How to Evict Squatters in California
Most squatter removals in California run through the courts, not the police. Owners who try law enforcement first usually hear that there isn’t much deputies can do without a court order, and then they’re figuring out what the process looks like.
I’m Andrea Van Soest, licensed real estate agent (California DRE #01505854) and co-founder of SoCal Home Buyers with my husband Doug.
We’ve been buying across Southern California since 2008, and these situations come up enough that the pattern gets familiar, though the process still surprises most owners the first time they go through it.
We buy houses, squatter situations included, so we have a direct interest in sellers going the cash sale route once the occupant is removed.
Squatter, Trespasser, or Holdover Tenant
What the Status Is
The first thing to work out is how long the person has been there and whether there was ever any arrangement between them and the owner, even a verbal one. An occupant who showed up last week is a very different situation from someone who’s been in the property for months and has texts or payment history with anyone connected to the owner.
More than one seller has called me convinced they were dealing with a squatter, then found out the occupant had messages from a family member saying they could stay, or had been handing cash to someone for months without a written agreement. When that history surfaces, the filing has to take a different approach, and it almost always comes out at the worst possible moment in the process.
When There Was a Prior Tenancy
The holdover situation comes up a lot too, where there was once a lease that fell apart over unpaid rent or just expired. I’ve had sellers reach out thinking they had a squatter situation on their hands when what they actually had was a holdover tenant, and the two processes go in different directions starting at the notice stage.
The tenant-occupied sale guide covers how the sale side of that plays out, including what buyers will and won’t accept when there’s an occupant still in the property.
What Rights Squatters Have in California
Most owners I talk to want to change the locks and be done with it. Under California law, that’s an illegal lockout even when the person inside had no legal right to be there, and I’ve watched that catch people completely off guard on the first conversation.
Owners who’ve tried cutting utilities or moving belongings out without a court order have handed the occupant a separate legal claim on top of the original situation. I’ve seen that happen, and it makes an already slow process considerably harder to close out.
When the Police Can and Can’t Help
When Law Enforcement Can Move Fast
I’ve seen cases clear fast through law enforcement, and they share the same setup: the occupation was recent, and the owner showed up in person with documentation ready. When neither of those is in place, deputies have a lot less to work with than most owners expect on that first call.
When the Courts Are the Only Path
Once someone has been living in a property long enough to look established, deputies will tell the owner to go through the courts. That call tends to stick, and the formal eviction process is usually what comes next from there.
We advised a seller in a situation like this to have someone physically at the property the next time law enforcement came out, with documentation showing ownership and an active purchase contract, and that third call resolved in a way the first two hadn’t.
The Formal Eviction Process
Which Notice Applies
For a true squatter who never had any arrangement with the owner, a 3-Day Notice to Quit goes out first. If the occupant can show any form of informal tenancy, even cash payments to a family member or a verbal agreement that was never committed to paper, the required notice period runs longer and the filing has to account for that.
In those informal-arrangement situations, the notice period can run 30 or 60 days depending on how long the occupancy has been going on, and getting the notice type wrong means starting the clock over. I’d have an attorney confirm which notice applies before anything goes out, since I’ve seen the wrong choice at that step push the entire process back by months.
Serving the Notice
I had one seller try to serve the 3-Day Notice to Quit informally and skip some of the required language, and the court threw it out and required them to start over, which pushed the timeline back by weeks. California’s service requirements are specific enough that dropping the notice under the door or in the mailbox gives the occupant grounds to challenge the entire filing.
Most sellers who use a process server avoid the documentation problems that come with handling service themselves. I’ve had clients do both, and the process server fee is a lot easier to absorb than a dismissed case that resets the timeline.
Filing and the Hearing
Once the notice period passes and the squatter hasn’t left, the owner files the unlawful detainer complaint at the Superior Court. The squatter then has five business days to respond in writing, which is a much shorter window than a standard civil case gives them.
Squatters who file a response get a trial date, usually within 20 days, where a judge hears both sides. The ones who don’t respond leave the owner free to request a default judgment without going through the hearing at all.
Most of the contested hearings I’ve seen wrap up quickly when the notice and service were handled correctly. An occupant’s defenses come down to challenging how the notice was served or whether the required language was there, and when those steps were done right the first time, I’ve rarely seen them get very far.
What It Costs
Superior Court filing fees for an unlawful detainer run around $240 to $450 depending on the county, and a process server adds $75 to $150 before any attorney fees come into it.
A contested UD with an attorney runs $1,500 to $3,000 in most cases I’ve seen, though complicated situations go considerably higher. Every additional week the process takes is another week of carrying costs running on the property, and those add up faster than most owners are tracking.
How Long It Takes
On cases I’ve watched where the occupants didn’t contest anything and the notice went out correctly the first time, the process ran about four to six weeks from start to lockout.
Contested cases can run three to four months, and that’s before accounting for any time lost to notice problems earlier in the process.
After the Judgment
The Sheriff Lockout
The unlawful detainer judgment is the main milestone, but the owner still has to go back to the court for a Writ of Possession and take that to the sheriff’s department before anything actually happens at the property.
The sheriff serves a 5-day Notice to Vacate on whoever is still inside, and some occupants leave voluntarily in that window without any further action needed. If they don’t, the sheriff returns on the scheduled lockout date and removes them from the property.
