We buy houses in every one of Chicago's 77 community areas.

The property types we see most

Chicago bungalows. Roughly 80,000 of them, mostly built between 1910 and 1940, concentrated in the belt that runs through Portage Park, Jefferson Park, Garfield Ridge, Ashburn and Chatham. The usual list is a roof at the end of its life, knob and tube in part of the house, a one and a half story attic that was finished at some point without a permit, and a kitchen and bath nobody has touched in forty years.

Two flats and three flats. The workhorse of Chicago's neighborhoods. Frequently tenant occupied, frequently with a basement or attic unit that exists but is not legal, and frequently impossible for a retail buyer to finance for exactly that reason. We buy them occupied and we buy them with the unit.

Greystones and workers cottages. Beautiful, and expensive to fix. Masonry, tuckpointing and lintels are real money, and a financed buyer's inspector will find all of it.

Condos. Where the killer is rarely the unit. It is a special assessment, a thin reserve balance, an association in litigation or a rental cap that makes the whole building unfinanceable, and none of it is your fault or within your control. We read the Section 22.1 disclosure and underwrite it instead of walking away from it.

Selling as is, and the line a financed buyer cannot cross

There is a point below which a retail buyer cannot finance a house and a retail appraiser will not sign off on it. A conventional buyer needs the roof sound, the mechanicals working and the electrical to pass. An FHA buyer, who is a large share of the market in much of the city, needs more than that. Below that line the only buyers left are cash buyers, and the listing simply sits while you keep paying the taxes, the insurance and the heat on it.

We will tell you plainly which side of that line your house is on. If it is above it, we will tell you to keep listing, because on a well kept house the market will beat us and we would rather say so than waste your afternoon.

As is means what it says. No repairs, no cleaning, no staging, no showings, and no unpermitted addition you have to resolve first. Leave what you do not want, take what you do.

The clearances that actually set your closing date

Inside the city limits the thing that moves a closing is almost never the buyer. It is a certificate. Chicago requires a Full Payment Certificate from the Department of Finance on essentially every transfer of real property, confirming the water and sewer account is settled, and without it you cannot obtain the transfer tax stamps, and without the stamps the deed cannot be recorded. The city asks for at least ten business days to process one, and longer where a meter has to be read or a field review ordered.

Ten business days is two weeks of calendar time on a document most sellers have never heard of. Ordered in week one it is a formality. Ordered the week of closing it is the reason your closing moves, and it is the single most common way a Chicago sale slips. We order it early, every time, on every house we buy.

On top of that sit three layers of transfer tax: the Illinois state tax, the Cook County tax and the city's own stamp, which in Chicago is split between buyer and seller rather than falling on one side. Rates change, so rather than print a figure here, run your price through the calculator and see the three layers separately. On anything we buy we cover the seller's side of the stamps and the title company's fees, and any open municipal balance or back taxes comes out of the proceeds at closing rather than out of your pocket. Illinois transfer tax calculator

Cook County taxes, billed a year behind

Cook County bills property taxes a year in arrears, which means the bill arriving now is for the year you have already lived through. At closing that is handled as a proration, and it is the line item sellers most often misread, because the credit you give the buyer covers a period you already owned the house for. It is normal, it is not a penalty, and we will walk you through the arithmetic on your specific parcel rather than leaving you to find it on the settlement statement.

Assessments move on a three year cycle, and the county reassesses by triad. The City of Chicago was last reassessed in 2024, which puts the next city-wide reassessment in 2027. That matters more than it sounds: a financed buyer is qualified on the monthly payment including taxes, so a reassessment year can change what your house is affordable to, and it is one of the reasons retail deals in the city die late rather than early.

If you are behind on the taxes, that is common here and workable, but it runs on a clock. Once a parcel has been through the annual tax sale the redemption period governs everything, and that date matters more than anything else in the transaction. Bring us the PIN and we will tell you exactly where you stand. More on delinquent property taxes

Two flats, three flats, and getting out as a landlord

Chicago is the hardest place in the region to exit a small rental building in a hurry, and the reason is the notice. Under the city's Fair Notice rules a tenant who has been in place more than six months and less than three years is owed 60 days' notice before a tenancy ends, and a tenant of more than three years is owed 120 days. On a long-tenured three flat that is four months before you can even deliver the building empty, which is four months of carrying it while you wait.

You do not have to wait. We buy occupied, month to month or on a lease, and we take the lease as it stands. You do not serve notice, you do not run an eviction, and you do not deliver the property vacant. The tenants, the leases and the notice clock become ours after closing.

The security deposits are the part worth raising early. Chicago's landlord and tenant ordinance is unusually strict about how deposits are held, accounted for and handed on, and the penalties for getting it wrong are real. Tell us what you are holding and for whom, and we will handle the transfer properly at closing rather than discovering it afterwards. More on tenant occupied property

Inherited houses, and houses that have been closed up a while

The version we see most often in the city is an estate: adult children who moved away, a bungalow or a two flat that has been shut since a parent died, and taxes and insurance quietly running the whole time. We can handle the transaction remotely, we do not need the house emptied, and we work to the probate court's schedule rather than pushing you to outrun it. More on inherited property

Vacancy is the part worth moving on, because in Chicago it is not only a maintenance problem, it is a filing. The city requires the owner of a vacant building to register it within 30 days, charges a registration fee in the hundreds, and requires the registration to be renewed every six months for as long as the building stays empty. Plenty of families inherit a house and find out about that requirement from a violation notice rather than from a form.

Everything else about an empty house runs at the same time: a carrier that may not renew once it learns nobody lives there, a water bill that runs regardless, scrappers, and a winter risk that is not theoretical. A burst pipe in an unheated Chicago house can do more damage in a week than the house lost in the previous five years. More on vacant property

Selling without an agent, and what the number actually nets

Plenty of Chicago sellers start by asking whether they can sell without a realtor. You can. We are the buyer, not a broker, so nobody is representing you, there is no commission on either side, and there is no listing agreement to get out of if you change your mind. No sign in the yard, no MLS photographs, and no strangers walking through on a Sunday afternoon.

What matters is that the comparison is honest, and the honest comparison is not our offer against a list price. It is our number against what a listing would actually put in your pocket: after commission, after the repairs a financed buyer demands at inspection, after the concessions, and after however many months of taxes, insurance and utilities you carry while it sells.

So we run that comparison for you in writing, with the three closest genuine comparable sales attached, whether or not you end up selling to us. If the answer is that you should list, we will say so and hand you three agent names. There is no charge for it and nothing attached to it.

Neighborhoods we buy in

All of them. This is a partial list of where we have looked at property recently.

• Portage Park
• Jefferson Park
• Albany Park
• Irving Park
• Avondale
• Logan Square
• Hermosa
• Belmont Cragin
• Dunning
• Norwood Park
• Edison Park
• Garfield Ridge
• Clearing
• West Lawn
• Gage Park
• Brighton Park
• McKinley Park
• Bridgeport
• Back of the Yards
• Englewood
• Auburn Gresham
• Chatham
• Avalon Park
• South Shore
• Woodlawn
• Greater Grand Crossing
• Roseland
• Pullman
• Beverly
• Morgan Park
• Mount Greenwood
• Ashburn
• Austin
• Humboldt Park
• West Town
• Pilsen
• Little Village
• Uptown
• Edgewater
• Rogers Park
• North Center
• Lincoln Square