What must an Illinois landlord disclose to a tenant, and what must the lease say?

No statute requires a residential lease to be in writing beyond the statute of frauds, so an oral tenancy is lawful. No statute requires the landlord to give the tenant a copy of the lease.

No Illinois statute requires a residential lease to be in writing, and an oral tenancy is lawful; only a lease for a term longer than one year must be written and signed to be enforceable. No statute requires the landlord to give the tenant a copy of the signed lease, and none sets a deadline for one. There is no statewide duty to supply a lease or a notice in another language, no plain-language act and no general type-size rule for leases. What Illinois regulates instead is the first page: the state summary of rights for survivors of domestic and sexual violence must be attached as page one of every written lease, and a lease granting a rent concession must carry the words Concession Granted across its face in letters at least half an inch high. From January 1, 2027 every non-optional fee must also appear on page one.

Statute of frauds: A contract for an interest in land for a longer term than one year cannot be enforced unless it, or a note or memorandum of it, is in writing and signed by the party to be charged or by an agent authorized in writing (section 2 of the Frauds Act, 740 ILCS 80/2). A lease of one year or less is enforceable orally.

Electronic leases and signatures: An electronic lease and an electronic signature are valid in Illinois. The Uniform Electronic Transactions Act (815 ILCS 333) makes an electronic record satisfy a writing requirement and an electronic signature satisfy a signature requirement, and it carries no landlord-tenant carve-out: the only excluded transactions are wills, codicils and testamentary trusts and most of the Uniform Commercial Code. It applies where both parties have agreed to conduct the transaction electronically, and it preserves any formatting requirement another law imposes. The page-one summary of rights is expressly written for electronic leases: the signature space may be attached to a paper lease or inserted into an electronic one.

No.

No Illinois statute requires a landlord to give a tenant the owner's or the managing agent's name, address or telephone number — not in the lease, not in a separate writing and not by posting — and Illinois has no landlord or agent registration statute, so nothing flows to a tenant from a filing either. Under the Building Law Violation Ownership Disclosure Act (765 ILCS 425/1) a trustee who holds title but no beneficial interest, or a managing agent, must disclose every owner and beneficiary to the enforcement agency within ten days of an initial notice of a violation affecting health or safety, and for a residential building the agency must place that disclosure in a public register if the violation is still uncorrected after 180 days; the disclosure runs to the agency, and a tenant sees it only through that register. Separately, after a foreclosure sale the holder of the certificate of sale or the purchaser must, no later than 21 days after the order confirming the sale, notify every known occupant in writing with the name, address and telephone number of a person to contact about the property or to ask for repairs, and post the same at the entrance of each dwelling unit; a party that does not may neither collect rent from a known occupant nor terminate for non-payment of that rent until it serves the notice. That duty is triggered by a transfer of ownership, not by the start of a tenancy.

Yes — a state-prescribed general tenant-rights document (a statement, summary or form) must be handed over or attached, and no general lease text is prescribed.

Illinois prescribes one general tenant-rights document and no general lease text. The Department of Human Rights summary of rights for survivors of domestic and sexual violence must be attached as the first page of every written residential lease, new or renewal, and every tenant must sign at the bottom of each of its four pages. There is no state tenant handbook, no model lease, no notice telling the tenant where the law can be read, and no landlord-written code summary. The radon pamphlet and the radon disclosure form are hazard documents and are described in the hazard table; the lead brochure duty sits there too, and is listed here only because the department has not identified the brochure the statute orders it to prepare. The Concession Granted legend is required only where the landlord grants a rent concession, so it is listed without making Illinois a prescribed-lease-text state.

