Society of Certified Senior Advisors: Can a Squatter Take Over My Home?

This year, several states introduced much-needed updates to the laws governing squatting.

This spring, the media spotlight illuminated an obscure corner of state legal code: squatters’ rights. Legally, to squat means to move into a vacant property that doesn’t belong to you. Depending on each state, squatters may or may not have certain rights protecting them from eviction and even granting them ownership of a property after years of occupancy.

Several outrageous instances of squatting ramped up concern and anxiety among home and property owners. In more than one case, AirBnB guests refused to leave when their weekend was up, invoking squatters’ rights. At least one AirBnB squatter then started renting out the basement of the house on AirBnB himself. Another woman found squatters occupying her childhood home. When she changed the locks, the squatters had her arrested.

A Very Brief History of Squatting

The seeds of U.S. squatting laws were planted by settlers who moved into the Midwest and West in the early nineteenth century. They lobbied Congress for, and won, preemption laws that gave them the right to own the land they occupied before speculators could snap it up.

Modern squatters’ rights laws were put in place to discourage property owners from resorting to vigilante justice when trying to evict people.

To top it off, a TikTok influencer, Venezuelan citizen Leonardo Moreno, started trending for posting videos encouraging other migrants in the U.S. to take advantage of squatters’ rights laws. Moreno has since been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

As a result of the increased media attention on squatting this year, at least ten state legislatures have introduced or passed new laws to shore up property owners’ rights and close long-standing loopholes around squatting.

All 50 states have some sort of legal code related to adverse possession, “in which someone who has used property belonging to another for a particularly long time, in a manner that suggests that he or she was the owner, can be granted legal ownership by a court.” For squatters, that “long time” depends on the state: as little as five years in California and Montana, or as many as thirty years in New Jersey and Louisiana.

Whether or not squatting is actually on the rise is a matter of debate. While some city governments including Los Angeles say they have seen an increase, there’s no evidence of a national surge in squatting, nor of a trend of undocumented immigrants invoking squatters’ rights. In general, squatters aren’t violent.

But the renewed attention on these laws has revealed that many of them are antiquated. And there’s no question that for property owners, the consequences of dealing with squatters can be devastating–emotionally and financially.

“Some people will make the argument that this is a very rare occurrence. But I think if it happens once or twice, it’s unacceptable,” said New York state senator Jessica Scarcella-Spanton. She introduced a bill in the state to make it easier for landlords to evict squatters. “I think that just seeing the cases that we’ve seen over the last couple of months in the news is reason enough to move forward with legislation.”

Take 81-year-old Jean, for example. An Idaho resident, she inherited a property in Los Angeles, and squatters moved in. She told CBS News that about twenty people in a dozen RVs occupied the land and refused to move out. Jean spent her savings of $100,000 on property taxes and legal fees trying to evict them, to no avail. When she finally found a buyer for the property, she had to drop her asking price by $800,000.

This year, Florida and West Virginia have passed laws criminalizing squatting. Florida and Georgia also introduced new provisions for removing squatters from homes. Similar laws have been introduced or passed in Alabama, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, among other states.

So, can a squatter take over your home?

If you’re living in your home, there’s no reason to stress. In no state can someone get away with moving into your home while you live in it without your permission–that’s just home invasion. Now, if you gave someone permission to move in as a roommate or caregiver and they refuse to leave, they may have gained tenants’ rights that could make the eviction process a major headache; but that’s a different story than squatting.

Property that sits vacant most of the time is more appealing to squatters. If you own vacant property, you might want to take steps to occupy or protect it. The best defense against squatters is to keep them out in the first place. Here are steps to consider to help prevent squatting:

Keep an eye on your property’s public records by calling your property appraiser or signing up for a monitoring service. In Broward County, Florida, for example, residents can sign up for a new tool called Owner Alert to find out if any claims of ownership have been made on their property.
Consider leveling up your security with cameras, fences, and alarm systems.
If you don’t live at the property, attempt to make it look like someone’s living there, and stop by regularly to monitor any activity.
Knowledge is power. Understand the squatting laws in your state, and keep up to date on any changes.
Take legal action quickly if you know or suspect someone is squatting on your property. Where squatters’ rights laws are still in place, the length of occupancy is a key factor for establishing ownership.

In the end, legally, squatters are at a disadvantage against property owners in every state. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t capable of making a big, expensive mess.