Illinois Flood Disclosure Law 2025: Three Disclosures Required

This isn't a standalone flood disclosure statute. It's a section, 765 ILCS 705/25, added directly into the existing Illinois Landlord and Tenant Act by Public Act 103-0754. A landlord already working from that Act's other requirements, security deposits, notice periods, and so on, now has this disclosure obligation sitting alongside them in the same statute.

[Cite: 765 ILCS 705/25, as added by Illinois Public Act 103-0754]

Every covered lease has to disclose, in writing, whether the rental property is located in a Federal Emergency Management Agency Special Flood Hazard Area, commonly referred to as the 100-year floodplain.

[Cite: 765 ILCS 705/25, as added by Illinois Public Act 103-0754]

This disclosure doesn't depend on the landlord's personal knowledge or experience with the property. FEMA flood zone designation is a matter of public record tied to the property's location, which means this particular disclosure applies regardless of whether the property has ever actually flooded.

Separately, a landlord has to disclose if they have actual knowledge that the rental property or any portion of its parking areas has been subjected to flooding, along with the frequency of that flooding.

[Cite: 765 ILCS 705/25, as added by Illinois Public Act 103-0754]

That "actual knowledge" qualifier is a meaningfully different standard from the FEMA disclosure above. This isn't a duty to investigate or research the property's flooding history from scratch. It's a duty to disclose what the landlord already, genuinely knows. A landlord who has personally observed or been told about flooding on the property has to disclose it; a landlord with no actual knowledge of any flooding event isn't required to manufacture a disclosure they can't honestly make.

For a specific category of unit, defined as garden-level, basement-level, or first-floor-level units, the law adds a more targeted requirement. The landlord has to disclose whether that lower-level unit, or any portion of the property containing it, has experienced flooding in the last 10 years, and how frequently.

[Cite: 765 ILCS 705/25, as added by Illinois Public Act 103-0754]

This is the disclosure most likely to actually change tenant behavior at signing, since it's specific to the exact unit a tenant is about to occupy rather than the broader property or a FEMA zone designation covering a wider area.

The other two disclosures simply have to be provided in writing before signing. The lower-level unit disclosure goes further: it has to be included directly in the written lease or the written renewal lease, and it has to be signed by both the landlord and the tenant.

[Cite: 765 ILCS 705/25, as added by Illinois Public Act 103-0754]

That's a higher bar than a separate disclosure form handed over alongside the lease. A landlord managing a building with lower-level units needs this specific language built into the lease document itself, not attached as a standalone sheet that could get separated or overlooked.

It would be easy for a leasing office to read this law as "disclose flooding" and build a single generic form covering everything. That approach misses the actual structure of the statute. The FEMA zone disclosure applies to every unit regardless of flooding history. The general actual-knowledge disclosure applies property-wide, including parking areas, and depends on what the landlord actually knows. The lower-level unit disclosure applies only to a specific category of units, carries its own 10-year lookback, and has a stricter signature requirement. Treating these as three separate checklist items, each triggered differently, is the more accurate way to build compliance into a leasing workflow.

[Cite: 765 ILCS 705/25, as added by Illinois Public Act 103-0754]

A tenant who discovers that a required disclosure wasn't made has a specific set of remedies. The tenant can terminate the lease by written notice within 30 days of discovering the non-disclosure.

[Cite: 765 ILCS 705/25, as added by Illinois Public Act 103-0754]

Upon that termination, the landlord has to return all advance rent and fees paid, within 15 days of the termination.

[Cite: 765 ILCS 705/25, as added by Illinois Public Act 103-0754]

Beyond the termination and refund remedy, a tenant can also sue for damages to personal property that resulted from flooding the landlord failed to disclose.

[Cite: 765 ILCS 705/25, as added by Illinois Public Act 103-0754]

That's a distinct claim from the termination remedy. A tenant whose belongings were damaged in a flood event the landlord knew about but didn't disclose isn't limited to walking away from the lease; the statute preserves a separate path to recover for the actual property loss.

The statute carves out farm leases, concession leases, and rental properties owned or managed by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.

[Cite: 765 ILCS 705/25, as added by Illinois Public Act 103-0754]

Outside those three specific categories, the disclosure requirements apply broadly across residential leasing in Illinois, without a carve-out based on landlord size or property type.

The practical starting point is building all three disclosures into the standard lease packet as distinct items: a FEMA flood zone statement checked against the property's actual designation, a general flooding-history statement reflecting what property management genuinely knows about the property and its parking areas, and, where applicable, a lower-level unit flooding disclosure built directly into the lease document itself with a dedicated signature line.

For any building with basement, garden-level, or first-floor units, confirming that lease templates already include the 10-year lookback language, rather than relying on a separate handout, closes the gap between what the statute requires and what a standard-form lease might currently contain.