Free tool · Chicago / Cook County
What does a squatter cost you in Illinois?
Change the numbers to match your property. The rent is Illinois's own, from HUD; how long it drags on is your call; everything else is yours to overwrite.
Illinois estimate
$36,484
Your numbers.
These are national starting points, not claims about your property. The one figure that drives the total — how long it drags on — is yours to set. Nobody can source it, so we do not pretend to.
How long before you get it back?
6 months
Your assumption, not ours — courts do not publish how long this takes. A contested removal runs in months, not weeks, almost everywhere; how it goes in Illinois is in the guide.
How many bedrooms?
Sets the rent from HUD’s published Fair Market Rent for Chicago / Cook County — $2,294/mo.
Mortgage / loan payment — per month
$
Only you know this one. The placeholder is roughly a $300k loan at current rates.
Lost rent or delayed sale — per month
$
HUD's Fair Market Rent for this metro, at the bedroom count you picked. It is the 40th percentile of recent-mover rents, so on a renovated or market-rate property it is a floor, not a valuation.
Attorney fees — one-off
$
No public data exists. Our estimate — nothing published backs it. No state bar and no court in any of these markets publishes fee data for an ejectment. Get a written quote and put it here.
Property taxes — per month
$
Your bill, divided by twelve. The placeholder is roughly a $250k property at Philadelphia's 1.3998% — Newark runs 1.845%, Los Angeles 1.187%.
Insurance — per month
$
No public data exists. Our estimate. Vacant cover genuinely does cost more, but the published figures for how much more disagree by a factor of five — anywhere from +25% to 5x. Use your own premium.
Utilities — per month
$
A national placeholder, unless your state overrides it below — Philadelphia's is the Water Department's own published bill. Whoever is inside, you are the ratepayer of record.
Damage and clean-out — one-off
$
No public data exists. Our estimate, and we want to be blunt: NO government body in the United States publishes squatter-damage data. Every figure you have seen quoted traces to one news story or to a lobby survey that counted houses, not dollars. We are not going to launder a number we cannot stand behind — put yours here.
If it happens in Illinois
$36,484
at 6 months— and every extra month adds $4,664.
Against a $0–$120k range, so the bar means something as you drag.
Carrying it, empty ($4,664/mo × 6 mo)
$27,984
One-off costs (attorney, damage)
$8,500
What ruins you is the carry — the months. On top of this you will pay to file, for the sheriff to serve and remove, and for a lawyer. Those are set locally and we do not print a number we cannot cite — but next to the months, they are a sliver.
Can you get any of it back? NO. The Eviction Article's only fee-shifting provision is limited to condominium cases: attorney's-fees recovery applies to condominium / common-expense cases, not to squatters.
Why Illinois costs what it does
Illinois's eviction statute expressly names the squatter case, and no waiting period applies before you file. The problem is not the law — it is Cook County. Filing is quick; getting to the front of the queue is not.
“When entry is made into vacant or unoccupied lands or tenements without right or title.”
Quote verified verbatim in § 9-102(a)(3). Illinois's Eviction Article is the summary successor to the Forcible Entry and Detainer Act; the statute text itself does not use the word 'summary'.
The statute
735 ILCS 5/9-102(a)(3); § 9-104 demand for immediate possession
Rent, by bedroom
1 bed $1,581 · 2 bed $1,781 · 3 bed $2,294 · 4 bed $2,653
FY2026, effective 2025-10-01
All four figures are HUD's FY2026 FMR schedule (efficiency 1480, 1BR 1581, 2BR 1781, 3BR 2294, 4BR 2653). The HUD area spans Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry and Will counties, so the figure is metro-wide, not Chicago-specific.
The Eviction Article's only fee-shifting provision is limited to condominium cases: attorney's-fees recovery applies to condominium / common-expense cases, not to squatters.
Is there a fast sheriff route?
No — and the gap Illinois left is exactly the problem
SB 1563 (effective Jan 2026) clarified that the eviction statute does not stop police from enforcing criminal trespass. It passed 55-1. But it created no affidavit, no form, and no way for an officer to verify who owns the building — so Chicago PD has publicly declined to act on it. The legislature granted the power and left out the evidence.
This is the bill for finding out too late.
Nothing on this page will get an occupant out, and be wary of anyone who says otherwise. What DeedProof does is earlier and duller: it verifies you own the property, structures the statement you swear before a notary, and files it — so that if someone does break in, the officer at the door has something to work from instead of a lease they cannot check.
The decision still belongs to the officer. Our job is to make it an easy one.
This page is the money. The law behind it is on Illinois’s guide — whether police can arrest, whether a sheriff can act on your affidavit alone, and how long occupation takes to become a claim. Every answer quoted from the statute.