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Squatting for a moment.
The concept made headlines last week when a post by Venezuelan national Lionel Moreno, in which he suggested immigrants “invade” and “occupy” vacant homes, went viral on TikTok.Moreno’s comments ended up making headlines new york post, fox news, Korea Tourism Organization, this daily mail and other outlets.
Apparently Moreno had racked up hundreds of thousands of views before deleting the TikTok account he used to post the video (other accounts have since appeared, but it’s unclear if they actually belong to Moreno). But while Moreno’s 15 minutes of fame seemed to be waning, the squatters’ actions captured the imagination and fear of people across the United States. Internal version sums up the general mood of the last week claim There has been a “surge in preemption cases” recently.
As they say on the internet, that’s huge if it’s true. A group of squatters competing for homes across the U.S. would pose a significant threat to the entire country and cause trouble for real estate professionals in particular.
However, upon closer inspection, it’s hard to find any solid evidence that squats are actually “explosive.” This is because data on the subject virtually does not exist. This does not mean that there are not challenging cases, and of course the concept of property rights is often subject to debate. Despite some alarmist headlines, there appears to be no evidence that squatting is a growing trend that Americans need to collectively worry about.
Surprisingly little data
While it’s easy to find headlines about preemption, it’s much harder to find the numbers.In widely used crime databases, e.g. Produced by the FBI or California Public Policy Institute.
One of the few numbers in the comments on this issue is the claim that squatters currently occupy approximately 1,200 homes in metro Atlanta. Bloomberg Use January’s numbers, crediting the National Rental Housing Council.real estate agent network Used in February have the same ownership. Over the past three months, many other stories have similarly mentioned this number, some with citations and some without.
Inman reached out to the National Rental Housing Council twice last week to get more information about that data point but did not receive a response. So it’s hard to know exactly how that number was compiled or whether it says anything about the situation in other metro areas. (Bloomberg’s The report noted that Atlanta has “more squatting cases than any other U.S. metropolitan area tracked by the commission.” )
More critically, even if this number is correct, it doesn’t account for what will happen over time. In other words, knowing that there are now 1,200 squatting incidents does not indicate whether the problem is getting worse or getting better. As such, it provides essentially no evidence to support the widely circulated contention that squats are “exploding.”
Frustrated by the apparent lack of hard evidence, Inman turned to Google Trends to see if the topic was getting more attention online — which might suggest the number of cases was rising. The chart on Google Search looks like this:
Google Trends shows that based on last year’s situation, there has been a recent surge in online searches related to cyber squatting in the United States.
However, the timing of this surge coincided with many viral news reports and social media posts about squatting. Prior to this peak, search volume typically remained stable or trended downward.
This is not empirically conclusive evidence either. But if squatting does show “explosive” growth, then the search volume of this topic in Google searches will gradually increase over a long period of time. After all, what seems like a more logical explanation here: around March 10th, thousands of property owners simultaneously discovered they had squatters and started googling for solutions? Or some virus case sparks some viral news coverage and suddenly a lot of people start Googling the topic because it wasn’t on their radar before?
Rich stories
So what happened?
One possibility is that squatting makes for a good story. Take early March as an example, contain ran a roaring yarn Stories about people squatting in luxurious houses in the famous 90210 area code.
Other recent squatting stories have received less literary treatment, but at their core they are essentially stories of human interest.For example, there is a widely circulated story recently Woman arrested for trying to evict squatters A house in Queens, New York, that she owned and was trying to sell.Social media is also full of anecdotal story about squatter These videos seem to be going viral because they capture emotionally (and legally) charged situations.
useful politics
Another possible (and more cynical) explanation for the surge in online chatter about squatting is that it fits into a larger, politically charged debate about the rule of law.
For example, last weekend, Elon Musk shared a New York Post story on X (the social network formerly known as Twitter) about squatting guidelines on Reddit. “In many states, your home is no longer your home,” Musk wrote, seemingly repeating a common “explosive” argument.
In many states, your home is no longer your home
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 23, 2024
However, even though Musk shared this story, Some observers have sounded the alarm The tycoon has shown an increasing interest in fringe politics and conspiracy theories, including some with racist roots – which may intersect with squatters’ interests in taking over private property.
Also on the political front, celebrity lawyer Jonathan Turley one piece for USA Today Last year, “the nuisance of squatters moving into homes reflects a breakdown in the basic deterrence of our laws.” Turley provided many anecdotes about squatting in his article, but no data.
Against this backdrop, the United States has recently been debating the existence of a widespread crime wave. The debate tends to fall along partisan lines, with Democrats arguing lawlessness is near historic lows and Republicans pointing to recent spikes in property crimes and other cases.
In fact, both sides are at least partly right. FBI Date Shows violent crime has risen only slightly since the mid-2010s. Meanwhile, property crime has surged recently but remains below historic levels.
Image source: FBI
The point here is not to get bogged down in the minutiae of crime data.
Instead, it simply points to news reports—usually from the media like that new york post The technology that turned fear-mongering into an art form didn’t appear out of nowhere.
do not be afraid
One thing that many of the preemption stories do point out is that every state in the United States has laws regarding property conservatorships. These rules (called adverse possession laws) vary from place to place, but generally give a person the ability to legally take possession of a home. However, doing so often takes years, can only happen legally if the owner has not attempted eviction, and often requires squatters to pay fees such as utility bills or property taxes.
Recent media cases of preemption have paid little attention to those who seek to take possession of property through adverse possession. More often, squatters simply take over the property and resist the eviction, which in some cases becomes more difficult after various eviction moratoriums.
Lawyer Turley argued that such property crime had been “downgraded” to a priority and that he might be right to call attention to the issue or urge a debate on property rights.
But for now at least, there doesn’t appear to be much evidence that squatting is sweeping the country.
Email Jim Dalrymple II
As a real estate professional, do you have any experience dealing with squatters? Let us know in the comments below.
