Free tool · Des Moines
What does a squatter cost you in Iowa?
Change the numbers to match your property. The rent is Iowa's own, from HUD; how long it drags on is your call; everything else is yours to overwrite.
Iowa estimate
$33,484
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Your assumption, not ours — courts do not publish how long this takes.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 Iowa is in the guide.
How many bedrooms?
Sets the rent from HUD’s published Fair Market Rent for Des Moines — $1,794/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 Iowa
$33,484
at 6 months— and every extra month adds $4,164.
Against a $0–$120k range, so the bar means something as you drag.
Carrying it, empty ($4,164/mo × 6 mo)
$24,984
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 — Iowa's forcible-entry chapter lets the winner collect court costs, but nothing in it shifts attorney fees; you pay your own lawyer.. 'Costs as in ordinary cases' means filing and service costs, not attorney fees. The only attorney-fee shifting in the related statutes is § 562A.26, which runs an ousted tenant's claim against a landlord — not an owner's action against a squatter. Chapter 648 contains no fee-shifting provision reaching the squatter.
Why Iowa costs what it does
Iowa gives an owner a fast court case called forcible entry and detainer: you file, the court sets a hearing within about eight days, and the fast-track ground expressly covers a person who got in by force or stealth, so you do not have to prove they were ever a tenant. If you win, the court orders them out and an officer removes them three days later — but a judge signs first; nobody is put out of an Iowa house on your sworn word alone. Watch two traps: if you knew someone was inside and let thirty days pass, the fast track closes and you fall into an ordinary lawsuit that runs months, and a disputed lease turns the eight-day hearing into a full evidentiary one with no statutory deadline.
How you must remove them
summary
“Where the defendant has by force, intimidation, fraud, or stealth entered upon the prior actual possession of another in real property, and detains the same.”
Iowa's summary forcible-entry-and-detainer track expressly reaches the force-or-stealth entrant without any tenancy — but a judge signs the judgment and an officer executes it (§ 648.22); this is a fast court case, not a court-free removal. Two carve-outs on the 'fast' label: § 648.18 bars the summary remedy after thirty days of peaceable possession with the owner's knowledge, dropping the owner into an ordinary action (§ 646.2), and a contested lease converts the eight-day hearing into a full evidentiary one (§ 648.5(7)).
The statute
Iowa Code ch. 648 (forcible entry and detainer), § 648.1(1)
Year-versioned URL (/2026/), not /latest/. The removal mechanics are in § 648.22 (judgment and three-day execution), the eight-day hearing in § 648.5, and the thirty-day bar in § 648.18. Not attorney-reviewed.
Rent, by bedroom
1 bed $1,109 · 2 bed $1,318 · 3 bed $1,794 · 4 bed $1,841
FY2026, effective 2025-10-01
All four figures are HUD's published FY2026 FMR for the Des Moines-West Des Moines HMFA (1BR $1,109 · 2BR $1,318 · 3BR $1,794 · 4BR $1,841). A separate row for 'Des Moines County, IA' (810/1063/1369/1426) is a different, smaller nonmetro area and is not used.
Do you get your legal fees back?
NO — Iowa's forcible-entry chapter lets the winner collect court costs, but nothing in it shifts attorney fees; you pay your own lawyer.
“an execution for the defendant's removal within three days from the judgment shall issue accordingly, to which shall be added a clause commanding the officer to collect the costs as in ordinary cases.”
'Costs as in ordinary cases' means filing and service costs, not attorney fees. The only attorney-fee shifting in the related statutes is § 562A.26, which runs an ousted tenant's claim against a landlord — not an owner's action against a squatter. Chapter 648 contains no fee-shifting provision reaching the squatter.
Is there a fast sheriff route?
No — a judge signs. HF 981 (2025) proposed § 648.24 to let police or the sheriff remove an occupant on the owner's complaint with no court; the committee struck that section, and its successor HF 2629 — passed the House 89-2 on 2026-03-12 — creates a criminal 'squatting' grade, not a removal power. Not law.
“If the defendant is found guilty, judgment shall be entered that the defendant be removed from the premises, and that the plaintiff be put in possession of the premises, and an execution for the defendant's removal within three days from the judgment shall issue accordingly”
Removal in ch. 648 runs only on a judgment; no chapter provision lets a sheriff or officer remove on the owner's sworn word. HF 2629 sits in Senate Judiciary with no floor action of record as of 2026-07-14. A future Iowa bill could restore a removal-on-complaint route, which would change this answer.
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 Iowa’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.