Selling a Car With Parking Tickets, a Boot or an Impound Hold in Chicago

Chicago parking tickets follow the registered owner, which is why a ticketed car can still change hands. What the tickets do is wait for you. The Department of Finance says that when you pay to release a booted or towed car, every parking, standing and compliance ticket that has reached final determination on any vehicle registered to you comes due, along with unpaid fees from earlier boots and any boot tamper fees (Department of Finance). Selling or scrapping the car doesn’t clear any of that.

So the real question is which stage you’re at.

Stage one: tickets, no boot

You can sell the car as it is. The tickets stay with you, and the car leaves.

Two things are worth doing. First, search your plate on the city’s ticket site to see the total, and look at the online payment plans if it’s large. Second, protect yourself from tickets after the sale. Keep a dated receipt or bill of sale, and take the plates off at pickup. Chicago lets you contest a parking or compliance ticket if you weren’t the owner of the vehicle when it was issued, and it gives you seven days from the ticket date to contest, with a second notice allowing 21 days to request a hearing. Hearings are requested through the city’s eContest system. Why the plates matter so much is covered in our guide to plates and the city sticker.

Stage two: the boot is on

Here the clock is short. After a car is booted, you have 24 hours to pay in full or get on a payment plan before it’s towed, and you can ask for one additional 24 hours by calling 312.744.7275 (City of Chicago). The extension can also be requested online.

The Finance Department’s booted-vehicle page lays out the fast exit: start an online payment plan, make the down payment, and the boot is released within one business day. Plans run at a $25 minimum monthly payment for up to 24 months, or 36 months with a hardship. The online route only works if no tow or storage fees have been added; once they have, those must be paid in person (Department of Finance). The city lists the boot fee for a passenger vehicle at $100.

A boot is there to keep the car where it is, and the city adds tamper fees if anyone interferes with one. So the order is simple: get the boot released, then call us. Same-day pickup is often possible, which matters when you’ve just bought yourself a day.

Stage three: the car is in the pound

If the tow already happened, find the car with the city’s vehicle search and go to the pound holding it. For a vehicle under 8,000 pounds, Finance lists a $250 tow and $50 a day in storage, payable at the pound or a city payment center by cash, card or a postal money order. The pound keeps a car 21 days before it becomes eligible for auction or destruction; Streets and Sanitation can grant a 15-day extension at 312-746-4954, weekdays from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Then comes the hard part. Add up the tickets, the boot, the tow and the storage, and compare that with what the car is worth. Letting the city keep it is tempting when the bill is bigger than the car. But the Finance page is direct about it: signing the car over or surrendering it doesn’t waive or reduce what you owe the city. Walking away costs you the car and leaves the debt.

If you get the car released, getting it out of the pound is your part. Once it’s back where you can give us access, we can pick it up from there. Our non-running cars page covers cars that came back with dead batteries or flat tires.

The three stages at a glance

Where you are	Can you sell?	First move
Unpaid tickets only	Yes, today	Check the total; set up a plan if needed
Boot on the wheel	After release	Payment plan online or extension call within 24 hours
Car at the pound	After release	Compare total owed with the car’s value; mind the 21 days
Tickets issued after you sold	You may contest	Proof of the sale date

Stop the next ticket

A dead car on the street is a ticket magnet. Chicago treats a car that can’t be driven as abandoned the day it sits there, which our guide to inoperable vehicle rules explains in full. Selling it before the boot crew finds it is the cheapest outcome.

Call before the clock runs out

Reach us at (872) 356-9663 from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily, or send the details through the cash offer page. We run pickups from Western Avenue to Chicago Lawn, Englewood and the surrounding neighborhoods, and the junk car removal page explains what happens when the truck arrives.