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Use the calculator below to estimate how long an eviction will take in your state from the day you serve notice through to final possession. Enter your state, reason for eviction, and start date to get projected milestone dates and a full timeline breakdown.
⏱️ Eviction Timeline Calculator
Find out how long an eviction typically takes in your state from notice to lockout, with projected milestone dates.
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Explore Eviction Timelines by State
Eviction timelines vary widely across the country. Click your state on the map below to view the complete eviction law guide including notice requirements, court procedures, filing fees, and state-specific warnings.
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How Long Does an Eviction Take? A State-by-State Overview
The eviction process in the United States does not follow a single national timeline. From the moment a landlord serves a notice to the day a sheriff executes a writ of possession, the total elapsed time can range from as few as 15 days in the fastest states to well over 6 months in the slowest — and those extremes matter enormously to a landlord who is watching their rental income disappear while a nonpaying tenant remains in their property.
Understanding how the timeline is structured, what drives the variation between states, and where delays most commonly occur is essential knowledge for any landlord who wants to manage the process efficiently and avoid the costly mistakes that extend an already expensive proceeding.
The Four Phases of Every Eviction
Every eviction in every state follows the same basic four-phase structure, even though the length of each phase differs dramatically depending on where the property is located.
The first phase is the notice period — the mandatory waiting period after the landlord serves written notice before a court complaint can be filed. This ranges from 3 days in states like Florida, Arkansas, and Texas for nonpayment of rent, to 30 days or more for lease violations in tenant-protective states. The notice period is the one phase entirely within the landlord’s control. Serve the notice correctly on day one and the clock starts immediately. Serve a defective notice and the entire timeline resets.
The second phase is filing to hearing — the time between when the landlord files the eviction complaint with the court and when the case is scheduled for a hearing. This phase is largely outside the landlord’s control and is driven almost entirely by court availability. In rural counties with light dockets, hearings can be scheduled within 5 to 7 days of filing. In dense urban counties like Mecklenburg and Wake in North Carolina, Fulton in Georgia, or Miami-Dade in Florida, court backlogs routinely push hearing dates out by 3 to 6 weeks or more.
The third phase is judgment to writ — after a landlord wins at the hearing, the court issues a writ of possession authorizing law enforcement to physically remove the tenant. This process typically takes 5 to 15 days depending on the state and the sheriff’s department workload. In Florida, sheriffs in most counties post a 24-hour notice and return to execute the writ, making this one of the faster writ phases in the country. In other states, writ execution can take two weeks or longer.
The fourth phase is writ execution itself — the day the sheriff arrives, removes the tenant if still present, and turns possession over to the landlord. In most states this is a relatively quick process once scheduled, though a tenant’s right to appeal a judgment can in some cases delay this phase by weeks if they post the required bond.
What Makes Some States So Much Faster
The fastest eviction states share a few common characteristics. Short mandatory notice periods — typically 3 to 5 days for nonpayment — combined with efficient small claims or magistrate court systems and limited tenant continuance rights produce the shortest total timelines. Texas is one of the most commonly cited examples, with a process that can move from notice to possession in as little as 3 to 4 weeks in straightforward cases. Arkansas, Georgia outside Atlanta, and South Carolina also tend toward the faster end of the spectrum.
Speed in these states is not guaranteed — a tenant who requests a jury trial, files an answer contesting the eviction, or appeals a judgment can add substantial time to any case regardless of which state the property is in. But in uncontested cases with proper notice, the fastest states can move remarkably quickly.
What Makes Some States Significantly Slower
Longer timelines are almost always the product of one or more of the following: extended mandatory notice periods, mandatory mediation requirements, tenant rights to automatic continuances, high-volume urban court dockets, or strong appeal rights that stay eviction pending bond. California combines several of these factors simultaneously, which is a primary reason its eviction process frequently takes 2 to 4 months even in relatively straightforward nonpayment cases and can stretch much longer in contested matters.
New York’s housing court system is one of the most tenant-protective in the country, with multiple procedural steps, strong tenant representation programs, and courts that move slowly under heavy caseload pressure. New Jersey similarly has a lengthy process driven by mandatory court appearances and procedural requirements at multiple stages.
It is worth noting that a long timeline is not necessarily the result of poor landlord preparation — in many states it is simply the cost of operating in a jurisdiction that has made a policy decision to provide tenants with significant procedural protections. Understanding this before you buy a rental property in a given state is far more valuable than learning it after a nonpaying tenant is already in your unit.
The Real Cost of a Long Eviction Timeline
Every day the eviction process runs is a day of lost rent. On a $1,500 per month property, a 90-day eviction costs $4,500 in lost rent before a single court fee or attorney bill is counted. On a $2,500 per month property in a slow state where the process runs 120 days, lost rent alone exceeds $10,000. Add filing fees, process service, writ execution, attorney costs in contested cases, and property damage on top of that, and the true cost of a single eviction in a high-protection state can easily reach $15,000 to $20,000 or more.
This is precisely why tenant screening is so often described as the most cost-effective investment a landlord can make. A thorough background check, credit report, income verification, and rental history review costs between $20 and $50 per applicant. The eviction timeline calculator above shows exactly what you are risking on the back end when that front-end step is skipped or rushed.
Use the calculator above to plan your timeline before you serve notice, and click your state on the map to review the complete eviction procedure guide including exact notice requirements, court names, filing fees, and the state-specific gotchas that catch landlords off guard.