Terms of Service

GroundSignal (“we”, “us”) assembles public records published by Cook County agencies — the Assessor, the Board of Review, Cook County GIS — and FEMA, alongside reviewed municipal and other official sources. Property records are linked by the county’s 14-digit parcel number. Search, maps and reviewed findings distinguish records, calculations and possible effects. Coverage includes the towns listed on the home page; availability and source coverage vary by town.

We are not a government agency, a title company, an appraiser, a broker, or a law firm. Nothing on the site is a title search, an appraisal, a tax bill, or legal advice.

You must be at least 18 to create an account. Keep your password private; you are responsible for activity under your account. Tell us at support@cookcountyrecords.com if you believe it has been used without your permission. We may suspend or close accounts that violate these terms.

Public (free) access lets anyone browse the map and factual parcel fields. Personal and Pro are licensed for individual use only: one person, for that person’s own research or purchasing decisions. They may not be used on behalf of a business, shared across a team, or used to build a product or dataset for others.

Intelligence Desk provides the feed tables and full lead-list CSV downloads for commercial use while subscription access is active. It does not include the separate Personal or Pro research tools. Commercial API includes those research tools and Desk for business use — companies, brokerages, lenders, investors, and anyone using the records in the course of trade. Commercial use of Personal or Pro is a breach of these terms and may be treated as use of the Commercial API plan at its list price. Firms that only need a list may buy a Trade territory list or Appeal season pass instead; those carry their own license (see One-time purchases).

You agree not to:

• scrape, crawl, bulk-download, or otherwise extract records from the site other than through an included in-app export, a purchased lead list, an active Desk or Commercial API subscription’s lead-list downloads, or the Commercial API once it is available;
• share an account, circumvent plan limits, or resell access;
• use the records to harass, stalk, discriminate against, or threaten any person, or for any purpose prohibited by law, including decisions governed by the Fair Credit Reporting Act (we are not a consumer reporting agency and the data may not be used for credit, employment, insurance, or tenant screening);
• interfere with the service, probe its security, or overload it;
• misrepresent estimates or inferences as official records.

Records are shown as published by the issuing agency and may be incomplete, delayed, or wrong at the source. Each fact carries its source and the date that source was last updated. We do not verify records against deeds or field inspections.

Fields labeled estimate or inferred (market value, annual tax, zoning, occupancy, relationships between people or companies, replacement timelines for building systems) are produced by models from public data. They are not appraisals, inspections, or statements of fact. Verify anything that matters with the county, the recorder of deeds, and a licensed professional before acting on it.

See the Methodology page for how each value is produced and which are facts versus estimates.

Paid plans are billed monthly in advance and renew automatically until you cancel. Prices are shown on the Pricing page at the time you subscribe; we give at least 30 days’ notice by email before a price change applies to an existing subscription. Payments are processed by Stripe; we do not store card numbers.

You can cancel at any time from your account page. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period, and you keep access until then. Charges already made are not refunded — see the Refund Policy.

Feed and lead-list downloads included with Desk or Commercial API require active paid access and end with that access. A separately purchased one-time list keeps its own access described below. Downloaded files remain subject to the applicable license and removal requirements; cancellation does not permit resale or redistribution.

Three products are sold once, not as subscriptions, and are delivered digitally the moment payment clears:

• Appeal brief ($49) — unlocks the appeal builder for one parcel (PIN) so you can build, print and rebuild its evidence brief. CLI purchases deliver a printable brief and include rebuilds for the same PIN using the private order access key. You can link the same paid order to your account at no additional charge to use the full builder. The brief is a compilation of public records and computed comparisons, not legal advice. The Assessor and the Board of Review decide every appeal; no reduction is guaranteed.
• Trade territory list ($299) and Appeal season pass ($495) — a CSV of parcels in the town selected at checkout with the county’s owner of record: name, ownership type, owner city, and an occupancy inference. No mailing street is included. The file downloads from your account page for as long as we offer the list, and its rows are recomputed from the current data release at each download. CLI purchases include the same current-release access through the private order refresh URL, plus recovery of the original dated file. Current-release downloads require available source records; their dates are identified separately from the original purchase. Keep the order access key private and saved.

These products are not refundable — all sales are final, except for the billing errors listed in the Refund Policy. The bulk-download restriction in Acceptable use does not apply to an authorized lead-list download.

The Commercial API is not yet live. Subscribing during the pre-sale means:

• you are billed monthly from the date of purchase at the pre-sale rate;
• you receive Pro-level access and Intelligence Desk on the website immediately;
• when the API launches you receive API credentials and keep the pre-sale rate for as long as the subscription stays continuously active;
• you may cancel at any time; charges already made are not refunded.

We will announce the launch date by email. Launch timing is an estimate; if the API has not launched within twelve months of your purchase you may cancel, or keep the pre-sale rate for as long as you stay subscribed; charges already made are not refunded.

The underlying public records belong to the public. Our selection, arrangement, labels, models, estimates, software, and design are ours. You may use what you view for the purpose permitted by your plan; you may not copy the compilation or the models.

The service is provided “as is” and “as available” without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including accuracy, completeness, merchantability, or fitness for a particular purpose.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, consequential, or punitive damages, or for any loss arising from reliance on the records or estimates. Our total liability for any claim is limited to the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim.

We may update these terms. Material changes are announced by email to subscribers and on this page at least 14 days before they take effect. Continuing to use the service after that date means you accept the updated terms.

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Illinois, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules, and any dispute will be brought in the state or federal courts located in Cook County, Illinois.

Questions: support@cookcountyrecords.com or the Contact page. Notices on paper: GroundSignal, 205 West Touhy Avenue, Suite 328, Park Ridge, IL 60068.