Free tool · Charlotte
What does a squatter cost you in North Carolina?
Change the numbers to match your property. The rent is North Carolina's own, from HUD; how long it drags on is your call; everything else is yours to overwrite.
North Carolina estimate
$35,176
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Your assumption, not ours — courts do not publish how long this takes.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 North Carolina is in the guide.
How many bedrooms?
Sets the rent from HUD’s published Fair Market Rent for Charlotte — $2,076/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 North Carolina
$35,176
at 6 months— and every extra month adds $4,446.
Against a $0–$120k range, so the bar means something as you drag.
Carrying it, empty ($4,446/mo × 6 mo)
$26,676
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 — no note, no contract, no fee-shifting statute reaches a squatter, so you eat your own attorney's fees. North Carolina follows the American rule: attorney's fees are recoverable only where a statute authorizes them. § 6-21.2 authorizes them only on a 'note, conditional sale contract or other evidence of indebtedness' — which a squatter, who has no contract with you, is not. Article 22D (the 2025 expedited-removal Act) sets no attorney's-fee recovery for a prevailing owner; its only fee/damages provision, § 14-159.56(a), runs the other way and caps the removed person's recovery. Marked secondary because it rests on the Act's silence plus the general rule rather than a fetched case on point; not attorney-reviewed.
Why North Carolina costs what it does
The ordinary fast eviction is written for tenants, and a true squatter never was one, so that track does not fit. But since December 1, 2025 North Carolina has a dedicated fast track for exactly this: you file an expedited-removal complaint, the sheriff serves it within 24 hours, a magistrate hears it within 48 hours of service, and if you win the occupant gets at most four hours to leave. A magistrate signs that order — not a sheriff acting on your affidavit, and not you. The catch is the one this tool exists to name: the statute has you swear that you own the building and tells no one at the courthouse how to check it.
How you must remove them
summary
“A hearing on the expedited removal shall be held before a magistrate in the county where the property is located as soon as practicable, but no more than 48 hours after such service.”
The ordinary summary-ejectment track (§ 42-26) is written for tenants and does not reach a squatter, but since 2025-12-01 North Carolina has a dedicated fast magistrate track for 'unauthorized persons' — that is the summary route this entry names. It is a court process (a magistrate signs), not a sheriff-on-affidavit bypass; the sheriff-bypass version in H.B. 96's first edition was rewritten out before passage.
The statute
N.C. Gen. Stat. §§ 14-159.50 to 14-159.56 (Article 22D, expedited removal of unauthorized persons), enacted by S.L. 2025-88 (S.B. 55), eff. 2025-12-01
Quoted/cited from the enrolled session law on the General Assembly's own server, read 2026-07-14. The Act's title still says 'BY A LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCY' — a leftover from an earlier draft; the enacted mechanism is a magistrate's order. Not attorney-reviewed.
Rent, by bedroom
1 bed $1,538 · 2 bed $1,686 · 3 bed $2,076 · 4 bed $2,637
FY2026, effective 2025-10-01
Verified verbatim against HUD's FY2026 schedule PDF: the row 'Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia, NC-SC HMFA' reads 1469 (efficiency) 1538 (1BR) 1686 (2BR) 2076 (3BR) 2637 (4BR). The HMFA spans five counties — Cabarrus, Gaston, Mecklenburg and Union in NC plus York in SC — so the same figures apply across the SC portion. An FMR is the 40th-percentile recent-mover rent: a floor for a renovated flip, not a market estimate.
Do you get your legal fees back?
NO — no note, no contract, no fee-shifting statute reaches a squatter, so you eat your own attorney's fees
“Obligations to pay attorneys' fees upon any note, conditional sale contract or other evidence of indebtedness, in addition to the legal rate of interest or finance charges specified therein, shall be valid and enforceable”
North Carolina follows the American rule: attorney's fees are recoverable only where a statute authorizes them. § 6-21.2 authorizes them only on a 'note, conditional sale contract or other evidence of indebtedness' — which a squatter, who has no contract with you, is not. Article 22D (the 2025 expedited-removal Act) sets no attorney's-fee recovery for a prevailing owner; its only fee/damages provision, § 14-159.56(a), runs the other way and caps the removed person's recovery. Marked secondary because it rests on the Act's silence plus the general rule rather than a fetched case on point; not attorney-reviewed.
Is there a fast sheriff route?
No. The enacted law routes removal through a magistrate; the affidavit-to-police bypass in H.B. 96's first edition (proposed § 42-82) was rewritten out before the bill passed.
“A hearing on the expedited removal shall be held before a magistrate in the county where the property is located as soon as practicable, but no more than 48 hours after such service.”
North Carolina came within one draft of the opposite answer. H.B. 96's First Edition (filed 2025-02-12) proposed § 42-82, under which the law enforcement agency 'shall remove' the occupant within 24 hours of the owner's affidavit — no hearing, no judge. That text never became law; the enacted Article 22D puts a magistrate between the owner and the door.
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 North Carolina’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.