A ‘thesda tale from UD’s neck of the woods…
Yesterday a woman in a $2.3 million house exited her three-car garage in a black Porsche Cayenne ($100,000 – $190,000 value) to defend her right to the house, in which she’d been squatting for nine months.
In her defense, she pointed out the house lacked a no trespassing sign.
“We need to post one of those in front of our place pronto,” UD advised Mr UD. “A big one.”
January 23rd, 2026 at 10:35AM
You laugh, but this is a real legal point. This problem became so serious in Texas that the state recently had to tighten eviction laws to cope with it. People would squat in temporarily vacant homes (generally mansions, why go small when you could go big?) near us in Houston (homes between renters or under renovation so the owners were elsewhere), and produce fake leases claiming they were legitimate tenants. The law prevented the police from evicting them, so owners would have to go through a drawn-out process in court to get them out, all while these people would live in the homes for many months, rent-free obviously. One of the legal mechanisms to protect against this is actually to post a No Trespassing sign on your vacant home, since I guess this indicates that no one should be living in it. I too thought this was a silly protection, but no, it’s real. See here: https://nypost.com/2023/06/18/texas-family-of-squatters-finally-forced-out-of-home-after-a-year/.
January 23rd, 2026 at 11:04AM
Had no idea! I’m sure the upscale neighbors of these mansions are thrilled with big red NO TRESPASSING signs plastered on the neighborhood jewels.
I’m also thinking that people who break into houses and start living in them might just possibly be capable of taking down a No Trespassing sign…