Matteson requires a pre-sale inspection, and it keeps registrations for vacant buildings and for rentals, so an unoccupied house or a tenant adds paperwork of its own.
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.
| Requirement | In Matteson | What that means, and where we read it |
|---|---|---|
| Pre-sale inspectionDoes the town inspect the house before it changes hands? | Required | Matteson requires an Existing Structure Inspection on a change of use, ownership, or tenancy, done by Building Services with the Matteson Fire Department, and the occupancy certificate comes out of it. A house that does not pass can still sell if the buyer signs an As-Is Affidavit accepting the listed violations. Source |
| Transfer stampDoes the town sell a stamp the deed cannot be recorded without? | Not confirmed | We could not confirm this for Matteson. Ask Matteson's building and code department whether the deed needs anything bought from them before it can be recorded. |
| Final water bill or account clearanceDoes the town want its own accounts settled first? | Not confirmed | We could not confirm this for Matteson. Ask Matteson's building and code department what the water and utility accounts need before a closing. |
| Vacant building registrationDoes an empty house have to be registered? | Required | If the house is empty, the village code requires the owner to put it on the vacant property registry, with a fee per vacant property and a renewal cycle, and foreclosure properties register separately. An unregistered empty house tends to surface during the inspection, not after. Source |
| Rental licence or registrationDoes a tenant in the house bring its own paperwork? | Required | Every owner or landlord of rental property in Matteson has to register it before anyone occupies it, with a property registration plus a registration for each rental unit, an inspection, and a new Certificate of Occupancy when the tenant changes. Source |
Every "Required" and "Not required" above links the page we read it on, checked 2026-09-23. Fees, deadlines and the exact wording live on those pages and change without notice, so we do not reprint them here. For Matteson itself, start with Matteson's building and code department.
Matteson is a village that looks at the building before it changes hands. That single fact shapes most of what happens when the house needs work. It is not a paper filing that somebody rubber stamps at the end. Building Services and the Matteson Fire Department walk the structure, and the occupancy certificate is issued once that inspection is complete. Applications run through the village's CitizenServe portal, which means the file has a date on it and the village knows what stage it is at.
If your house has a bad roof, knob and tube, a wet basement, a furnace that is done, or a stack of open code items, none of that ends the sale. What it does is put the condition in writing in front of the village and in front of whoever is buying. Sellers who get into trouble here are usually the ones who left the inspection until the week of closing, or who assumed an empty house sitting quietly was invisible to the village.
The county half is separate and moves on its own clock. Matteson sits in Rich Township for Cook County Assessor purposes, in the South triad. Taxes, any sold taxes, and anything recorded against the title are county matters, not village matters, and the village inspection has nothing to do with them.
The Existing Structure Inspection, or ESI, applies to existing residential and non-residential structures on a change of use, ownership, or tenancy. A sale is a change of ownership, so a sale triggers it. Building Services conducts it together with the Matteson Fire Department, and the occupancy certificate follows from it.
What matters for a house that needs work is what happens when it does not pass. Matteson gives two paths. The seller can hand the buyer the list of code violations and the buyer signs an As-Is Affidavit accepting them, or the seller corrects everything on the list and calls for a reinspection before closing. The first path is the reason an as-is sale is possible in this village at all. The second path is the reason a seller who wants to repair should start early, because a reinspection has to happen before the closing date, not after it.
Ignoring the ESI does not produce a quiet closing. It produces a closing that cannot get its occupancy certificate, and a buyer's attorney who will not move until it does. Apply through CitizenServe well before the date on the contract. The village's code enforcement page is where the current application sits.
Matteson's code requires the owner of vacant property to register it with the village registry after it becomes vacant. The code sets a short window for that and a fee for each vacant property, and the registration is not a one-time filing. Vacant and foreclosure registrations renew on the village's cycle through CitizenServe, and property in foreclosure registers under its own provision of the code. The counts, the fee, and the timing are all in the village code on American Legal, which is the only place worth reading them, because those numbers change and this page does not.
For a seller, the practical point is that the vacant registry and the pre-sale inspection meet each other. When the ESI is scheduled on a house nobody has lived in for a while, the registration question comes up. Unpaid or unfiled registration fees do not vanish at closing. They get sorted at closing, which is a better outcome than discovering them the day before.
Matteson's code says every owner or landlord of rental property must register the property before permitting occupancy, and the registration renews. The Code Enforcement page goes further. There is a property registration for each rental property, single family and multi family alike, and a rental unit inspection registration for each unit, with an inspection and a new Certificate of Occupancy on each change of tenant.
So a rented house in Matteson carries a stack of village records, and a change of tenancy is one of the events that triggers the ESI in the first place. If you are selling with a tenant in place, expect the village to look at what is registered and what is not. If you are selling after a tenant has gone and the unit sat empty, you may be dealing with the vacant registry as well. Both are things the village will expect to see handled, and both belong in the conversation early.
For anything about the inspection, the occupancy certificate, the vacant registry, or rental registration, call Matteson's building and code department. They hold all of it and they are the ones scheduling the walk-through.
For the county half, the Cook County Treasurer's Office handles tax bills and the annual tax sale. The Cook County Clerk's Office handles redeeming sold taxes, and the same office holds deeds and recorded liens after absorbing the Recorder of Deeds. The Circuit Court of Cook County sits in Chicago. Our Cook County page explains how those offices line up against a closing, and our notes on open code violations cover what an inspection list usually contains.
We are a private buyer. We purchase Chicagoland houses for cash, for our own account, in the condition they are in. We are not an agent and we are not a repair service.
In practice that means we look at the house as it stands, with the roof it has and the furnace it has and whatever is still inside it. If there is an open code file or a house that has been sitting, we read it and price it. Then we make an offer or we tell you we are not the right buyer. When we do buy, we are usually the party signing the As-Is Affidavit, which is what takes the repair list off the seller's plate. At closing, the title company pays out of the sale proceeds what the records show is owed. If the house is full of belongings, our liquidation page explains how we handle that.
A cash offer on a house that needs work will usually come in below what the same address would list for after it is repaired, permitted, and staged. That is the trade. You are not paying for the work, not waiting on the reinspection, and not carrying the house while it happens. Take the number to an agent or to a real estate attorney and compare it against a repaired listing with its own costs and its own timeline. That comparison is the right way to decide, and we would rather you make it than skip it.
Yes. Matteson's own process allows the seller to give the buyer the list of code violations, with the buyer signing an As-Is Affidavit accepting them. The alternative is correcting everything and calling for a reinspection before closing. Both routes end at a closing, but only one of them requires the work to be done first.
Matteson's code requires vacant property to go on the village registry, with a fee per property and a renewal cycle. Registering it late is a normal thing to do. The likeliest moment for it to surface is when the Existing Structure Inspection is scheduled, so it is better to raise it with Matteson's building and code department yourself than to have it come up in the middle of a contract.
It adds filings. The village wants a property registration for the rental and a registration for each unit, with an inspection, and a new Certificate of Occupancy whenever the tenant changes. A change of tenancy is itself one of the triggers for the Existing Structure Inspection, alongside a change of ownership, so a rented house tends to touch the village record more than once.
No repairs, no fee, no obligation. See the number, then decide.