Free tool · Louisville
What does a squatter cost you in Kentucky?
Change the numbers to match your property. The rent is Kentucky's own, from HUD; how long it drags on is your call; everything else is yours to overwrite.
Kentucky estimate
$32,470
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Your assumption, not ours — courts do not publish how long this takes.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 Kentucky is in the guide.
How many bedrooms?
Sets the rent from HUD’s published Fair Market Rent for Louisville — $1,625/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 Kentucky
$32,470
at 6 months— and every extra month adds $3,995.
Against a $0–$120k range, so the bar means something as you drag.
Carrying it, empty ($3,995/mo × 6 mo)
$23,970
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 — Kentucky's fast-removal statute provides no recovery of the owner's own attorney's fees, and the only fee-shifting it contains runs AGAINST the owner: an occupant who proves a wrongful removal recovers court costs and reasonable attorney's fees from the owner (KRS 383.290(6)). No statute in the removal or forcible-entry-and-detainer track awards the prevailing owner their fees.. The fee-shifting quoted here favors the plaintiff in a wrongful-removal suit — i.e., the person the owner put out, suing the owner. It is not an owner-side recovery. We found no provision awarding the owner their own attorney's fees in either the KRS 383.290 removal procedure or the KRS 383.200–.245 forcible entry and detainer action.
Why Kentucky costs what it does
Kentucky took the court out of it. Since June 2025 an owner can hand a sworn petition to a police officer, sheriff or constable, and the officer serves a notice to vacate and puts the owner back in possession — no judge, no hearing. The statute says the officer acts "without unnecessary delay" and sets no outer limit on that phrase. But that fast route is switched off against anyone who was ever a tenant or ever had any agreement to be there, so a person waving a lease can force the owner onto Kentucky's ordinary eviction track: a forcible entry and detainer complaint in District Court, at least three days' notice, a trial, and a warrant of restitution if the owner wins.
How you must remove them
summary_plus_affidavit
“If the identity of the petitioner is verified, the law enforcement officer shall, without unnecessary delay, serve a notice to immediately vacate the property on all the unlawful occupants and shall put the owner in possession of the real property.”
Kentucky offers BOTH tracks. Fast lane: since 2025-06-27 KRS 383.290 lets an owner hand a sworn petition to a police officer, sheriff or constable who serves a notice to vacate and restores possession with no judge and no hearing. But KRS 383.290(9) switches that route off against anyone who is or ever was a tenant or ever had an agreement to occupy — the forged-lease target — leaving the ordinary summary forcible entry and detainer action in District Court (KRS 383.200–.245).
The statute
KRS 383.290 (2025 Ky. Acts ch. 63 [HB 10], eff. 2025-06-27) — sworn-petition police removal; KRS 383.200–383.245 — forcible entry and detainer
“A property owner or his or her authorized agent may request a law enforcement officer to immediately remove a person or persons unlawfully occupying real property pursuant to this section”
Enrolled text of 2025 Ky. Acts ch. 63 (HB 10) and the codified section were both fetched and read in full from the Kentucky Legislative Research Commission's server on 2026-07-14.
Rent, by bedroom
1 bed $1,047 · 2 bed $1,272 · 3 bed $1,625 · 4 bed $1,891
FY2026, effective 2025-10-01
All four figures are HUD's FY2026 metro-wide FMRs for the Louisville/Jefferson County, KY-IN HUD Metro FMR Area (CBSA 31140), which spans Bullitt, Henry, Jefferson, Oldham and Spencer counties in KY plus the IN portion: 1BR $1,047, 2BR $1,272, 3BR $1,625, 4BR $1,891. Louisville is also a Small Area FMR metro, so the operative voucher standard is ZIP-level and ranges well above and below these metro-wide numbers; a fresh flip should treat the metro FMR as a floor. Do not confuse these with the higher unlabeled county figures ($1,077/$1,301/$1,701/$1,955) some aggregators show — those are a different area/year definition.
Do you get your legal fees back?
NO — Kentucky's fast-removal statute provides no recovery of the owner's own attorney's fees, and the only fee-shifting it contains runs AGAINST the owner: an occupant who proves a wrongful removal recovers court costs and reasonable attorney's fees from the owner (KRS 383.290(6)). No statute in the removal or forcible-entry-and-detainer track awards the prevailing owner their fees.
“A prevailing plaintiff shall be entitled to an award of court costs and reasonable attorney's fees in addition to other appropriate relief.”
The fee-shifting quoted here favors the plaintiff in a wrongful-removal suit — i.e., the person the owner put out, suing the owner. It is not an owner-side recovery. We found no provision awarding the owner their own attorney's fees in either the KRS 383.290 removal procedure or the KRS 383.200–.245 forcible entry and detainer action.
Is there a fast sheriff route?
YES — since 27 June 2025 an owner hands a sworn petition to a police officer, sheriff or constable, who serves a notice to immediately vacate and puts the owner back in possession. No judge, no hearing, and no counter-affidavit mechanism — the occupant's only remedy is to sue afterward. The officer verifies the petitioner's IDENTITY by photo ID; nothing in the procedure checks that the petitioner owns the building.
“Upon receipt of a petition in accordance with subsection (3) of this section, the law enforcement officer shall verify the identity of the petitioner. The petitioner's identity may be verified by presentation of a government-issued photo identification.”
The fast lane is defeated by KRS 383.290(9): it 'shall not be enforced against' a current or former tenant or anyone who ever had an agreement to occupy — the sentence a forged lease is aimed at. The statute names nobody to decide, on the doorstep, whether the person holding out a lease qualifies.
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 Kentucky’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.