A stranger, whom I’d never met before and whose name I didn’t even know, recently took up residence in one of my vacant flip houses. A person, otherwise known as a squatter, and long considered every property owner’s worst nightmare had just moved in. I’d read and heard horror stories about these squatter situations happening to others before, and how hard it was to get them out due to “Squatter’s Rights” and our legal system, so when I realized that I was the unfortunate participant in a squatter story myself, I knew that the experience would neither pleasant nor easy.
This is the story of how it happened to my husband and me, and how we dealt with getting the squatter removed from our property. I’ll cover everything from how the police responded and the questionably illegal advice they gave me, to what I learned and how I would handle a situation like this in the future, should it ever happen again. So if you’re a property owner yourself, or if you just like a victorious tale of justice being served to those due, then this story is for you.
I first realized that something was amiss with the subject property when I went over to take listing photos for the MLS and to put my For Sale sign in the front yard. The house had been recently renovated – all new paint and flooring throughout, newly-renovated kitchen and bathrooms – and my husband and I were excited to get it listed on the market to get it sold. Since we had just renovated the entire house and it all looked clean and new, and it was in a safe, upper-middle class neighborhood, we were optimistic that it would sell quickly.
When I pulled up to the house, the first thing I noticed was a car in the driveway and the trash bins that were normally inside the garage had been put outside by the curb for trash pickup, full of trash. The lights in the house were also on and my alarm bells started ringing. As a smaller female all alone, I realized that I couldn’t and shouldn’t approach or go into the property on my own. I knew that I needed backup assistance. At this point, I could sense and suspect what was happening and as my stomach filled with knots, I pulled out my phone and dialed the local police department as I sat in the safety of my car.
A single patrol car pulled up behind my car a few minutes later and a police officer got out and came over to my window. I introduced myself as the property owner and I explained the situation and my suspicions about someone being inside my house based on the appearance of the outside. The officer asked me to wait in my car while he approached the front door and rang the bell. A few moments later, it opened and a woman stepped out, a woman whom I didn’t recognize and had never seen before in my life. They stood on the front porch talking for a few minutes, and the woman became animated a few times, waiving her hands in the air for emphasis and emotion. I could tell she was upset.
Shortly thereafter, the office came back to my car and told me that this woman was claiming that she was a legal renter in the house. She was telling him that she had found a listing for the property on a website called Craigslist.com and had contacted that person to rent the home. According to the woman, the person who posted the ad on Craigslist.com was out-of-state and had never met her at the property to show it to her. Instead, she claimed, they had asked her to wire money to them and then the transaction had been completed.
As a professional in the real estate industry, I had been around the block a few times and I knew the story of the Craigslist scam very well. The story that this woman was spinning to the police officer made her appear as a victim in the scenario as well, that she wasn’t to blame for any of this at all, that someone else took advantage of her and it wasn’t her fault.
I wasn’t buying it. I asked the police officer to ask her if she had any of the following information: A lease agreement, keys to the house, wire confirmation for proof of sending the money to this Craigslist scammer, any email correspondence to the Craigslist scammer, or even a copy of the Craiglist advertisement.
He asked and she had none of it. Not a single thing to show or to back up her story. Nothing. At this point the police officer, speaking only to me (as he kept us separate from one another the whole time) was agreeing that this seemed fishy.
“Unfortunately, there isn’t anything I can do about this, though. I’ve walked around the house and there aren’t any clear signs of breaking and entering, so I can’t just arrest her for trespassing or breaking and entering.” He apologized but explained, “You’re going to have to deal with this in civil court and file an eviction to get her to vacate the property.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. There was a complete stranger living in a house that I owned, that had never paid me a dime of money, and I was stuck paying the mortgage on this house while she was going to get to live there rent-free for at least a month, maybe longer while we had to pay money to file and fight her through eviction court. Yet this woman could provide no documents to show that she had a right to be in my property, she had no keys to the house, or anything else. The police officer explained that the law didn’t allow them to remove her from the property because of what she was telling him. It was her word against mine. Their hands were tied.
