How long does an eviction take from the notice to the lockout?

California's judicial branch puts it at 30 to 45 days or more, and is careful about what it is measuring: the clock starts when court papers are delivered to the tenant and ends when they must move out. The notice period sits before that window and the sheriff's queue sits after it, so a California owner counting from the day the notice went on the door should expect six to eight weeks in an uncontested case. That range is built from California's stages and does not transfer to another state; a contested case has no ceiling anywhere. Washington's show cause hearing alone may be set anywhere from 7 to 30 days after the order is served under RCW 59.18.370, and that is one stage of eight.

Can I file and argue the case myself, without a lawyer?

In Texas justice court, expressly yes: Property Code § 24.011(a) says the parties may represent themselves or be represented by authorized agents who need not be attorneys, and Travis County's JP4 page repeats it. Florida is narrower in an unusual way. Section 83.59(2) lets a landlord's agent file the initial complaint but nothing after it unless the agent is an attorney, so an owner who hands the case to a helper has to take it back at step two. Everywhere, filing the paperwork yourself and arguing a contested habitability defense yourself are different decisions. The second is where a defective notice gets found.

The tenant paid everything after I got the judgment. Can I still use the writ?

Sometimes, and Washington wrote the rule down. RCW 59.18.390(1) says that after a writ of restitution issues, accepting a payment that only partially satisfies the judgment does not invalidate the writ unless there is a written agreement signed by both parties, and the eviction is not stopped unless a copy of that agreement reaches the sheriff. The statute puts the duty to deliver it on the tenant. Read that as a warning in both directions: money changing hands late in the process has different effects in different states, and it is worth a call to your own court before you accept it.

What happens to the belongings still in the unit?

This is a separate procedure with its own deadlines, and it is where owners who did everything else correctly get sued. Florida § 83.62(2) lets the landlord move personal property to or near the property line when the sheriff executes the writ, and lets you ask the sheriff to stand by at an hourly rate. California runs the other way: CCP § 715.010(b)(3) requires the writ itself to state that property left behind will be sold or disposed of under § 1174 unless the former tenant pays reasonable storage costs and collects it within 15 days. Same event, two different obligations. Find your state's abandoned-property section before the lockout date, not after.

Eviction Process Step by Step: Start to Finish

The one act an eviction is for — putting a person out of a house — is the one act a landlord may never perform. It belongs to a sheriff or a constable, in every state, and substituting yourself for that officer is a separate violation with its own damages: priced by the day in California, by the month's rent in Texas, and set out at the end of this page.

Reaching that officer legally takes eight stages, and Florida publishes the shortest version of the last one. A deputy tapes a notice to the front door; § 83.62(1) is specific that Saturdays, Sundays and legal holidays do not stay the 24 hours that follow; the sheriffs' statewide schedule prices the writ at $90. Then the landlord gets the property back.

Everything that makes an eviction slow, and nearly everything that makes one fail, happened in the seven stages before that deputy arrived. Most timelines flatten those seven into one range of weeks, which leaves the impression of a single thing you drive from beginning to end. It behaves more like a relay — each leg produces the document the next leg needs — and the owner runs two of the eight.

California, Florida, Texas and Washington are the working examples, because they build the same machine out of visibly different parts. Every section quoted was read at the legislature's or the court's own site on 22 August 2026, and that is the whole basis for this page: I have never filed an eviction, I am not a lawyer, and none of this is legal advice. No number below survives a state line, and your county will add rules these four legislatures do not print.

Eight stages: which ones cost money and which ones cost weeks

Day counts run from the day the notice is served, in a case nobody contests, and the ranges span only the four states used here. They are a shape to check your county against, not a schedule to plan around; a contested case has no typical shape at all.

#	Stage	Who does it	Day, uncontested	Money due here
1	Notice period runs	You	0 to 3–14	Postage, or a process server
2	Complaint filed	You, at the clerk's counter	4–16	The filing fee, the big one
3	Summons issued and served	Clerk issues, a non-party serves	5–22	Per-defendant service fee
4	Answer window	The tenant	4–20 days after service	Nothing
5	Default requested, or hearing set	You ask, the court decides	20–35	Sometimes a second fee
6	Hearing or trial	The court	25–45	Nothing
7	Judgment, then the writ issues	The court and clerk	27–50	Writ issuance
8	Sheriff or constable executes	Sheriff only	30–60	Execution fee, plus standby time

Three rows cost money. The waiting in rows 4, 6 and 8 costs you rent instead, which is the larger number and the one nobody itemises.

To rebuild the table for where your house sits you need two statutes and two counter pages: the landlord-tenant chapter for the notice period; the summary-procedure or unlawful-detainer sections for the answer window and the writ; your county clerk's fee schedule, since the statewide figure is usually a floor with surcharges on it; and your sheriff's or constable's civil division page, which quotes a deposit rather than a fee.

The notice period and the filing are the only parts you control

Stage one is entirely yours and has the most ways to lose: wrong notice type, wrong amount, wrong service method, wrong count of days. The companion piece on how service works and what voids a pay-or-quit notice is the long version. The part worth repeating is that stage one failures do not surface until stage six.