Required item:

SUMMARY OF RIGHTS FOR SAFER HOMES — a state-prescribed document to be handed over or attached; issued by the Illinois Department of Human Rights. A landlord or a landlord's agent must attach a copy of this four-page state summary as the first page of any written residential lease, for a new rental and for a renewal alike, and must obtain each tenant's signature in the acknowledgment of receipt at the bottom of every page. The summary identifies the key rights and remedies of tenants, and of members of a tenant's household, who are survivors of domestic or sexual violence under six Illinois laws: the Safe Homes Act, the eviction article of the Code of Civil Procedure, the Illinois Human Rights Act, the deposit-deferral section of the Public Utilities Act, and the municipal and county provisions that forbid penalizing a tenant for calling the police or other emergency services. A missing signature creates a rebuttable presumption that the landlord did not comply. A landlord found not to have complied owes that tenant the greater of actual damages up to $2,000 or $100, plus court costs and reasonable attorney's fees, and the tenant need not go to the Department of Human Rights first. The duty attaches to any written residential lease, with no unit count, building age or owner-occupancy exemption; an oral tenancy is outside the Act, which defines a tenant as a person who has entered into a written lease. Revision: V.2025-12.3, printed in the footer of all four pages beside the agency's Safe Homes Act line; the publisher's own file date of December 19, 2025 agrees with it. Given at signing and on renewal, attached as the first page of the lease. Languages: English. Typography: Attached as the first page of the written lease, with space at the bottom of each page of the summary for the tenant to sign as acknowledgment of receipt, whether the lease is on paper or electronic. Agency page. (765 ILCS 752/15, /20, /25, /30)

Listed, but not a general duty counted above:

Informational brochure on lead poisoning prepared by the Department of Public Health — a document the statute orders an agency to prescribe that the agency has not yet published; issued by the Illinois Department of Public Health. Before entering into a residential lease of a building containing dwelling units built before 1978, the owner must give the prospective tenant a copy of an informational brochure prepared by the Department of Public Health (410 ILCS 45/9.1, restated at 77 Ill. Adm. Code 845.25). The department's own lead pages identify no such brochure: the only handout it publishes for the public is the federal pamphlet, which cannot stand as the state document. The duty is in force and the penalty behind it is real, but no state brochure can be pinned to it today, so a landlord meeting this duty has to ask the department what it publishes. Given before signing, handed over. Threshold: Regulated facilities — a residential building or child care facility — containing dwelling units built before 1978. Agency page. (410 ILCS 45/9.1) Not counted: the document does not exist yet.

Concession Granted legend and marginal memorandum — words or content the lease itself must carry. Where a rent concession is made, the lessor must, at the time the lease is made or immediately after, cause the lease to bear the words Concession Granted across its face and text in plainly legible letters not less than one-half inch in height, and to bear a memorandum on the margin or across the face stating the amount or extent and the nature of each concession. A concession is a credit on or rebate of rent, a right to occupy for a period other than the lease term rent free or at less than the average rent, or any other valuable thing, right or privilege; repairing and decorating is not a concession, and waiving a lease term other than one about paying rent is not either. Farm and agricultural property is outside the Act. Omitting the legend is unlawful; the criminal penalty in the Act reaches only a person who exhibits an unendorsed lease in order to sell the premises or obtain a loan on them. The words are required only because the landlord has chosen to grant a concession, so the text is listed here without counting toward the count above. Given at signing, inside the lease itself. The statute fixes the words. Typography: The words Concession Granted across the face and text of the lease, plainly legible, in letters not less than one-half inch in height, with a memorandum on the margin or across the face stating the amount or extent and nature of each concession. Threshold: Does not apply to farm or agricultural property, or to any lease or evidence of leasing executed for it. (765 ILCS 730/2, /3, /5a, /6) Not counted: required only because the landlord elects a practice.

Lease contents the statutes or rules address, each in the circumstance it names:

• The state summary of rights for survivors of domestic and sexual violence, attached as the first page of every written residential lease, new or renewal, and signed by each tenant at the bottom of every page of the summary (765 ILCS 752/20).

• The flood disclosure, which must be included in the written lease or the written renewal lease and signed by both parties as well as given in writing before signing (765 ILCS 705/25).

