Free tool · St. Louis
What does a squatter cost you in Missouri?
Change the numbers to match your property. The rent is Missouri's own, from HUD; how long it drags on is your call; everything else is yours to overwrite.
Missouri estimate
$32,128
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Your assumption, not ours — courts do not publish how long this takes.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 Missouri is in the guide.
How many bedrooms?
Sets the rent from HUD’s published Fair Market Rent for St. Louis — $1,568/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 Missouri
$32,128
at 6 months— and every extra month adds $3,938.
Against a $0–$120k range, so the bar means something as you drag.
Carrying it, empty ($3,938/mo × 6 mo)
$23,628
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 — the court can order the occupant to pay repair, service, and court costs, but attorney's fees are not on the list. Confirmed on the Revisor's server that subsection 7 contains no attorney-fee authorization. Each item is a discretionary 'may', and they attach only to the post-hearing order to permanently exclude, not to the first ex parte order. Collecting any of it from a squatter is a separate practical problem.
Why Missouri costs what it does
Missouri added a fast statutory removal in 2024: the owner files a sworn (verified) petition and a judge can sign an ex parte removal order the same day, with a hearing held within 48 hours, after which the county sheriff turns the occupant out. But it only reaches a home that has not been rented in the last three months, occupied by someone who was never your tenant and is not a relative. Anyone outside those conditions drops back to the ordinary unlawful-detainer track in the same chapter, which is slower.
“Notwithstanding any provision of this chapter to the contrary, a property owner or his or her authorized agent may seek relief for the removal of a person or persons unlawfully occupying property containing a residential dwelling under this section by filing a verified petition in the county or city not within a county where the property is located.”
This is a fast statutory removal track that expressly reaches unlawful occupants — but a judge signs the ex parte order (§ 534.602.5(1)), so it is not a sheriff-removes-on-affidavit statute. It also does not reach a home rented in the last three months, a former tenant, or a relative (§ 534.602.5(1)(g)–(h)); those fall back to ordinary unlawful detainer.
The statute
RSMo § 534.602 — removal of persons unlawfully occupying a residential dwelling (H.B. 2062, eff. 2024-08-28)
Read alongside the definition of 'unlawful occupant' at § 534.602.1(3) and the fallback unlawful-detainer action at § 534.030. HB 2099 (2026) would widen the statute but leaves the judge in the loop; it passed the House 136-1 and stalled in a Senate committee. Pending attorney review.
Rent, by bedroom
1 bed $995 · 2 bed $1,218 · 3 bed $1,568 · 4 bed $1,812
FY2026, effective 2025-10-01
Verified verbatim: the FMR feature returns 1BR $995, 2BR $1,218, 3BR $1,568, 4BR $1,812 (0BR $955) for the St. Louis, MO-IL HUD Metro FMR Area. Kansas City is a separate FMR area with its own schedule; these figures are St. Louis only.
Do you get your legal fees back?
NO — the court can order the occupant to pay repair, service, and court costs, but attorney's fees are not on the list
“(6) Order the respondent to pay all costs of repair to the petitioner's premises or dwelling unit relating to damages caused by the respondent; (7) Order the respondent to pay all costs associated with service of any ex parte order authorized against the respondent; or (8) Order the respondent to pay court costs.”
Confirmed on the Revisor's server that subsection 7 contains no attorney-fee authorization. Each item is a discretionary 'may', and they attach only to the post-hearing order to permanently exclude, not to the first ex parte order. Collecting any of it from a squatter is a separate practical problem.
Is there a fast sheriff route?
No — a judge signs the ex parte order first; the sheriff only enforces once the court has granted it
“Upon the filing of a verified petition under this section, and for good cause shown in the verified petition, the court shall immediately issue an ex parte order to remove the respondent.”
Missouri comes close to the affidavit bypass — the petition is sworn and the order issues ex parte, without the occupant heard — but a judicial officer signs it, and § 534.602.5(2) requires that same court to dismiss where the petitioner 'is not authorized to seek relief.' The ownership-verification gap is intact: the statute makes the owner's own assertion the 'good cause' and names nobody to check it.
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 Missouri’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.