Security Deposit Alternative in Illinois
Illinois gives you 30 days after a resident moves out to send an itemized statement of damage with the cost of each item and the paid receipts attached. Estimates are allowed, but the receipts then have to follow within another 30 days. Send nothing and the whole deposit has to go back within 45 days. Withhold wrongly and you owe twice the deposit plus the resident's court costs and attorney fees.
What Illinois law says about security deposits
Read from the Illinois statute on 2026-09-10. Deposit rules change, and this is general information rather than legal advice. Confirm the current text with your own counsel before you change a lease.
Can you require it of every Illinois resident?
The Security Deposit Return Act has nothing to say about a fee charged instead of a deposit. What it regulates, in detail, is keeping any of a deposit. Within 30 days of the resident moving out, or of their right of possession ending if that is later, you send an itemized statement of damage with the estimated or actual cost of each item and the paid receipts attached. If you send estimates, the receipts have to follow within another 30 days. A written lease may set a specific cost for cleaning or repairing a listed component, and you may withhold that amount if the statement references it. Send no statement and receipts and the deposit goes back in full within 45 days. Withhold wrongly and you owe twice the deposit plus the resident's court costs and attorney fees. Chicago's residential landlord and tenant ordinance adds its own rules on top of the state act, so a Chicago program needs both read.
Rules differ by state and by city, and subsidized housing is its own question. This is general information for property managers, not legal advice. Get a written opinion before you make the fee a condition of tenancy anywhere.
How the program works in Illinois
The mechanics are the same in every state Beagle operates in. The program is designed to comply with applicable state and local regulations, and the rate is set by the deposit amount rather than by geography, so a Illinois property and one two states over are quoted the same way.
The resident chooses at signing
Instead of producing the full deposit, the resident pays a smaller non-refundable monthly fee that is billed with rent. Nothing is held, so nothing has to be returned.
The property keeps its protection
Damage beyond normal wear is reimbursed up to the deposit amount the unit would otherwise have required, so what you can recover does not shrink.
Move-out stops being a negotiation
A claim is filed against the program rather than deducted from money you are holding, which takes the itemised-deduction letter and the dispute that follows it off your team's desk.
You earn on every resident who takes it
You set an administrative fee on top of the premium, up to $5 per unit per month, and keep it.
Illinois security deposit alternative FAQs
Illinois has no statewide statute answering that, so a mandatory version is a question for your own attorney, and in Chicago the city's residential landlord and tenant ordinance has to be read alongside the state act. The Security Deposit Return Act governs how you keep a deposit, not whether you may replace one.
Security deposit rules in other states
See it on your Illinois units
Run the program against your own unit count, or walk through it with our team. No upfront fees, no onboarding charges, no long-term contracts.