Chicago · Residential transaction
Illinois does not close the way most of the country closes. If you have bought a house somewhere else, roughly half of what you know is wrong here — starting with who runs the transaction.
Illinois residential transactions close through attorneys, not escrow officers. Each side has its own attorney, and closing takes place at the escrow office of the title company issuing the owner’s policy — by default the office nearest the property.
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Acceptance starts two clocks, and they run together
After an offer is accepted, each side’s attorney has five business days to approve the contract, disapprove it, or propose modifications.
This is widely described as five days. The contract says five business days, which is a defined term and a materially different deadline across a holiday week.
Inspection does not wait for attorney review to finish. Both begin on the date of acceptance and both carry a five-business-day notice deadline.
Repair credits and price adjustments travel through the inspection provision while document changes travel through attorney review. Two tracks, one week — which is why the days right after acceptance are the busiest part of the deal.
What attorney review can and cannot do
Attorney review cannot be used to renegotiate the purchase price. The contract expressly bars proposing modifications to the price, and bars disapproving the contract solely on the basis of price.
A great deal of published advice says attorney review is the moment to renegotiate price. Under the current form it is not. Price moves through the inspection provision, or through an amendment both sides voluntarily sign.
If no notice of disapproval or proposed modification is served within the time allowed, attorney review is waived and the contract stands as written. Nothing announces the waiver; the right simply ends.
Buyers arriving from New Jersey expect attorney review to allow cancellation for any reason. Illinois is not that.
The financing deadline is two deadlines
The pre-printed financing deadline falls forty-five days after acceptance, or five business days before closing, whichever comes first.
On a thirty-day closing — which is normal here — it is the second limb that binds, landing around day twenty-three. Reading only the forty-five-day figure puts the deadline three weeks later than it actually is.
Thirty to forty-five days from accepted offer to closing is the Chicago norm for a financed purchase. Cash purchases close in two to three weeks. Condominium deals run longer.
A condominium adds two more clocks
Under the contract the seller must apply for the association’s disclosure package within ten business days after acceptance. Under the Condominium Property Act the association then has ten business days from the written request to furnish it.
The association’s deadline is widely published as thirty days. It has been ten business days since January 1, 2023, and a great deal of professional material still carries the old figure. If you have read otherwise, that is why.
Stacked, those two windows can consume most of a month before the buyer’s own five-business-day review of the documents even begins. It is the main reason condominium timelines differ from single-family.
Title and survey: what the contract requires, and what is only custom
The seller is contractually obliged to deliver and pay for the owner’s title insurance policy. The lender’s policy is not addressed by the contract at all — by Chicago-area custom the buyer pays for it, usually at a discounted simultaneous-issue rate.
A clean example of the difference between what the contract requires and what local habit supplies. One is enforceable. The other is simply how it is done here, and it is negotiable in a way the first is not.
The seller furnishes a plat of survey at the seller’s expense, prepared by an Illinois-licensed surveyor and dated no more than six months before closing. This does not apply to condominium units.
Chicago’s own gates, which stop closings that are otherwise ready
Chicago’s transfer tax totals $5.25 per $500 of price. The $3.75 city portion falls on the buyer and the $1.50 CTA portion on the seller — roughly 0.75 percent and 0.30 percent respectively.
The contract’s general rule puts transfer stamps on the seller “unless otherwise designated by local ordinance.” Chicago’s ordinance does designate, so inside the city the buyer carries the larger share. Readers who see only the general rule get this backwards.
Unless law or rule provides otherwise, a Full Payment Certificate is required on all Chicago transfers, including transfers exempt from the transfer tax. It certifies that accrued utility charges are either paid in full or otherwise not transferable to the next owner. Without it no transfer stamps issue, and without the stamps the deed cannot be recorded.
Before transfer stamps issue, Chicago requires a certificate of zoning compliance for single-family homes, two-flats, and residential buildings of five units or fewer. Condominiums, co-ops and newly built homes sold to the first occupant are exempt.
This is the provision that catches an unpermitted basement or attic unit. A two-flat marketed as a three-flat fails here — at the transfer-stamp stage, which is to say at the closing table, with everyone already in the room.
What people don’t know to ask
Four things that catch buyers who have done this before, somewhere else.
- The busiest week of the transaction is the first one, not the last. Two five-business-day clocks start the moment the offer is accepted.
- You cannot use attorney review to lower the price. If the inspection is going to matter, it matters on the same timeline.
- Two city certificates sit between a finished deal and a recorded deed. Neither is the attorney’s to produce on the day.
- If the building has more units than its zoning allows, the closing table is where that surfaces.
Whether any of this applies to a particular contract is a question for an attorney — and in Illinois, having one for a residential purchase is the norm rather than the exception. The two city certificates are administered by the Department of Finance and the Zoning Administrator.
Sources
- Multi-Board Residential Real Estate Contract 8.0 — ¶¶5, 8, 13, 15, 17(d), 20, 21. Read 2026-09-15; paragraph citations re-checked 2026-09-20.
- Chicago Municipal Code 3-33-030 — real property transfer tax. Served as current.
- Chicago Municipal Code 3-33-045 — certificate of zoning compliance. Served as current.
- City of Chicago, Department of Finance — Full Payment Certificates.
- 765 ILCS 605/22.1 — Condominium Property Act, disclosure on resale. Amended effective 2023-01-01.
Every statement on this page is dated and sourced. Where a rule changed recently, the page says so, because guidance published before the change is still circulating. Where local custom supplies an answer the contract does not, the page distinguishes the two rather than blurring them. Nothing here is legal advice; it is a description of how the process works.