Any lockout action before the sheriff’s scheduled date, including changing the locks or moving belongings out, still counts as self-help eviction and gives the occupant grounds for a new claim. Owners who move on the property before that date typically end up facing a second legal situation on top of the one they’re already in the middle of.
Property Left Behind
I’ve had owners reach out after the sheriff’s lockout ready to clear the property, and discovered they had one more step to deal with. Under California Civil Code §§ 1980-1991, the owner has to store the items the former occupant left behind and give written notice with a window to retrieve them.
The required storage period depends on the nature of the prior occupancy and what the notice specifies. I’d confirm the right approach with an attorney before disposing of anything, and that’s true whether the occupancy was a clear squatter situation or something that blurred into a tenant-like arrangement.
When Someone Claims Tenant Protections
Who It Applies To
AB 1482 comes up more often than owners expect in squatter situations, usually once the occupant figures out they have more leverage than a simple trespasser would have. An occupant who can show any informal arrangement or a payment history with someone connected to the property may try to argue they qualify as a protected tenant under California’s just-cause eviction law.
I’ve seen this come up most on inherited properties in Los Angeles and Orange County, where the original owner had informal arrangements in place that the heir had no idea about. Most single-family homes owned by an individual qualify for an AB 1482 exemption, and the ones that don’t, primarily multi-family and LLC-owned properties, are where I’ve seen these claims move somewhere.
What It Does to the Filing
If the occupant raises an AB 1482 claim and the property isn’t clearly exempt, the filing has to reflect just-cause grounds rather than a straight squatter removal. The wrong basis at the filing stage means starting over with the correct notice, and I’ve seen that push a case back by months at a stretch.
Can They Take Ownership?
Almost every seller who calls me about a squatter situation asks at some point whether the person inside could end up owning the property. In all the deals we’ve worked in Riverside and San Bernardino counties and across the rest of Southern California since 2008, it hasn’t happened on a residential property we’ve been involved with.
The legal route they’d have to use is adverse possession under CCP § 325, and it requires five continuous years of open, documented occupation plus property tax payments the entire time. None of the occupants in these situations have ever been paying property taxes on the house, and without that, the five-year threshold isn’t something I’ve ever seen come close to being relevant.
Cash for Keys
On a few deals I’ve worked, the owner skipped the formal eviction entirely and paid the occupants a small amount to leave voluntarily. The occupants were gone in days and the seller avoided the whole court process.
Some of those sellers came out ahead on the math when carrying costs and attorney fees got factored in. For owners thinking about this approach, the calculation comes down to how cooperative the occupants seem and what a two or three month eviction would cost in their specific situation.
The AB 1110 Disclosure
AB 1110 is something I bring up on every cash-for-keys conversation where the occupant might have any basis to claim a form of tenancy. The owner has to provide written notice of the occupant’s right to consult an attorney before they sign, and the occupant gets 25 days from that notice before the agreement becomes binding.
On situations where any informal arrangement existed before the squatter status, I’d have an attorney review the buyout paperwork before it goes out. The occupant can void an agreement that went out without the required disclosure, even after signing.
What Happened on Coulston Street in Loma Linda
In August 2015 we closed on a property on Coulston Street in Loma Linda for $30,000. The seller had been dealing with unauthorized occupants for weeks before reaching out to us.
The seller had called the sheriff’s department twice before we got involved, and the deputies couldn’t do much more than tell the occupants to leave, since no one was on-site to make the situation concrete for them.
We advised the seller to have someone physically at the property the next time law enforcement came out, with documentation showing ownership and an active purchase contract. The deputies cleared the occupants on that third call, once someone was there on-site with the full documentation in hand.
We closed about a week after the occupants left.
Vacant Properties and Squatter Risk
Most of the squatter situations I get calls about involve properties that have been sitting empty with no one checking in. An unmonitored property lets people establish enough of a presence that it becomes quite hard to undo once it’s set.
The ones that didn’t attract occupants usually had someone checking in regularly and the owner had changed the locks after any prior vacancy. The vacant property sale guide covers managing that exposure, including what a regular check-in situation tends to look like in practice.
When Selling Is the Better Move
I’ve had owners come out of a formal eviction process having spent more in attorney fees and carrying costs than their situation called for, and by the time it finished they weren’t sure the math had worked in their favor.
We buy properties with squatters still in them, and we take on the removal after closing. The offer price accounts for that work.
For owners weighing whether to sell before clearing, we went into how that works at selling with squatters still in place, including what buyers will and won’t accept in that situation.
Owners who want to clear first and then list will find what that typically looks like at selling as-is in California, including what buyers tend to ask about once an occupancy situation is in the history.
Getting a Number
We’re cash buyers with over 400 transactions since 2008, from San Diego County deals to Riverside and San Bernardino markets and everywhere in between.
I’ve listed properties that came through occupancy situations and I know what those look like on the market once the removal is done. Our offers account for the as-is condition and whatever the circumstances are around the occupancy.
If you want to know what your property would net in a cash sale, call us at (951) 331-3844 or request an offer through our website and we can have a number in front of you within 24 hours.
Andrea Van Soest is a licensed real estate agent (California DRE #01505854) and co-founder of SoCal Home Buyers with her husband Doug Van Soest. Together they have closed over 400 transactions across Southern California since 2008.
