Governor Pritzker recently signed a Bill that makes significant changes to the Statute. Please note these statute changes do not become effective until January 1, 2025.
Most significantly, the statute recognizes that a Rental Agreement may be delivered and accepted by electronic mail or other electronic records. Thus, if you send an Occupant a Rental Agreement by email and the Occupant does not sign it, the Occupant’s continued use of the Storage Space constitutes acceptance of the Rental Agreement, as if it had been signed by the Occupant. Further, the definition of Default has been modified to include trailers to the list of vehicles that can be towed. Finally, there is now a way to deny Occupant use of the Facility after termination or non-renewal notice and an appropriate period of time has passed. There is obviously more to these changes than this posting provides. You should speak to your legal counsel regarding all of the specifics of the changes, how you may use them at your storage facility, and what the limitations of these changes mean for your operations.
Congratulations to both the National Self Storage Association and the Illinois Self Storage Association for working diligently to bring such an important change to your state.