Shaking my head, I asked, “How can this be? It isn’t fair.”
The police officer was sympathetic, and I could tell he felt sorry for the situation I was stuck in. I know he wanted to do more, so he offered some helpful advice. This piece of advice is something that will stick with me forever and is something that every property owner needs to store in their brain rolodex for “How to handle a Squatter” situation. Just remember, you didn’t hear it from me, and you didn’t do it… even if you did and even if you do.
“Listen, if this ever happens again, just take a rock and throw it through a back window before you call us. That way, there will be clear signs of breaking and entering and we’ll be able to arrest the person for trespassing.”
I thanked him for his advice, wishing that I had thought of this myself before I had called them, but it was too late for this particular squatter situation. I could see the woman glaring at me from the safety of the front porch, my front porch. As I got back into my car, I could see her smirking, thinking she had won. “You just wait, missy,” I thought to myself as I pulled my car away. “You don’t know what kind of treat you’re in for. You don’t know who my husband is…”
Let me take a minute and explain who my husband is. New Yorker, Italian, mafia … he’s none of those things at all. My husband, Harry C. Marsh, is the friendliest attorney you’ll ever meet. Raised in a blue-collar family with little means growing up, he was forced to forge his own way in this world with only academia, cleverness and hard-work on his side. Nothing has ever been handed to him in life, it’s all been earned. Today, he’s one of the area’s largest Real Estate Attorneys in the market. It’s because he can relate to people, it’s because he isn’t stuck up or feels above anyone else, it because he has the will-power, grit and smarts to get out there and ‘get ‘er done’, as he’s had to do his entire life on his own before.
When I got to the office, I told my husband, Harry the bad news. I showed him the pictures of the squatter and the police officer talking on the front porch of our house. I explained that the police officer refused to get her out of our house because he claimed it was a civil matter that we would have to pursue with eviction. As a real estate attorney, Harry had been around the block a few times before in eviction court and he knew how these things played out in real life.
“She’ll likely show up and tell the magistrate the same story and then she’ll say she’s paying a landlord in cash and they collect it in person at the front door.”
Since we both suspected the Craigslist story was a sham, we agreed the likelihood of her doing this was good. We already realized that the system was not on our side in this situation, that it was designed to protect the squatter and that we were at a huge disadvantage already. We needed to get creative.
“What if we try something else?” Harry mused. “Since it’s our house too and she doesn’t have a written lease agreement, I don’t see why we wouldn’t be able to also “rent” it to someone else. What if we just hire someone else to go live there with her and walk around naked all day long?”
We both laughed at this idea, knowing that we couldn’t seriously find someone to agree to do this. The idea was fun to think about as we went about our day.
Later that evening, I received a call from another officer at the police station in regards to our squatter situation. He wanted to talk to me because they knew that this particular woman had a long history of squatting in other houses.
“She has actually done this seven times before in our county, in this last year alone”, he said.
“Are you kidding me?” I asked. “SEVEN TIMES! And you can’t do anything about it?”
“The law is the law,” he responded. “Listen, we’re all on your side and we want to see this woman brought to justice just as much as you do, but since there were no signs of forcible breaking and entering, our hands are tied.”
“This is crazy,” I stammered.
“I can offer to drive a patrol car by the house every few hours, but that’s the most we can do for you. We just don’t have enough proof to arrest her.”
“Did everyone else have to evict her too, in the other places she squatted in?”
“Honestly, I’m not sure. What you need to do is have the power shut off immediately though and maybe that will get her to leave.”
I thanked him for his information and he promised to keep me posted on the case as we hung up. Now, as a real estate professional, I had been taught about “Forceful Eviction” and I knew that having the power shut off on the house could actually work against us if we did have to go to eviction court. I knew this was a direct violation of landlord-tenant laws, but in this scenario, when there wasn’t even a lease in place outlining terms, when I had never received a dime of rent money, did those landlord-tenant laws still apply? I was so confused at this point, and frustrated. Frustrated by a system that seemed to be working against us in every possible way.
