Sell Your House Fast During Squatters

A squatter, under Florida Statute 82.036, is someone who entered your property without permission, was never authorized to be there, and has refused to leave after you told them to go. That is a different problem from tenant problems: a tenant signed a lease and has legal rights a court has to unwind, while a squatter never had a lease at all. Florida's 2024 law (House Bill 621, signed March 27, 2024, effective July 1, 2024) created a faster path specifically for this second case, one that skips eviction court entirely.

To use that faster path, every one of eight conditions in F.S. 82.036 has to be true: you or your authorized agent files the complaint; the property has a residential dwelling on it; someone entered and is still there without your permission; the property was not open to the public when they got in; you told them to leave; they are not a current or former tenant under a lease; they are not your immediate family; and, the condition that trips up the most owners, there is no pending court case between you and the occupant. If even one of those eight is false, the 82.036 sheriff process does not apply, and the case has to go through the regular unlawful-detainer or eviction courts instead.

When all eight hold, you or your agent file a verified complaint (Florida sheriffs use a standard "Complaint to Remove Persons Unlawfully Occupying Residential Real Property" form) with the sheriff of the county where the property sits - Miami-Dade, Broward, or Palm Beach. Once the sheriff confirms you're the owner of record, the statute requires them to serve a notice to immediately vacate "without delay" and put you back in possession, hand-delivering it or posting it on the front door. You pay the sheriff's standard fee for serving a writ of possession, plus a reasonable hourly rate if you want a deputy to stand by while a locksmith changes the locks. The statute doesn't set a fixed number of hours for how fast this moves, so treat any specific turnaround time you read elsewhere as a claim to verify, not a guarantee.

What you cannot do, at any point, is remove the occupant yourself: changing the locks, shutting off water or power, or hauling out their belongings. Florida law bars that kind of self-help removal for a tenant under F.S. 83.67, and doing it to a non-tenant occupant instead risks the same civil exposure, plus a criminal-mischief or trespass complaint landing on you instead of them. The 82.036 sheriff process exists precisely so you never have to make that choice. It's also worth knowing a squatter is nowhere near gaining ownership: Florida's adverse-possession statute (F.S. 95.18) requires seven straight years of continuous possession, with the claimant paying every year's property taxes starting within the first year and filing a sworn return with the county property appraiser - a bar almost no squatter clears, and not something a homeowner who acts in the first weeks ever needs to worry about.

We buy the property while it's still occupied - you sign now, we make a cash offer based on the home's as-is condition, and we take on the removal ourselves rather than making you wait for it to clear before closing, the same way we already handle tenant problems with a difficult renter. One thing worth flagging to your insurer in the meantime: a standard homeowner's policy is written around a home that's occupied or intentionally left vacant, and most insurers' vacancy clauses start cutting coverage, typically for vandalism and related claims, once a property sits unoccupied by you for 30 to 60 days - call your carrier and tell them exactly what's going on so you know where you stand. And if the occupant left the property out of compliance with local code, our code violations page covers selling as-is on that front too; a vacant property and a squatter-occupied one aren't the same problem - vacancy is what let this happen, occupation is what you're dealing with now.