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CHICAGO TRANSFER TAX - let the games begin!

As of yesterday, it looks as though the City Council's Department of Finance did a 180 degree turn and is now going to lay off the $3.00 transfer tax increase on sellers and not buyers.

The tax increase goes into effect on April 1.

So it was to be expected that Buyers would rush their deals forward and try to close on March 28th or on the 31st to beat the increase.

Turns out that might not work out as planned. See, the tax gets paid when Deeds are filed with the Cook County Recorder of Deeds. Its usually the title company's job to handle the recording of documents and since they have to record so many, they do not always get recorded the same day as your closing. Sometimes it can take days or weeks (or months) to get done. Title company's dont want to be left holding the bag for the fee increase. As a precaution many will start collecting additional funds to cover the tax increase as early as March 25th or 26th.

So all those end of month closings we took pains to schedule? Guess we're gonna reschedule a whole slew of them again, a few days sooner....

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