One deadline here is not about possession at all. Texas § 24.006(a) says that to be eligible to recover attorney's fees, a landlord must send a written demand to vacate, stating that if the tenant does not leave before the 11th day after receipt the landlord may recover fees, by registered or certified mail at least 10 days before filing. Miss it and you can still evict. You just pay your own lawyer.

Sends it backwards: accepting rent after the notice, or naming an amount the statute does not let you demand.

Stage two is the counter. California's self-help guide, read on 22 August 2026, puts the fee at $240 up to $10,000, $385 for over $10,000 to $35,000, $435 above that, with three counties possibly higher. Underneath sits Government Code § 70613 and its $205 and $330 pair; the gap is surcharges. Florida's § 34.041(1)(a)8 caps a removal-of-tenant action at $180, and (1)(d) adds $10 for issuing each summons. Travis County's justice court page asks $144 for filing plus service on one person, $90 per person after that.

Then Washington, which prices this stage like a bargain until you reach the second sentence of the subsection. RCW 36.18.020(2)(a) charges $45 to start an unlawful detainer against $200 for an ordinary civil case, then adds that the $45 "shall not include an order to show cause or any other order or judgment except a default order or default judgment." The show cause order is the ordinary route to a writ once a tenant appears. Cheap only if nobody fights.

Sends it backwards: filing before the notice period expires, or amending to add a defendant, which returns that person to stage three.

Service of process is where it leaves your hands

You may not serve your own summons. That is the first hard handoff, roughly where the word "self-managing" stops applying. A sheriff, a registered process server or some other adult who is not a party has to do it, and the return of service is the document the rest of the case rests on.

Sheriff pricing is where statutes mislead most. California charges $50 per service under Government Code § 26720.9. Florida's § 30.231(1)(a) sets $40 per summons. Washington's RCW 36.18.040(1)(a) says ten dollars for one defendant and twelve for two at the same residence, plus mileage, and then subsection (3) lets each county set its own amounts anyway. Read the county page, not the code.

Texas puts the clock on the officer instead: under § 24.0051(f) the constable must make a diligent effort to serve by the fifth business day after filing, and if that fails you may use another law enforcement officer.

Sends it backwards: defective service, invisible until a tenant raises it. Substituted service also delays the start of the count in California — the court's default page walks it through, mailing date as day zero, ten calendar days before the tenant counts as served.

The answer window is where the four states stop resembling each other

Nothing in this stage is yours. Its length is still the biggest single variable in the timeline.

CCP § 1167(a) gives a California tenant 10 days excluding Saturdays, Sundays and judicial holidays — recent, since AB 2347 doubled it from five effective 1 January 2025. Subsection (b) adds five court days for service through the Secretary of State's address confidentiality program; substituted service and posting reach 20 days by the route described at the previous stage, a count the court publishes rather than § 1167. Florida runs the other way, hard: § 51.011(1) allows five days after service, and no pleadings beyond the answer are permitted at all.

Florida then adds the rule that decides most of its nonpayment cases. Under § 83.60(2), a tenant raising any defense other than payment — including the defense that your 3-day notice was defective — must pay the accrued rent into the court registry within five working days of service, or move to have the amount determined. Failure is "an absolute waiver of the tenant's defenses other than payment," and the landlord gets an immediate default judgment with a writ, without further notice or hearing.

Texas rebuilt this stage on 1 January 2026. Senate Bill 38 added § 24.005106, letting a landlord file a sworn motion for summary disposition with the petition. Absent genuinely disputed facts, the justice court may enter judgment without a trial unless the tenant responds with facts within four days of service. Where there is a real dispute, trial is set not earlier than the 10th and not later than the 21st day after filing.

Washington does something none of the others do. The eviction summons in RCW 59.18.365(3) carries a checkbox reading "This case is / is not filed with the court." You can serve before you file.

Four states, four windows. Local rules can put a step in front of all of them — a mediation referral, a mandatory settlement conference — which the code never mentions and the clerk's counter will.

Sends it backwards: a late answer. California's court page is explicit that a tenant may file one at any time before you request entry of default, so the longer you wait to ask, the longer their window stays open.

Hearing, judgment, and the days that belong to nobody

If the tenant does nothing, stages five through seven collapse into paperwork. If the tenant appears, the calendar takes over, and each state has written a promise about speed that its clerks then have to keep.

CCP § 1170.5(a) requires trial not later than the 20th day after the request to set, and issues a writ of execution immediately on request if the plaintiff prevails. RCW 59.18.370 fixes the show cause hearing at not less than seven nor more than thirty days from service of the order. Florida § 83.59(2) simply commands the court to "advance the cause on the calendar." Texas builds in a pause: § 24.0061(b) forbids issuing a writ before the sixth day after judgment unless a possession bond has been filed and approved, because § 24.005107(a) gives the tenant five days to appeal by bond.

