Owners of vacant buildings in Chicago are required to register them on the Department of Building's Vacant Building Registry. 

Owners must register within 30 days after the building becomes vacant (see 14X-12-1204 in the Chicago Municipal Code) and renew every six months while the building is vacant. 

This data is now available in Property Finder within Place Reports in Chicago Cityscape, and there are 1,507 properties citywide. You'll find the filter option in a new section called "Vacancy". 

Each property in the data table links to the registration's listing on the Vacant Building Registry where there may be more information about the property. For properties that had been inspected by the Department of Buildings, there may be photos. 

We are showing a subset of the VBR data: registered properties that are currently registered or have expired within the last three months and that are either non-residential buildings or are residential buildings and real estate owned. ("REO" is a term that generally means owned by a lender or bank, a receiver, or some other entity that is in charge of the property after the previous owner left due to an atypical situation, like foreclosure.)

This data has to be imported manually, which is a resource-intensive effort; the update frequency will be based on usage and feedback we get from our members.