15-1514.Temporary COVID-19 stay of certain foreclosure proceedings and filings.

Section 15-1514 reaches further back in the foreclosure timeline than the sale-and-possession freeze in Section 15-1513. It covers the same category of property -- residential real estate as defined in Section 15-1219, and real estate with a dwelling structure of six or fewer independently living units where the mortgagor was an individual landlord renting the units, even without personally occupying one.

For those properties, any foreclosure action pending on the effective date of this amendatory Act -- including actions filed on or before March 9, 2020, or commenced within 30 days of that effective date -- was stayed until May 1, 2021. No court could accept any new foreclosure filing before that date. And every deadline tied to a pending foreclosure, including the running of any redemption period, was tolled until May 1, 2021.

The Section closes with a severability clause: if a court of competent jurisdiction, after exhausting all judicial review, found any clause, sentence, paragraph, subsection, or part invalid, that ruling would be confined to the specific part directly involved, leaving the rest of the Section intact.