a property and a path to respond to a violation on your property. The county states plainly that inquiries about properties inside a municipality should go to that municipality's own building and zoning authority. The collar counties are organized the same way: a county department for unincorporated land, and a village or city department everywhere else.
If you are not sure where to start, our county pages list the offices that answer these questions in suburban Cook County, DuPage County, Will County, Lake County and Kane County.
Frequently asked questions
Can I sell a Chicago house that has open building code violations?
Generally, yes. Open violations get priced in rather than ruling a sale out, and the title company looks for recorded liens and open enforcement cases before a closing. If an Administrative Hearings or Circuit Court case is active, the contract needs to say who handles it, and an attorney should read that language before anyone signs.
What is the difference between a 20, 50 and 80 notice?
They are levels of enforcement a Department of Buildings supervisor assigns. The city describes a 20 notice as a warning notice for maintenance violations, a 50 notice as life-safety violations that are not dangerous or hazardous, which are processed for Administrative Hearings, and an 80 notice as dangerous and hazardous violations, which are processed for the Circuit Court.
Do building code violations follow the property or the owner?
The citation names an owner, but the condition belongs to the building, so a later complaint about the same condition can name whoever owns it then. The city runs title to decide whom to name, and its process describes refiling against the correct owner when the wrong one was named. Before buying or selling, ask the Department of Buildings what is open on the address, and ask an attorney what your contract says about it.
If the repairs are more than you want to take on
Some owners read the list, price the work and decide it is not theirs to do. That is a legitimate answer, particularly for an owner who lives out of the area or a building that needs more than a weekend. Doing the work is one path, listing with an agent is another, and selling directly to a private buyer is a third.
Our code violations page explains how we look at buildings in this condition and what we ask about. There is no fee to ask and no obligation to accept.
If the same building also has property taxes that have fallen behind or an open Illinois foreclosure case, those are separate processes, run by different offices, on their own dates. It is worth knowing where each one stands before deciding anything about the property.
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.