• Where a rent concession is made: the words Concession Granted across the face and text of the lease in letters at least one-half inch high, with a marginal memorandum of the amount, extent and nature of each concession (765 ILCS 730/3).

• Where master-metered utility service is billed to tenants as a proportionate share: the allocation formula itself, in the lease or in another written agreement (765 ILCS 740/5).

• Conditional, not mandatory: the federal drug-free-housing lease addendum or a substantially similar document, which a landlord must have executed with the tenant before the Act's lease-voiding remedy for a Class X drug felony on the premises is available (765 ILCS 705/5).

No.

No Illinois statute or rule requires a move-in condition statement, checklist or inventory, on any trigger, and none requires a landlord to show a tenant the previous tenant's damage list. The deposit statutes work only at the other end of the tenancy: the Security Deposit Return Act sets the itemized statement and the return deadlines, and the Security Deposit Interest Act pays interest in buildings of 25 or more units. Both are on the deposits pages. From January 1, 2027 a landlord may not charge a fee or fine for an in-person walk-through at move-in or move-out — Illinois will regulate the price of an inspection it has never required.

Two in-force state hazard disclosures: lead (before signing, on renewal, when the event the section names occurs, and by posting); and radon (at application, before signing, and on request). No state duty exists for mold, bed bugs, methamphetamine, asbestos, or any other hazard.

Every state duty and every stated absence, hazard by hazard:

Lead (state add-on to the federal rule) — in force — a state duty, before signing, on renewal, when the event the section names occurs, and by posting, on an agency document (a statute and an administrative rule). Illinois adds four things of its own on lead. Before entering into a residential lease of a regulated facility containing dwelling units built before 1978, the owner must give the prospective tenant a copy of an informational brochure prepared by the Department of Public Health. An owner who has received a mitigation notice from the department must, before renewing an existing lease of that unit, give the tenant written notice that a lead hazard was previously identified there, which is satisfied by handing over a copy of the mitigation notice and the inspection report, unless a certificate of compliance has since been obtained; the same paragraph bars a new lease of that unit until the hazard is mitigated and the certificate issues. The owner must also post notices at all entrances to the building, drafted by the department and sent with the hazard notification, saying that a unit in the building has been found to have lead hazards, that other units may, that the department recommends blood lead testing for children six and under, where to seek further information, and whether two or more mitigation notices have issued for the building within five years. The department's rules restate both disclosure duties. The one gap is the brochure itself: the department's lead pages identify no document that answers the statute's description, so no state brochure can be pinned to the duty today. Threshold: A regulated facility is a residential building or a child care facility; the brochure duty reaches those containing dwelling units built before 1978, with no unit-count or owner-occupancy carve-out. The renewal notice, the entrance posting and the bar on a new lease reach only a unit for which the health department has issued a mitigation notice. If the duty is not met: The health department or an approved local representative must report a violation to the State's Attorney, who may charge the owner with a Class A misdemeanor and must take additional measures to see that rent is withheld by the occupants of the affected dwelling units until the mitigation requirements are met. No tenant may be evicted because rent is withheld under the Act (410 ILCS 45/10).

Mold — no state duty. No Illinois statute or rule requires a landlord to disclose mold. The Mold Remediation Registration Act registers remediation contractors and reports on mold in state buildings; the words lessor, lessee, tenant, lease and rental do not appear in it. No part of the administrative code reaches mold in a dwelling, and the sales-disclosure act does not reach an ordinary tenancy. Mold in a rental is a repair question under the local building and health codes.

Bed bugs — no state duty. Illinois has no bed-bug law at all — nothing to disclose, nothing to inspect and nothing to report. The Structural Pest Control Act, which governs pest-control businesses, never mentions a tenant, an occupant, an apartment or a lease, and the pest-control part of the administrative code carries no occupant notice. Chicago has its own bed-bug ordinance, which is not carried on this page.

