Chicago and the suburbs share one county government, one assessor and one court system, but building rules change at every city and village line. This page maps the offices that matter when a property has fallen behind, and explains where a private cash sale sits among your options.
Fair Value Investments is a private real-estate investor buying for our own account. We are not a broker, lender, attorney, or government agency, and we charge no fee to make an offer.
Cook County is the largest county in Illinois, and its county seat is Chicago. A house here answers to two layers of government at once. The county issues the property tax bills, keeps the deed records and runs the courts for everyone. The city or village the house sits in writes and enforces the building code. When a property has more than one problem, the answers usually come from more than one office, and knowing which is which saves a lot of phone calls.
Property tax bills are issued and collected by the Cook County Treasurer's Office. Unpaid taxes do not stay with the Treasurer forever. Cook County holds two kinds of tax sale: the annual tax sale, where a tax buyer can purchase the unpaid taxes on a parcel, and the scavenger sale, which offers taxes that have gone unpaid for multiple tax years. Either way, the buyer at the sale is purchasing the unpaid taxes, not the house.
Once taxes are sold, the balance moves to a different office. The Cook County Clerk's Office handles redemption, which is the process of paying sold taxes off. For a specific parcel, the Clerk can prepare an Estimate of the Cost of Redemption. It also calculates prior-year taxes that were offered at a sale and not purchased, which the Clerk calls "forfeited," and ones still marked "open."
A few practical points:
A tax bill starts with an assessment. The Cook County Assessor's Office values each parcel, and owners who disagree with a value can appeal to the Assessor and to the Cook County Board of Review, a separate office with its own appeal process. An assessment appeal is a separate track from a past-due balance. If taxes are already behind, ask the Treasurer or the Clerk how the two affect each other for your parcel.
Who enforces the building code depends on exactly where the property is.
An open violation is part of what any buyer weighs when pricing a property, which is one reason an as-is buyer and a retail buyer can look at the same house very differently.
Illinois foreclosures go through the courts. In Cook County, mortgage foreclosure cases belong to the Circuit Court's Chancery Division, which has its own section for mortgage foreclosure and mechanics lien cases. Those courtrooms are in the Richard J. Daley Center at 50 W. Washington Street in downtown Chicago.
The case file is kept by the Clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County, and the court's own foreclosure page describes the stages in general terms. For what they mean in your case, the people to ask are an attorney and a HUD-approved housing counselor, whose help is free; the counselor line is in the notice at the bottom of this page.
An owner can generally still sell while a case is open. The sale proceeds pay off the loan at closing, and once the loan is paid the case is typically dismissed. Whether a sale makes sense for you depends on what is owed and on what the house is worth as it stands today.
Since it absorbed the Recorder of Deeds in 2020, the Cook County Clerk's Office also keeps the county's recorded documents: deeds, mortgages, releases and liens. Before any sale, a title company searches those records to find everything that must be paid or released at closing.
The Clerk also runs a Property Fraud Unit, which helps owners look into documents recorded against their property without their knowledge. Owners dealing with a foreclosure or a tax problem are frequent targets of deed and title scams, so it is worth knowing that unit exists.
A sale to a private buyer like Fair Value Investments follows the same path as any Cook County closing. You get an offer and decide, with no obligation either way. If you accept, a title company runs the title search, orders payoff figures, and at closing pays what the property owes, such as the mortgage, unpaid or sold taxes and recorded liens, from the sale proceeds. The new deed is then recorded with the Clerk, and what remains after those payoffs is yours.
Selling to us is one option, not the only one. Listing with a licensed agent can net more when a house is in good shape and time allows, and our pricing explainer shows how to compare the two. For more on each situation, see back property taxes, houses with code violations and the foreclosure page.
The Cook County Clerk's Office. The Treasurer collects current bills, but once taxes have been sold, redemption and the Estimate of the Cost of Redemption come from the Clerk.
In the Chancery Division of the Circuit Court of Cook County, in its mortgage foreclosure section at the Richard J. Daley Center. The Clerk of the Circuit Court keeps the case records.
Yes. We consider properties in Chicago, in the suburban cities and villages, and in unincorporated parts of the county, in any condition.
Usually, yes. Violations and sold taxes are things a buyer prices in and a title company deals with at closing. A court order or a completed tax deed can change that, which is a question for an attorney.
The county runs the tax sale, the deed records and the courts. The building code, the transfer stamp and the final water bill are set by the village, and they are different in every one.
No repairs, no fee, no obligation. See the number, then decide.