Illinois security deposit law
Your landlord is on a clock, and most tenants never find out it exists. Here is what the statute actually says - quoted, with a link so you can read it yourself.
30 days after you vacate, a covered landlord must furnish an itemized statement of damages with receipts or estimates. If no statement is furnished, the full deposit must be returned within 45 days.
- Itemization
- Required, with paid receipts or, where work is not yet done, written estimates.
- If they get it wrong
- Twice the amount of the security deposit due, plus court costs and reasonable attorney's fees, where the landlord refuses to supply the statement or supplies it in bad faith.
- Statute
- 765 ILCS 710/1
The part most people miss
If you're in Chicago, check the city ordinance too. The state Act applies to every residential landlord - there's no minimum building size - but Chicago's Residential Landlord and Tenant Ordinance runs a different 45-day deadline and a stricter, no-bad-faith-required double-damages remedy that can work better for you than the state Act. One more thing worth doing either way: make sure your landlord actually has a mailing or email address for you. If they don't, they're not liable for any damages or penalties that result from not being able to reach you.
within 30 days of the date that the lessee vacated the leased premises or within 30 days of the date the lessee's right of possession ends, whichever is later
765 ILCS 710/1(a)
Where that leaves you
The date you handed back possession, plus the 30-day window above, is the number that matters. If that date has passed and nothing arrived, that fact carries weight under Illinois law - the statute is quoted above, and the conditions attached to it (if any) are noted on this page too.
If you are still living there, or about to move out, the most useful thing you can do takes fifteen minutes. Nearly every dispute reduces to a single question - was that damage there before you were - and dated photographs are the strongest evidence you can bring to that question.
Check your timeline for Illinois
Other states
Last reviewed: 24 Aug 2026 · How this was sourced: CORRECTED 23 Aug 2026: a prior version of this entry stated the Act applies only to landlords with five or more units. Independent re-verification against three sources (ilga.gov's official text of the full Act, fetched twice, and Justia) found no unit-count threshold anywhere in 765 ILCS 710 - the opening clause of Section 1 covers 'a lessor of residential real property who has received a security deposit,' full stop. The five-unit figure was likely confused with a different statute (the Security Deposit Interest Act, 765 ILCS 715, which does carry its own unit threshold for a separate interest-payment duty) or a municipal ordinance. Replaced with an accurate note about Chicago's stronger local ordinance, confirmed against the Chicago Municipal Code at codelibrary.amlegal.com. Independently re-verified 24 Aug 2026: confirmed 765 ILCS 710/1(a) also contains a tenant-address safe harbor for the landlord ('the lessor shall not be held liable for any damages or penalties as a result of the lessee's failure to provide an address') - added a note.