Squatters or a Tenant Who Won't Pay? Your Options in Pennsylvania

The first question is who the person is, because that decides which process you use. Act 88 of 2024, signed July 17, 2024 and in effect since September 15, 2024, changed the definition of a tenant. A tenant now has to be living there with the owner's express or implied consent, which includes a written or oral lease, or the owner or an agent accepting rent. Someone who is not and never has been a tenant is owed no notice to quit, and the Landlord and Tenant Act doesn't apply to them.

Pennsylvania's criminal trespass law makes it a third-degree felony to enter, or secretly stay in, a building without permission, and a second-degree felony to break in. Staying after the owner personally tells someone to leave can be defiant trespass, a misdemeanor. There is a defense if the person reasonably believed the owner would have allowed them to be there, which is why a fake or disputed lease can stall things.

Whether officers act is up to them. Even before Act 88, the Pennsylvania Association of Realtors warned that "it may be difficult to convince the police to become involved." The bill's sponsor said squatters who stay where they aren't licensed or privileged commit defiant trespass, but the law did not create a special police removal process.

• Bring your deed or tax records and photo ID
• Bring proof there is no lease and you never accepted rent
• Tell the occupant in person, with officers present, to leave
• Ask officers for an incident number either way

If police treat it as a civil matter, the owner files an ejectment action in the Court of Common Pleas, which is available when the occupant was never a tenant and refuses to leave. The Pennsylvania Association of Realtors puts the best case at an order around 30 days after the occupant is served, and more likely several months. Owners who hold the house in an LLC generally need a lawyer to file.

Frustration is understandable, but these moves can turn a strong case into a lawsuit against you. The Attorney General's tenant guide is direct: landlord self-help eviction is prohibited.

• Changing the locks while someone is living there
• Shutting off heat, water or electricity to force them out
• Removing or throwing out their belongings
• Accepting money from a squatter
• Threats, or showing up with friends instead of police
• Waiting months before you act

For tenants, 68 P.S. § 250.505a sets the rules once an order for possession has been carried out or the tenant has otherwise abandoned the unit. The landlord must first send a written notice. The tenant then has 10 days from the postmark to take the items or ask that they be stored for up to 30 days, at the tenant's own cost. If there is a known protection-from-abuse order, the items are held 30 days. A written lease can set different terms, and violating the section can cost triple damages plus attorney fees.

For someone who was never a tenant, ask an attorney how to handle belongings before anything is thrown out.

Practically never. Adverse possession in Pennsylvania takes 21 years of "actual, continuous, exclusive, visible, notorious, distinct and hostile" possession, the standard the state Supreme Court repeated in December 2025. A narrow exception allows 10 years for a single-family home on half an acre or less that the claimant lived in the whole time, and it still requires a quiet title lawsuit.

Under 68 P.S. § 250.104, a buyer has the same rights and duties as the seller. Hand over the lease, the rent history and the security deposit. Pennsylvania caps deposits at two months' rent in the first year and one month after that, and deposits must be returned or itemized within 30 days after a tenant leaves.

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We bought 94 Market Street in May 2026. Watch Part 1, our first look inside, on YouTube.