Two things get decided here that owners rarely prepare for. Habitability is one — Florida § 83.60(1)(b) makes material noncompliance with the repair duty a complete defense to a nonpayment possession action, provided the tenant gave you written notice of the defect at least seven days earlier saying they meant to stop paying because of it. So the argument you have been having about who was supposed to pay for the repair walks into the courtroom with you. The money judgment is the other. It is separate from possession and does not touch the deposit, which is still held under your state's deposit rules and still needs its itemization on the statutory clock once the unit is empty.

How you reach the hearing — a request to set, a show cause order, a date already on the citation — is your court's local answer rather than the statute's. Look it up before assuming one of the four patterns above applies.

Sends it backwards: a continuance, a motion to quash, a demurrer, a motion to set aside a default, a stay of execution.

The sheriff's leg: 24 hours in Florida, five days in California

The final waiting period is short and wildly inconsistent. Florida, 24 hours posted on the door. Texas, a warning of at least 8.5 by 11 inches on the exterior of the front door stating a time not sooner than 24 hours after posting, under § 24.0061(d)(1); the next subsection, (b-1), requires the officer to serve the writ by the fifth business day after issuance and declares issuance itself "a ministerial act not subject to review or delay." Washington, three days after the sheriff serves the writ, under RCW 59.18.390(1). California, five days from service on an occupant under CCP § 715.020(c), the statute adding that the usual extension-of-time rules do not reach it.

Execution pricing, read the same day: Florida $90, being $40 for the writ plus the $50 that § 30.231(1)(b) adds where a levy is required. California $125 under Government Code § 26722. Travis County, Texas, $205 payable to the JP court. Washington prints $25 in RCW 36.18.040(1)(e) to serve a writ of restitution without aid of the county and $40 plus $30 an hour with it in (1)(f) — both replaceable by the county under subsection (3), so the civil desk quotes a deposit of its own rather than either figure. Add standby time if you want the deputy to wait while you change the locks, which Florida § 83.62(2) allows at an hourly rate the sheriff sets.

Sends it backwards: in Washington, a written partial-payment agreement signed by both parties, which the statute makes the tenant's job to deliver to the sheriff and the sheriff's job to honour on receipt.

Doing the last stage yourself has a published price

Every state closes this door by statute, and two of the four attach a published price to going through it anyway. The two prices are built differently.

California's Civil Code § 789.3 is the clearest. A landlord intending to end the occupancy may not willfully cut off water, heat, light, electricity, gas, telephone, elevator or refrigeration, whether or not the utility is under the landlord's control. Nor block access by changing locks or using a bootlock, nor remove outside doors or windows, nor remove the tenant's belongings. Liability is actual damages, up to $100 for each day or part of a day the violation continues, never less than $250 per cause of action, and attorney's fees to the prevailing party.

Texas has the one real exception, and it is narrower than the forums make it sound. Section 92.0081(b) bars preventing a tenant from entering "except by judicial process," then carves out changing the locks on a delinquent tenant's own door. Every condition attaches: the right must be in the lease; notice goes out five days ahead by mail or three by hand or posting; and the door notice must give an on-site location, or a number answered 24 hours a day that produces a key within two hours. Subsection (f) removes the last doubt — the key goes to the tenant whether or not any rent is paid.

Miss any of it and subsection (h) gives the tenant possession or the right to end the lease, plus a civil penalty of one month's rent and $1,000, actual damages, costs and attorney's fees; withhold the key and (i) adds another month's rent. Subsection (a) forbids removing a door, window or lock except for a bona fide repair, (k) forbids the change while anyone is inside or more than once in a rental period, and (j) voids any lease clause waiving the section. Texas permits more here than the other three and still does not permit an eviction — a pressure tactic with a statutory receipt, not a way to get the unit back.

Out of order: what you get to redo, and what you don't

Stages one through three are recoverable. Expensive, but recoverable. A bad notice usually means dismissal without prejudice and a restart at day zero, several weeks older, and Florida softens even that: § 83.60(1)(a) says the landlord "must be given an opportunity to cure a deficiency in a notice or in the pleadings before dismissal of the action." Bad service is fixed by serving again. Filing a day early is fixed by filing again.

Stage five out of order is the common self-inflicted one. Ask for a default before the response window closes and it gets rejected; in California the request is also the thing that shuts that window, so asking late donates the tenant the extra days.

The two that are not recoverable sit at the ends. Skipping the Texas certified-mail demand costs your attorney's fees permanently for that suit, and no amount of winning brings them back. And taking possession yourself at any point — after judgment, after the writ issues, an hour before the deputy is due — turns a case you were winning into a case you are defending, with the day counter running and the fees flowing the other way.

The order exists because each stage produces the document the next one requires. A notice with the wrong number on it produces a complaint the court cannot grant. A writ with no proof of service behind it is paper the sheriff's civil desk hands back. Work out which document each stage is supposed to hand you, and the sequence stops being a rule you obey and becomes something you can check — which is all this page is for. It is the published skeleton in four states, read on one day, and it is not advice about your case. Once a tenant files anything at all, an hour with a landlord-tenant attorney where the house sits costs less than the week a wrong guess takes back.