Free tool · New York City
What does a squatter cost you in New York?
Change the numbers to match your property. The rent is New York's own, from HUD; how long it drags on is your call; everything else is yours to overwrite.
New York estimate
$44,584
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Your assumption, not ours — courts do not publish how long this takes.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 New York is in the guide.
How many bedrooms?
Sets the rent from HUD’s published Fair Market Rent for New York City — $3,644/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 New York
$44,584
at 6 months— and every extra month adds $6,014.
Against a $0–$120k range, so the bar means something as you drag.
Carrying it, empty ($6,014/mo × 6 mo)
$36,084
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 asymmetry is brutal. RPL § 234 only triggers where a LEASE provides for fees, and it runs to the tenant. A squatter has no lease and, since 2024, is expressly not a tenant. Meanwhile under NYC's right to counsel the occupant may get a lawyer for free while you pay full freight and recover nothing.
Why New York costs what it does
On paper New York has the cheapest filing fee in the country and an express squatter provision. In practice it is the slowest jurisdiction we looked at, by a wide margin. The 2024 amendment declaring that a squatter is not a tenant was purely definitional — it created no fast track, no police path, and no affidavit remedy.
What the total doesn’t show you
Real, sourced, and deliberately not in the number above — none of them has a published amount, and we would rather name a cost than invent it.
You pay the movers and the bonded warehouse
The Marshals Handbook is explicit: 'the cost of removal of the tenant's property and its delivery to a bonded warehouse must be borne by the landlord.' The marshal must hire a mover licensed by NYSDOT and store the goods in a warehouse licensed by DCWP.
The only way out is to elect a 'legal possession' instead — the occupant leaves and their property STAYS, and you sign a hold-harmless making yourself bailee of a stranger's possessions inside your own building. That is the real New York fork, and neither side of it is free. No city body publishes what the movers and the warehouse charge, so we do not guess.
Fourteen days of dead time after you win
The marshal must give 14 days' written notice before executing the warrant, on a business day between sunrise and sunset — and the court may still 'stay or vacate such warrant for good cause shown' during it.
Sealing the building does not stop the water bill
The NYC Water Board's rate schedule says a premises pays the minimum frontage charge 'if the premises is vacant and sealed' — $211.86/yr on a narrow rowhouse, rising to $741.65/yr, plus $52.95 per storey above the first.
Boarding the place up after a break-in is the obvious move, and the city bills you for the privilege. Sewer runs a further 159% of the water charge.
The 30-day rule was never actually repealed
The 2024 amendment removed squatters from RPAPL § 711's definition of 'tenant' — but NYC Admin Code § 26-521 was left untouched, and still makes it unlawful to evict an occupant who has 'lawfully occupied' a unit for 30 consecutive days without a warrant. Doing it anyway is a class A misdemeanour, $1,000–$10,000 in civil penalties, plus up to $100/day for failing to restore them.
The word 'lawfully' is arguably an out for a true squatter. An officer standing at the door at 2am is not going to adjudicate that word — which is exactly the uncertainty this company exists to remove.
“He or the person to whom he has succeeded has intruded into or squatted upon the property without the permission of the person entitled to possession”
The statute
RPAPL § 713(3) — 10-day notice, then a special proceeding in Housing Court
Rent, by bedroom
1 bed $2,655 · 2 bed $2,910 · 3 bed $3,644 · 4 bed $3,959
HUD's New York area is wider than the five boroughs — it sweeps in Putnam, Rockland and Westchester. Treat it as the metro, not as your block.
RPL § 234 only triggers where a LEASE provides for fees, and it runs to the tenant. A squatter has no lease and, since 2024, is expressly not a tenant. Meanwhile under NYC's right to counsel the occupant may get a lawyer for free while you pay full freight and recover nothing.
Is there a fast sheriff route?
No. S2366 would add squatting to criminal trespass — still in committee.
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 New York’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.