Free tool · Birmingham-Hoover
What does a squatter cost you in Alabama?
Change the numbers to match your property. The rent is Alabama's own, from HUD; how long it drags on is your call; everything else is yours to overwrite.
Alabama estimate
$32,218
Your numbers.
These are national starting points, not claims about your property. The one figure that drives the total — how long it drags on — is yours to set. Nobody can source it, so we do not pretend to.
How long before you get it back?
6 months
Your assumption, not ours — courts do not publish how long this takes. A contested removal runs in months, not weeks, almost everywhere; how it goes in Alabama is in the guide.
How many bedrooms?
Sets the rent from HUD’s published Fair Market Rent for Birmingham-Hoover — $1,583/mo.
Mortgage / loan payment — per month
$
Only you know this one. The placeholder is roughly a $300k loan at current rates.
Lost rent or delayed sale — per month
$
HUD's Fair Market Rent for this metro, at the bedroom count you picked. It is the 40th percentile of recent-mover rents, so on a renovated or market-rate property it is a floor, not a valuation.
Attorney fees — one-off
$
No public data exists. Our estimate — nothing published backs it. No state bar and no court in any of these markets publishes fee data for an ejectment. Get a written quote and put it here.
Property taxes — per month
$
Your bill, divided by twelve. The placeholder is roughly a $250k property at Philadelphia's 1.3998% — Newark runs 1.845%, Los Angeles 1.187%.
Insurance — per month
$
No public data exists. Our estimate. Vacant cover genuinely does cost more, but the published figures for how much more disagree by a factor of five — anywhere from +25% to 5x. Use your own premium.
Utilities — per month
$
A national placeholder, unless your state overrides it below — Philadelphia's is the Water Department's own published bill. Whoever is inside, you are the ratepayer of record.
Damage and clean-out — one-off
$
No public data exists. Our estimate, and we want to be blunt: NO government body in the United States publishes squatter-damage data. Every figure you have seen quoted traces to one news story or to a lobby survey that counted houses, not dollars. We are not going to launder a number we cannot stand behind — put yours here.
If it happens in Alabama
$32,218
at 6 months— and every extra month adds $3,953.
Against a $0–$120k range, so the bar means something as you drag.
Carrying it, empty ($3,953/mo × 6 mo)
$23,718
One-off costs (attorney, damage)
$8,500
What ruins you is the carry — the months. On top of this you will pay to file, for the sheriff to serve and remove, and for a lawyer. Those are set locally and we do not print a number we cannot cite — but next to the months, they are a sliver.
Can you get any of it back? NO — and the fee-shifting runs against you. The affidavit route is an administrative removal, not a suit the owner files, so there is no squatter to recover fees from. The only fee-shifting in the statute points the other way: § 4(g) immunizes the officer and agency, and § 4(h) aims the wrongful-removal suit — triple rent plus the other side's attorney — squarely at the affiant. Fifty dollars when it is right; triple rent when it is wrong.
Why Alabama costs what it does
Alabama does not send a squatter case to court at all. Since June 2024, the owner swears an affidavit, hands it to a police agency in the county, the agency checks that the affiant is the record owner, and at least 24 hours later an officer serves a notice to vacate — no judge, no hearing, no writ. The catch is the same gap DeedProof exists in: the statute orders the agency to confirm you are the record owner and never says how, and the only proof of ownership the form asks you to attach is a photo ID. Get it wrong and the person removed can sue you personally for triple the fair market rent plus their attorney's fees.
How you must remove them
summary_plus_affidavit
“Upon receipt of the affidavit, the law enforcement agency shall verify that the affiant is the record owner of the dwelling or the authorized agent of the owner of the dwelling and appears otherwise entitled to relief. Upon verification and after at least 24 hours from receipt of the affidavit, the law enforcement agency shall serve a notice to immediately vacate on the unauthorized individual.”
Same coding as Florida: this is a police-removes-on-affidavit statute, not a courtroom track. The affidavit goes to a law enforcement agency in the county, not to a court; no judge signs, and there is no counter-affidavit procedure of the kind Georgia has. HB 182 § 5(b) also lifts squatters out of the Title 35 eviction chapters entirely. Codified section numbers (Title 35, Ch. 9B) are quoted from the enrolled Act.
The statute
Ala. Code Title 35, Ch. 9B (Squatting), enacted by HB 182 (2024 Reg. Sess.), eff. June 1, 2024
“Occupancy by a squatter is excluded from the application of Chapters 9 and 9A of Title 35 of the Code of Alabama 1975, and the removal of a squatter shall not require the use of an eviction action under those chapters.”
Widely miscited as 'SB 61' — the vehicle was HB 182. Effective date, § 7: 'This act shall become effective on June 1, 2024.'
Rent, by bedroom
1 bed $1,155 · 2 bed $1,266 · 3 bed $1,583 · 4 bed $1,801
FY2026 (eff. 2025-10-01)
Verified verbatim on 2026-07-14 by fetching HUD's own FY2026 FMR Schedule PDF and reading the Birmingham-Hoover row: Efficiency 1024, 1BR 1155, 2BR 1266, 3BR 1583, 4BR 1801. An FMR is the 40th-percentile recent-mover rent — a floor for a renovated flip, not an estimate of its market value.
Do you get your legal fees back?
NO — and the fee-shifting runs against you
“An individual harmed by a wrongful removal under this section may have the possession of the dwelling restored and may recover actual costs and damages incurred, as well as punitive damages of triple the fair market rent of the dwelling, plus court costs and reasonable attorney fees.”
The affidavit route is an administrative removal, not a suit the owner files, so there is no squatter to recover fees from. The only fee-shifting in the statute points the other way: § 4(g) immunizes the officer and agency, and § 4(h) aims the wrongful-removal suit — triple rent plus the other side's attorney — squarely at the affiant. Fifty dollars when it is right; triple rent when it is wrong.
Is there a fast sheriff route?
YES — the cleanest sheriff-affidavit statute in the table: police remove on the owner's sworn affidavit, no court
“The owner of a dwelling or the agent of the owner of a dwelling may request the removal of an unauthorized individual from the dwelling by submitting a sworn affidavit to a law enforcement agency in the county where the dwelling is located”
Unlike Georgia, there is no counter-affidavit that stops the clock — the occupant's only remedy under this Act is a lawsuit AFTER they are out (§ 4(h)). This is the species of law CLAUDE.md flags as existential: affidavit → removal, no judge. Alabama has it, which is why the state is traffic, not a market. The verification gap survives it intact: § 4(d) orders an ownership check and § 4(c) item 10 asks only for a photo ID.
This is the bill for finding out too late.
Nothing on this page will get an occupant out, and be wary of anyone who says otherwise. What DeedProof does is earlier and duller: it verifies you own the property, structures the statement you swear before a notary, and files it — so that if someone does break in, the officer at the door has something to work from instead of a lease they cannot check.
The decision still belongs to the officer. Our job is to make it an easy one.
This page is the money. The law behind it is on Alabama’s guide — whether police can arrest, whether a sheriff can act on your affidavit alone, and how long occupation takes to become a claim. Every answer quoted from the statute.