Radon — in force — a state duty, at application, before signing, and on request, in a signed acknowledgment (a statute). When a prospective tenant applies to lease a dwelling unit, again before the lease is entered into, and at any time during the leasing period on request, the lessor must give the tenant three things: the Emergency Management Agency pamphlet Radon Guide for Tenants, or an equivalent pamphlet the agency approves; copies of any records or reports of radon concentrations in the unit that show a radon hazard; and the disclosure form the statute sets out. The form carries a warning that the property may expose occupants to indoor radon gas and that radon is the leading cause of lung cancer in nonsmokers, initial lines on which the lessor states either no knowledge of elevated concentrations or that concentrations at or above the agency's action level of 4.0 picocuries per liter are known to be present, initial lines on which the tenant acknowledges receiving the information and the pamphlet, and a certification of accuracy signed and dated by both. The pamphlet and the form are owed for every covered unit, tested or not. The duty stops at the third story: it does not reach a dwelling unit on the third story or higher above ground level. Knowledge standard: Any records or reports the lessor holds that show radon concentrations in the dwelling unit indicating a radon hazard; the pamphlet and the form are owed whether or not the unit has ever been tested. Threshold: Only a dwelling unit below the third story above ground level: the Act does not apply to a unit on the third story or higher, and a transfer under the Act includes a lease. Applies to leases entered into on or after January 1, 2024. Document: Radon Guide for Tenants, issued by the Illinois Emergency Management Agency and Office of Homeland Security. Revision: The pamphlet carries no revision or print code on its face; the tracked value is the publisher's own file date, January 5, 2024, labeled as such. Agency page. If the duty is not met: A tenant has 90 days from the start of the leasing period to run a radon test, and may terminate the lease where the result exceeds the agency's recommended action level and the lessor elects not to mitigate; the tenant must give the lessor a copy of the results within ten days of receiving them, and the lessor may have a licensed contractor re-test within 30 days. Where the lessor did not give the documents at all, the tenant may test at any point during the term, and if the lessor neither disputes the result nor mitigates, the tenant may within 60 days either terminate or, with the lessor's express consent, have a licensed contractor mitigate and deduct the cost from rent in equal parts over the rest of the term. A lessor of a unit vacated on that ground may not keep any part of the deposit as compensation for radon testing or mitigation, and must itemize anything it does keep. Nothing in the Act obliges either party to test or to mitigate.

Methamphetamine — no state duty. Illinois has no methamphetamine-contaminated-property law: no disclosure duty, no bar on renting a contaminated unit, no cleanup standard, no certificate of compliance and no registry. Nothing in the housing, public health, environmental safety, nuclear safety, public safety, professions or property chapters creates one, and no rule in the administrative code does either. Contamination in a rental is left to the general repair and habitability duties and to local health enforcement.

Asbestos — no state duty. No Illinois landlord must disclose asbestos to a tenant. The state's only asbestos statute is the Asbestos Abatement Act, which sits in the schools chapter, and the administrative parts beside it cover schools, commercial and public buildings and air emissions. None of them reaches a residential tenancy.

Pesticide, ordnance, demolition, conversion and alarm notices — no state duty. Illinois requires no pesticide-application notice, no military-ordnance or noise-zone notice, no demolition or condominium-conversion notice and no pool notice to a residential tenant. The pre-application pesticide notice in the pest-control statute binds school districts and early care and education centers, not landlords. The Carbon Monoxide Alarm Detector Act is an installation duty rather than a notice, and alarms are on the habitability page.

Yes — a statute requires the landlord to disclose both the property's flood-zone status and its flood history to a prospective or current tenant, in a signed acknowledgment.

