11.2×
Gap between the fastest and slowest statutory state floors
Eviction Research Network · National
State Eviction Timeframes
How fast an eviction can lawfully move in every state and D.C.
The eviction clock runs ten times faster in some states than in others. Rebuilt stage-by-stage from each state's current statutes and court rules — the nonpayment eviction track, verified against primary law — the fastest lawful floor is 5 days; the slowest is 56. Most states set no upper limit at all.
17days
Median state floor — half of states are faster, half slower
51
States plus D.C., each an independent set of eviction laws
34of 51
Jurisdictions whose law sets no ceiling — the slow end is unbounded
Figure I
An eviction runs four clocks in sequence.
Every eviction moves through the same four stages. The clock in this analysis starts when rent is missed and ends when the tenant must be out. Each stage adds days; the state's total is the sum.
GraceStage 1
Days the law inserts between rent falling due and the eviction clock starting. Most states: none — the notice can issue at once. Six jurisdictions verifiably delay it: Rhode Island (15), Connecticut (9), Maine (7), Oregon (7), South Dakota (3), North Dakota (3).
NoticeStage 2
The written warning — a Notice to Pay or Quit — and the days the tenant has to pay or leave before the landlord can file in court.
CourtStage 3
Filing the case, serving the summons, the tenant's response window, and the wait for a hearing and a judgment.
RemovalStage 4
After judgment: the court issues a writ, the sheriff serves it, and the tenant is given a final window to move before a forced lockout.
Figure II
The fastest lawful eviction ranges from 5 to 56 days across states.
Each bar is a state's verified statutory floor — the fastest a nonpayment eviction can lawfully move from missed rent to removal — broken into the four stages, every element traced to its statute or court rule. Where the law also sets a ceiling, a pale extension shows it; a fade means the law sets no ceiling. A degree mark (°) flags states where a stage has no statutory timing and counts zero toward the floor. Ranked fastest floor to slowest.
How to read these numbers. Every figure is a statutorily mandated wait on the nonpayment track, summed at face value (business, judicial, and calendar days as printed). Floors are legal minimums — service logistics, dockets, and continuances usually add time, so these are the speeds the law permits, not predictions. "No cap" means the law sets no ceiling; a degree mark (°) flags stages with no statutory timing, which count zero toward the floor. Each element's citation and effective date are in Figure III and the downloadable data; the full verification record lives with the dataset.
Figure III · State by state
Every state's floor, ceiling, and the nuance behind it.
The single number hides how each state gets there. Sort or search below. Each row carries its controlling nonpayment-notice law and effective date; the chips grade each stage's legal anchoring — in order grace · notice · court · removal: ✓ fully statutory, △ partial anchors, ○ no statutory timing (counts zero toward the floor). Full pinpoint citations for every stage are in the downloadable data and the verification memos.
| # | State | Floor | Ceiling | Fastest-path breakdown | Nuance | Notice law · effective |
|---|
Beyond the Clock
The clock is only part of the story.
These timeframes are one instrument in a larger system. How evictions actually move — on and off this ladder — why counts can't be compared across states, and who is building the data: What You Should Know About Eviction, ERN's primer and research treatment. And the clock is not just a survival window: in ERN's Housing Precarity Risk Model, two time-to-evict variables — the notice period and the post-judgment window — rank among the top five predictors of neighborhood eviction risk. The speed of the process shapes the counts themselves.
Methodology & sources
This page presents the Eviction Research Network's state time-to-evict dataset, rebuilt element-by-element from primary law — each state's current statutes and court rules — and verified in July 2026. It follows the nonpayment track, the modal eviction. It supersedes both the 2019 attorney-survey compilation first visualized by the Las Vegas Review-Journal and the commercial timeline tables that a stage-by-stage audit showed to be unreliable (see Verification below).
How the numbers are built
- Each state's floor is the sum of the statutorily mandated minimum waits on the nonpayment track — grace (only where the law delays the clock), the nonpayment notice, court (filing to judgment), and removal (judgment to lockout) — every element traced to a pinpoint citation with its effective date.
- A ceiling is shown only where the law caps every stage; 34 of 51 jurisdictions set no statutory ceiling, and their slow end is reported as open, not invented.
