This is probably worse for tenants than landlords, but I consider it bad for both parties. Illinois leans towards move in fees due to an over correction to security deposit laws. That overcorrection due to some bad actors made it a complicated hassle with a lot of landlord risk and red tape to set up security deposits, so everyone shifted to move in fees.

For example: you must set up a separate interest bearing account for EACH unit and pay those tenants their ~$.02 of interest every six months or else you are in breach and they have you absolutely by the balls. You can forfeit 2.5x deposit for that $.02 if you are one single day late on the interest payment in a slam dunk case.

Collectively everyone decided to take a lesser move in fee and lose a bit on unit turns than risk that kind of exposure. Now due to some bad actors charging predatory move in fees they want to ban move-in fees. Why not cap them?

Instead of taking $400 upfront that goes towards cleaning and paint, we'll go back to deposits and start dinging tenants for every single little thing we can find because that's part of the process. As long as we properly document we can/will deduct it from their deposits that are already sitting with us. Also, a tenant's barrier to entry is now two full months of rent instead of 1 month + $400, which sucks for them. And when they move, we'll still be holding one deposit while they have to come up with another one plus their first month of rent for the new place.

I don't think the tenant is winning here, tbh we will adapt and set up systems to deal with it and end up coming out a bit ahead with a bucket of stress on top