Free tool · Atlanta / Fulton County
What does a squatter cost you in Georgia?
Change the numbers to match your property. The rent is Georgia's own, from HUD; how long it drags on is your call; everything else is yours to overwrite.
Georgia estimate
$35,812
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Your assumption, not ours — courts do not publish how long this takes.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 Georgia is in the guide.
How many bedrooms?
Sets the rent from HUD’s published Fair Market Rent for Atlanta / Fulton County — $2,182/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 Georgia
$35,812
at 6 months— and every extra month adds $4,552.
Against a $0–$120k range, so the bar means something as you drag.
Carrying it, empty ($4,552/mo × 6 mo)
$27,312
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, in practice. HB 1017 lets the court award fair market rent and 'other monetary relief' — it conspicuously does NOT say attorney's fees. O.C.G.A. § 13-6-11 requires bad faith, specially pleaded, and is discretionary.
Why Georgia costs what it does
Georgia's affidavit route is fast — the officer turns the occupant out once three days have elapsed. But it is defeated by a single piece of paper: if the occupant tenders a counter-affidavit claiming a good-faith right, no turnout happens and the matter drops into the Fulton County magistrate queue, where open cases went from about 7,000 to over 26,000 in a single year.
But note the ordinary dispossessory does NOT cleanly fit. O.C.G.A. § 44-7-50 is framed around a TENANT, and a pure squatter is an intruder, not a tenant at sufferance. Filing a dispossessory invites dismissal. The correct routes are the intruder affidavit (§ 44-11-30) or the criminal squatting provision (§ 16-7-21.1).
The statute
O.C.G.A. § 44-11-30 (intruder affidavit); § 16-7-21.1 (unlawful squatting)
Rent, by bedroom
1 bed $1,660 · 2 bed $1,820 · 3 bed $2,182 · 4 bed $2,605
FY2026 (eff. Oct 1, 2025 – Sep 30, 2026)
All four figures confirmed verbatim against the HUD FY2026 FMR Schedule row for the Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA HUD Metro FMR Area (0BR $1,585 · 1BR $1,660 · 2BR $1,820 · 3BR $2,182 · 4BR $2,605). Note HUD designates Fulton County as a Small Area FMR county, so actual voucher FMRs vary by ZIP within the metro; these are the metro-wide FMR schedule figures.
HB 1017 lets the court award fair market rent and 'other monetary relief' — it conspicuously does NOT say attorney's fees. O.C.G.A. § 13-6-11 requires bad faith, specially pleaded, and is discretionary.
Is there a fast sheriff route?
Only if they don't fight it — a counter-affidavit sends it to a judge
HB 1017 does NOT let a sheriff remove on an owner's affidavit alone. Absent a counter-affidavit the officer turns the occupant out three days after exhibiting the affidavit; a counter-affidavit sends it to magistrate court, where a judge signs the writ. The true sheriff bypass, HB 61, passed the Senate 32–18 on 2026-03-20 and died tabled in the House at Sine Die on 2026-04-02.
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 Georgia’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.