Every Illinois landlord must clearly disclose to each tenant, in writing before the lease is signed, that the rental property is in the Federal Emergency Management Agency Special Flood Hazard Area — the 100-year floodplain — and, where the landlord actually knows it, that the property or any part of the parking areas serving it has flooded, with how often. A landlord letting a lower-level unit, meaning a garden, basement or first-floor unit, must also disclose in writing before signing whether that unit or any part of the property containing it has flooded in the last ten years, and how often. Both disclosures must be repeated in the written lease or written renewal lease and signed by both parties. The statute sets out wording the disclosure must look substantially like: check boxes for whether the landlord is aware the property is in the floodplain and whether it has flooded at least once in the last ten years, a space for the number of floods, a statement that a property outside the floodplain may still flood, a pointer to the federal flood map searchable by address at no cost, a warning that most tenant insurance policies do not cover flood loss and that federal flood insurance may be available for personal property, and signature and date lines for tenant and landlord. No type size is prescribed. Farm leases, concession leases and rental property owned or managed by the Department of Natural Resources are outside the section, and the section does not let anyone rent a lower-level unit in a municipality that forbids it. In force since January 1, 2025. One drafting note worth knowing: the section prints two subsections lettered the same way, the remedies first and the exemptions second, so it is safest to refer to them by what they say.

Threshold: Does not reach farm leases, concession leases or rental property owned or managed by the Department of Natural Resources. The ten-year flooding limb reaches lower-level units — garden, basement and first-floor units. If the duty is not met: A tenant who becomes aware that the landlord did not give the floodplain disclosure may terminate the lease by written notice no later than the thirtieth day after becoming aware of the failure, and the landlord must return all rent and fees paid in advance no later than the fifteenth day after that notice. Where either disclosure was missed and flooding then damages the tenant's personal property, affects the habitability of the property or affects the tenant's access to it, the tenant may terminate by written notice no later than the thirtieth day after the flood, recover the advance rent and fees on the same fifteen-day clock, and bring an action against the landlord for personal property lost or damaged.

Yes — of the facts the rule names, disclosing some is forbidden and no cause of action arises from not disclosing some, each as stated here.

Three Illinois rules run the other way from a disclosure duty. First, where a lessor of residential real estate lives at the property and is a child sex offender, and rents to a person who did not tell the lessor they are the parent or guardian of a child under 18, a tenant who later discovers the lessor's status may not terminate the lease on that ground and the lease stands; no statute requires the lessor to disclose the status in the first place (765 ILCS 705/10, for leases entered into after the amendment that added it). Second, a landlord may not tell a prospective landlord that a tenant or a member of the tenant's household exercised rights under the Safe Homes Act, or pass on anything the tenant gave in exercising them, except in a civil proceeding under that Act, where the law requires it, or where the survivor has waived the protection in writing; a landlord who does is liable for actual damages up to $2,000 plus reasonable attorney's fees and costs, and the Act may not be waived or modified in any lease or separate agreement (765 ILCS 750/27, /29, /30). Third, a landlord may not threaten to disclose or actually disclose information about a tenant's immigration or citizenship status to any person, entity or immigration or law enforcement agency with the intent of harassing or intimidating the tenant, retaliating for the exercise of a right or getting the tenant to give up possession, unless a law or court order requires it; the remedies are actual damages, a civil penalty of up to $2,000 for each violation payable to the tenant, reasonable attorney's fees and court costs, and equitable relief, and a tenant's waiver is void (765 ILCS 755/10, /15).

No enumerated list — Illinois has no roster of prohibited lease provisions. What it has is a handful of single-subject void-and-unenforceable rules, each inside its own act, and one general rule: every covenant in, collateral to or connected with a lease of real property that exempts the lessor from liability for injury to person or property caused by the lessor's negligence in operating or maintaining the premises is void as against public policy and wholly unenforceable. The carve-out runs the opposite way from the usual pattern — it saves a property-damage clause in a non-residential lease — so the bar is at its strongest in residential leases. There is no general unconscionability provision in these acts and no anti-waiver rule of general application; the Safe Homes Act and the Immigrant Tenant Protection Act each carry their own, and both reach any lease term that tries to give up their protections. A genuine enumerated list arrives on January 1, 2027, when eleven kinds of fee become unlawful for a landlord or a lease agreement to require.

