The Village of Deerfield, a Lake County community on Chicago's North Shore, requires a contractor to file a $20,000 surety bond, payable to the Village, with the Community Development Department before it will issue a building permit. Ours is $100 flat — the price you see is the checkout price. The bond issues the moment you pay — a soft credit pull at most, never a hard inquiry.
















A Deerfield contractor license bond is about the simplest filing in surety. Here's the entire process:
Business details and an effective date. That's the application — no financials, and a soft pull at most.
Registration bonds like this are among the thousands of bond types that issue right after purchase. At most, 1–2 business days.
Your executed bond and power of attorney arrive by email, ready to file with Deerfield Community Development alongside your permit application. Wet-ink original mailed on request.
Deerfield is one of the many Illinois municipalities that does not rely on a statewide contractor license — Illinois does not license general contractors at the state level — and instead conditions its own building-permit process on a general contractor first posting a $20,000 surety bond with the Village. Deerfield separately bonds several trades at a lower $5,000 amount, so a general contractor's filing is distinct from a trade-specific one.
It's a three-party arrangement: you (the principal), the surety carrier, and the Village of Deerfield (the obligee), with property owners and the Village itself as the protected parties. If a bonded contractor's work causes damage the licensing requirement is meant to guard against, a harmed party can recover against the bond up to the $20,000 penal sum.
It is not insurance for you — if the surety pays a claim, you repay the surety. The carrier's own filing for this bond shows a term that runs one year from the effective date you choose at application, so a 1, 2, or 3-year term simply stacks that many renewal cycles back to back.
These are the actual issuing fields — a soft pull at most, never a hard inquiry.
Start the application →$100 flat, soft pull only, bond often issued in the same sitting. Free until issued.