It's a landlord's worst nightmare to have a tenant who stops paying their rent or who just won't leave when you need the home back. This blog post will cover all you need to know about the average cost of an eviction and the average timeline from a 5-day notice to a sheriff kicking in the door.
Let's delve into the timeline of an eviction. The most significant cost of an eviction isn't the legal fees but the potential loss of rent while the tenant remains in the unit. Understanding the steps and timeline of an eviction in Cook County, particularly in Chicago, can help you manage this financial impact.
The first and crucial step in evicting a problematic tenant is to serve notice. Depending on the reason for the eviction, you may need three types of notices. Understanding these notices and which type of notice is needed is the key to initiating the eviction process.
1. 5-day notice or 30-day notice for nonpayment of rent. The amount of notice depends on two factors: one, If your tenant receives any government assistance, or two if you bought the home using a VA or FHA loan that you are still paying off, you must present a non-paying tenant a 30-day notice to pay or quit; if the above does not apply, you can serve a simple five-day notice. Once these notices are served, you must accept a total rent payment but can deny partial payments. It's important to note that any payment taken after the notice is up, meaning on day six or day 31, respectively, will cancel the notice, and you must start the process over if you wish to file an eviction. (you may take partial payment before expiration, i.e., day four or day 29, and still file the eviction).
2. 10-day notice to quit: This notice is for evictions due to a lease violation, such as having a non-authorized pet or smoking in a unit. This notice can be served, and after the 10-day period, if they have not fixed the violation, you can start eviction; one thing to note is that while you are trying to evict the tenants, accepting rent cancels the eviction notice or eviction, so once the end of the notice period is up, if you want them out, you do not want to collect or accept any rent.
3. 30, 60, or 120 days notice to end a lease: this applies to a tenant on a month-to-month lease or one whose lease is ending. This written notice is a little different than the others as day one is always the next first of the month, meaning if you serve on June 1st, day one of the notice is July 1st, and the days start from there. Which one you serve depends on the time the tenant has lived in the unit; if less than six months, you can serve 30 days' notice. If less than three years, 60 days' notice is reasonable, but if over three years, you would want to serve 120 days ' notice to start the eviction process if they do not move out at the end of the notice period.
One thing to note on all notices is that they must be handed to someone above 13 at the tenant's residence in Chicago. This means it may take you or your property manager multiple attempts to find the tenants and serve them. Also, we have seen a judge rule in favor of the tenant based on proper notice not being served legal advice can be expensive. Still, it is nowhere near the price you will pay to start over after six months of going to a court hearing for your eviction case and having it thrown out because the way you wrote something in the notice was not the correct legal process.
Part two after the notice expires:
After the end of the notice period, you need to file your case in court. I suggest hiring legal counsel to save time and agony, as they understand all the legal procedures and court proceedings. The filing fee in Cook County can be between $232 and $432, and generally, if you hire an attorney, they will be charged to fill out the paperwork and submit it to the courthouse.
After you file, you must pay the Sheriff $120 to serve the tenant notice to appear in court for the eviction trial. Unfortunately, Illinois eviction laws require you to currently use the sheriff to attempt to serve notice to the tenant; however, after January 2025, you will be able to hire a process server to serve the notice from the start of the legal eviction process versus having to wait for the first court date to come and request permission to serve the tenant after the sheriff failed to serve which is about 80% of the time in our experience.
After you file, the first court date is between 5 and 8 weeks after the filing. Often, the first court date is just to find out the tenant was not served in time, so a new court date is set for 30 days later. At this court date, your attorney should request to be able to hire a special process server.
It is important to remember that at this point, unless you have a judge-signed payment plan, accepting any rental income from the tenant will make you start back at day 1. So we need to make sure all payment methods are turned off beyond paying the full amount due with all penalties and fees.
If the tenant shows up on the first court day or on the second, that day will be used for mediation. This is where your eviction attorney should try to get the bad tenants to sign a court-ordered payment plan to make future rent payments along with the unpaid rent over a period of time. the actual amount on the agreement is not super significant as we have seen most of the time when we get these payment plans in place, the tenant does not pay more than a month of rent, and per the agreement, the judge will give us a writ of possession once they miss a payment, this is much faster than going through the entire eviction proceedings
If no agreement is made, the next step is to go to trial, where the judge rules either in favor of the landlord or the bad tenant.