Sanction as the statute states it: The clause falls and nothing more. The exculpatory covenant is void as against public policy and wholly unenforceable; the utility and rent-payment provisions make an inconsistent or conflicting lease term void and unenforceable. No statute awards damages, a rent multiple or fees for merely including a prohibited clause, and there is no cure window. Money consequences attach only where the underlying statute supplies one: requiring payment by electronic funds transfer is an unlawful practice under the consumer fraud statute, and a tenant billed in breach of the shared-meter rules recovers those utility bills.

The general provisions:

• A covenant in, collateral to or connected with a lease of real property that exempts the lessor, or the lessor's agents, servants or employees, from liability for damages for injury to person or property caused by their negligence in operating or maintaining the leased premises or the property containing them (765 ILCS 705/1; the only carve-out is a property-damage clause in a non-residential lease).

• Any term or condition in the rental agreement inconsistent with the shared-meter disclosure and utility-change rules (765 ILCS 735/1.2).

• Any lease provision conflicting with the tenant's right to pay rent at a staffed business office on the premises of a building or complex of 100 or more residential units, in a lease entered into, extended or renewed on or after the rule's effective date (735 ILCS 5/9-218).

• Any waiver or modification of the Safe Homes Act, whether in the lease or in a separate agreement (765 ILCS 750/30).

• Any waiver by a tenant of a right under the Immigrant Tenant Protection Act (765 ILCS 755/10).

• A term requiring the tenant to pay rent or any other amount due under the lease by electronic funds transfer, including an arrangement that transfers funds automatically on a recurring basis (765 ILCS 705/4).

No statute addresses attorney-fee clauses in residential leases as such.

No Illinois statute turns a one-way landlord attorney-fee clause into a reciprocal one, and none awards fees to the prevailing party in a residential lease dispute generally. A lease clause giving the landlord its fees therefore stands as written. Fee-shifting in Illinois residential landlord-tenant law is statutory and runs one way, to the tenant: a tenant who brings and wins an action over the page-one summary of rights recovers all court costs and reasonable attorney's fees, and need not go through the Department of Human Rights first; a tenant who wins under the Safe Homes Act's non-disclosure rule, under the Immigrant Tenant Protection Act, or under the Landlord Retaliation Act recovers reasonable fees and costs as well. From January 1, 2027 a court may also award attorney's fees and costs on the new fee rules.

Partly — state law preempts local rules on some subjects and leaves others to the locality or open.

Illinois answers the question subject by subject, and in both directions. The Radon Awareness Act preempts: a home rule unit may not regulate lease agreements or tenant rights in a manner inconsistent with that Act, and the section is written as a limitation on the concurrent exercise of home rule powers under article VII, section 6 of the state constitution. The reusable-screening-report section runs the other way, applying whichever of the state rule or a conflicting local policy gives prospective tenants greater protection. The flood section preserves a municipality's power to forbid the renting of garden, basement and first-floor units. And from January 1, 2027 the new fee rules are an express floor: a home rule unit, a non-home-rule municipality or a county may regulate fees charged to tenants, but its rules must restrict them at least as much as the state's. Nothing in the Landlord and Tenant Act or in any other act on this page preempts local lease-disclosure or lease-content rules generally, and home rule in Illinois is constitutional, so the big cities legislate freely. Chicago requires a city-published summary of its Residential Landlord and Tenant Ordinance to be attached to every written lease and every renewal, and given to a tenant under an oral agreement, alongside an annually reissued deposit-interest-rate rider. Suburban Cook County, outside the City of Chicago, attaches a county summary to every rental agreement and adds owner, utility-cost, code-violation and foreclosure disclosures with their own tenant remedies. Neither set of city or county requirements is carried on this page.