- Stages where the law sets no timing at all (e.g., Indiana's hearing schedule, Nevada's summary-eviction hearing) contribute zero to the floor and are marked ° — those floors are understatements by construction.
- Day counts are taken at face value as the law states them: business, judicial, and calendar days are not converted, so mixed-unit floors are conservative.
- Worked example — D.C.: grace 0 (the 5-day rule is late-fee-only) · notice 10 (D.C. Law 26-80, eff. 12/31/2025) · court ≥14 (summons window; no statutory cap) · removal 23–77 (21-day eviction-date notice, since 2019) → floor 47, ceiling open.
Verification (July 2026)
Every stage of every state's row was checked against primary law — statutes, court rules, and judicial-branch publications — in a July 2026 verification pass (twelve research sweeps under evidence-only rules; pinpoint citations throughout). The verdict: grace and notice figures are mostly sound; the court stage is not. Thirty-four of 51 jurisdictions carry at least one stage that conflicts with primary law; the court stage is fully confirmed in only two (Michigan and Louisiana), and Louisiana is the only fully confirmed row. The compilation's recurring failures: converting statutory ceilings ("trial within 60 days of service") into additive waits, and counting no-cause termination notices as the nonpayment clock. Several rows were also outdated by recent law — D.C. (Dec. 2025), Virginia (July 2026), Hawaii (Feb. 2026), Minnesota (2024), Georgia (2024), South Dakota (2024), Oregon (2023), Rhode Island (2022). Following that audit, every figure on this page was rebuilt from the verified statutory chains; the original compilation is retained in the dataset as a comparison layer, and the full corrections report — citations and effective dates for every element — lives with the dataset (data/time_to_evict/verification/).
Federal overlay
State floors apply only to non-covered private housing. The CARES Act 30-day notice to vacate remains in effect (15 U.S.C. §9058(c) has no sunset; CRS, May 2026) for federally connected properties — public housing, Section 8, LIHTC, USDA programs, and homes with federally backed mortgages — and HUD's 30-day nonpayment-notice rule (effective Jan. 13, 2025) still binds public housing and project-based assistance, its attempted revocation indefinitely delayed after litigation. A pending bill, H.R. 1078, would repeal the CARES notice.
Sources & citations
Primary sources: each state's controlling statutes and court rules, cited per stage in Figure III and the downloadable data; pinpoint URLs in the verification memos shipped with the dataset. Structure discovery (comparison layer): iPropertyManagement, Landlord–Tenant Laws (2026). Lineage: Las Vegas Review-Journal, "Nevada eviction law still favors landlords" (2019). Validation sources: LSC Eviction Laws Database (statutory notice periods, current to Jan 1, 2021); state judicial-branch self-help centers (e.g., Texas State Law Library, California Courts, New Jersey Courts); controlling statutes via FindLaw; and legal-aid organizations. Note: the Eviction Lab measures eviction filings, not process duration, and is not a timeline source. Related work: the only other stage-decomposed 50-state timeline build is the Review-Journal's 2019 attorney survey (floors only, no D.C.); the LSC/Temple database codes statutory stages categorically as of Jan. 1, 2021, and its study closed in 2026; Nolo's 50-state charts cover the notice stage only. No current source publishes stage-decomposed floor-and-ceiling ranges for all 51 jurisdictions.
Cite this work
Download the dataset: ern_time_to_evict_verified_2026-07.csv (or the button above the state table) — per-stage minimums, ceilings, citations, effective dates, and anchoring grades. Before relying on these figures in published research, validate the current timelines against each state's cited statute — and if you find an error or a law change we've missed, email evictions@berkeley.edu so we can correct the dataset. Suggested citation:
Thomas, Tim, and the Eviction Research Network. (2026). Time to evict: State statutory eviction timelines (verified edition, July 2026) [Data set]. Eviction Research Network, University of California, Berkeley.
@misc{ern_time_to_evict_2026,
author = {Thomas, Tim and {Eviction Research Network}},
title = {Time to Evict: State Statutory Eviction Timelines},
year = {2026},
note = {Verified edition, July 2026. Stage-level figures rebuilt from
state statutes and court rules; see methodology.}
}