When you go to trial, here are the things that could cause you to lose the case and not be able to get the eviction. The trial may be one court date. It may stretch four or five, depending on how many times the tenant can get a continuance.
1 improper 5-day notice or improper serving of the 5-day notice: Your 5-day notice should state how much is due, how long the tenant has to make the payment, and what will happen if the payment is not made. It must have the correct address and the correct name of the tenants. In terms of serving the notice, it must be handed to the tenant or someone above the age of 13 who is in the apartment.
2. Money is accepted after the notice has expired; even if you take $1 from the tenant, you may be forced to start the eviction all over, so make sure if they put money on your doorstep, you return it to them immediately.
3. Major repairs not made: If your apartment doesn't have running water or heat, you will get the case thrown out. Even though you are evicting them, you must keep the home livable during the eviction.
4. Illegal fees on the ledger: if you charge fees that are either not in the lease properly or that
do not follow state and local laws, your case could be thrown out; this includes charging the proper late fee in Chicago, which is $10 for the first $500 of rent and 5% of the remainder of the rent amount, any fee charged higher would cause your case to be dismissed.
5. Wrongfully held security deposits: If you have a security deposit and the lease is incorrectly written not to include a local bank holding the deposit, or if you have not paid interest every year the tenant has been there, you can get your case denied and countersued for 3x the security deposit amount.
During your trial, the judge grants you the writ of possession, but you are not done yet; you must now file that with the sheriff's office for them to come out and do the eviction. This can take anywhere from 4 to 8 weeks from the time you file.
When the sheriff comes to the property, they will give you a 4-hour window; you must be at the property during that time, and when they come, they will have you sign paperwork stating that you agree if the key doesn't open the door they can break in and will damage the door. When they go in, they will make all the tenants leave, and you must secure their property for up to 7 days and allow the tenant to set up a time to retrieve it from the property.
But wait. There is an uno reverse card that tenants can play when the sheriff arrives; if a tenant is too sick to leave or elderly, or if they get a judge to give them a stay, you will be required to fix the door and wait for social services or a court date before being able to call the sheriff out again. This could add a month to two months to the process, making an eviction last anywhere from four months to ten in Chicago.
After court costs, sheriff costs, and attorney fees, evictions can range between $1000 and $2000, but the much higher price is the lost rent you are not getting while waiting for the eviction to go through. This is why screening your tenants properly and knowing what red flags to look for is critical to being a profitable landlord. We advise not to accept anyone with past due utilities, prior evictions, or money owed to previous landlords, as all of these are due to repeat themselves. There are many professional tenants in the Chicagoland area who go from landlord to landlord, getting into an apartment only never to pay again and live out in the apartment for a year or two before the sheriffs come, and then they go and find another landlord that will fall victim to their tactics.
How do we prevent evictions?
As you can see, an eviction should be a last resort, as it can damage your profitability for a year and cause you to go into foreclosure if you don't have enough reserve funds. So if a tenant stops paying, how can you avoid an eviction?
1. if a tenant has generally been good and has a life event happen causing payment to go bad, work with them, either by putting them on a payment plan to catch up over time or by allowing them to exit their lease early, far too many landlords try to make a tenant stay for six months when they do not have a job to pay rent with, by allowing them to break the lease when a life event happens you are not losing six months of income you are losing a month maybe as you get it re-rented but than you'll have a new tenant paying again, vs. making the tenant stay in the apartment and causing them to resent the landlord and not leave until the sheriffs have to come. If the tenant has a huge medical bill but will be on time next month, let them skip the month and start paying an extra $100 or $200 every month until they are caught up. This will allow them not to be overburdened and have a chance to catch up.
2. if that fails, it is time to try cash for keys; some tenants don't have the means to move out, and that is why they stay as long as they can by offering enough to pay their move-in fee, rent and moving expenses you may be able to get them out, now one caveat to this is never give the tenant money directly until they are moved out. Still, you can hire the movers for them or deliver a move-in fee to the new landlord on their behalf if they need the funds early.
While not all evictions are avoidable, if you want the best chance at avoiding them we recommend talking to us about managing your property and properly screening any new tenants that will be moving in.