We had her name. That was all they gave us. Her name, so we could file the proper eviction paperwork with the county magistrate, after paying the $350 filing fee it would cost us, and waiting the proper time limits to do so. And then, after all of those things, we realized that we were dealing with a serial squatter/scammer, someone who knew how to work the system and would invariably continue to do so. We realized that she would and could likely show up at the eviction hearing and make a plead that would allow the eviction case to be thrown out, causing us to have to start all over with a new filing fee, and more weeks wasted while we were stuck paying the mortgage and our money tied up in a house that someone else got to enjoy for free. On top of all of that, we worried that all the money and time we spent to renovate the house would be wasted. What kind of damage or wear and tear would she cause to the property during the time she got to stay there for free? How was it possible that situations like this could happen?
I go back to being thankful that I married a clever man. We were luckier than most in that we had more resources available to us than others would because of the law firm. We had access to two skip-tracing software programs that are so detailed, they can tell you everything including a person’s full Social Security Number, the VIN numbers on every car they’ve every owned, and even where a person currently has utility bills in their name. Needless to say, finding a phone number was easy for us.
Despite the system working against us in every other way, there was one law that was on our side during all of this and that is that North Carolina is a one-party recording state. This means that you are legally allowed to record phone calls without disclosing to the other party that you are recording the phone call in North Carolina. Legally, only one-party has to be aware of the recording, and that one party is the person doing the recording.
Another thing to know about my husband, Harry is that he records every single phone call he makes. As an attorney, he has to. You see, being in the legal field subjects one to all of the bad in the world and rarely any of the good. As an attorney, you see the worst in people: the lying, stealing, cheating, scamming, etc. It’s a sad truth, but something we have to protect and prepare for. It’s just part of the business. The practice of recording every phone call is just one way to protect ourselves that we’ve been forced to adapt time after time.
The dialog between Harry and the squatter began after he found her phone number. He called her up and they began to talk. To be honest, I don’t know how he did it, but somehow, on that recorded phone line, Harry eventually got her to admit that it was all a farce, that she had never paid anyone any money and that she had gotten into the property through breaking into the garage. I’m still amazed that he was able to get her to admit to it. I guess that’s why attorneys make the big bucks…
The next day, Harry took the recording to the county magistrate and played it for all to hear. By the time he saw the magistrate, word had gotten around the county that the serial squatter had struck again, so they were aware of the situation already, and eager to see her brought to justice, same as we were. Before the recording had even completed its loop, the magistrate had already picked up the pen to sign the warrant for her arrest. Her fate sealed in ink, justice finally being brought.
The arrest warrant was signed at 3:22pm that afternoon and the squatter was arrested at 7:47pm the same night. All of this happened within three days of the discovery of her occupancy in our property. We were lucky that things worked out for us and that we were able to get her out so quickly. In our story, we won in the end. However, in many other stories of similar nature, most property owners lose, as they’re stuck dealing with squatters for weeks and months while they fight the process through the civil courts, as that’s the only option given in these types of scenarios. Had we gone through the same course of action, by filing the eviction to get her out, she easily could have been there another month or two, enjoying living in a newly-renovated house for free, while my husband and I were stuck footing the bill and working hard for her to reap the benefits.
In the end, I hope the arrest set the squatter straight. I hope that it was a lesson to her to make her rethink her course of life and to possibly change her story. I’d like to think it set her straight, but I’ll know. As for us, my husband and I went on to sell the house quickly after the squatter was vacated by the police. Thankfully, she didn’t do any lasting damage and the house only required minimal cleaning. We came away with many lessons, some of them questionably legal, all of them helpful. Just another week, another story under the belt, and more experience on this journey we’re all on together, this journey called life.
Kaitlin Rush
