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The Scoop
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Miss one date and the lease re-signs itself — on the old terms.
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Most landlords think a lease just … ends. In Chicago, it doesn’t. Two separate clocks decide what happens at the finish line — the auto-renewal clause in your own lease, and the city’s notice rules for not renewing. Sleep through either one and you can be locked into another full term, at last year’s rent, with a tenant you meant to part ways with. Here’s how both clocks actually run.
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The Breakdown
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Five moving parts in the end-of-lease machine:
1. Your lease may renew itself. If your lease has an automatic-renewal clause, doing nothing isn’t neutral — it rolls the tenant into a new term automatically. The clause that was supposed to save you paperwork is the same one that traps you when you wanted out. How auto-renewal clauses work →
2. The clause has to be disclosed to count. Illinois’ Automatic Contract Renewal Act says an auto-renew clause is only enforceable if the tenant was clearly told about it. Bury it in fine print and you can lose the very rollover you were counting on — the protection cuts both ways.
3. Non-renewal runs on Chicago’s sliding clock. Under the city’s Fair Notice rules, the written notice you owe before ending or not renewing a tenancy scales with how long they’ve lived there: 30 days for under six months, 60 days for six months to three years, and 120 days for three years or more. Same clock applies to a rent increase. The non-renewal notice rules →
4. Late notice doesn’t shrink the clock. If a three-year tenant needed 120 days and you gave 60, you don’t get to evict 60 days late — you generally have to wait out the full required window, which can mean carrying them, at the old rent, for months you didn’t plan on.
5. The two clocks interact. Here’s the stinger: an auto-renewal clause and the Fair Notice window run on different deadlines, and the earlier one governs your real cutoff. Plan around the lease end date alone and you can blow the deadline that actually mattered weeks before you ever opened the calendar.
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The Receipts
A landlord with a tenant of two-plus years wants the unit back at lease end to renovate and re-rent at $1,950. He sends a polite 30-day non-renewal notice — reasonable, in writing, ahead of the date. But a two-year tenancy needed 60 days. The notice was void, the tenant had the right to stay, and the renovation slipped a full quarter at the old $1,650 rent. That “$300 bump” he was chasing cost him roughly $900 in lost rent waiting for a valid window. The lease end date wasn’t the deadline. The notice clock was.
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Your Move
You can take both clocks off autopilot today:
Pull every lease end date. Make one list of when each tenancy ends — you can’t manage a deadline you haven’t written down.
Count the tenancy length. For each unit, figure out which bucket it’s in — under 6 months, 6 months to 3 years, or 3+ — and back-date the 30/60/120-day notice deadline.
Find your auto-renew clause. Read your own lease. If it auto-renews, set a reminder before that trigger, not before the lease end date.
Serve it in writing, and keep proof. Verbal “heads-ups” don’t count. Date it, deliver it, and save evidence of how and when it went out.
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| Straight From the Robot’s Mouth |
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Hall of shame: “The lease ends in July, I’ve got plenty of time.” — said in May, about a 120-day notice that needed to go out in March.
Reader Q: A Portage Park landlord asks, “My tenant’s lease auto-renewed before I realized — am I really stuck for another year?” Often, yes — but it depends on whether that clause was properly disclosed and how your tenancy lines up with the Fair Notice window. There’s sometimes a door; it just isn’t the one most leases assume.
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These clocks apply to every Chicago tenancy. Which deadline lands first for your unit, given your lease and your tenant’s move-in date, is the part a newsletter can’t see — that’s what Dweller IQ is for.
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The Fine Print is plain-language general guidance, not legal advice — verify against the current ordinance or your attorney before acting on your specific situation.
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