A colleague of mine took a listing that should have been routine. An elderly client of his owned several properties and had left one of them, a Silicon Valley townhouse, empty for years. She did not need the space and had never gotten around to selling it, so it just sat. When she finally decided to sell, she told my colleague what to expect inside: original condition, decades old, the same interior it had when she bought it.
He signed the listing agreement, drove out to the townhouse, and opened the door to a home he did not recognize. The interior was freshly renovated. New finishes, modern work, none of it done by the owner or anyone in her family. When he started digging, the picture got stranger. The unit was occupied. Someone was renting it out to tenants, collecting the rent, and the owner had no idea. She ended up having to pursue eviction to get her own property back.
Behind it was an organized ring operating out of Nevada. They looked for long-vacant homes belonging to elderly owners, let themselves in with no visible sign of a break-in, renovated at their own expense to make the unit rentable, and then leased it out and pocketed the money. It sounds almost too strange to be real, and it is rare. But it happened, and it happened because a home sat empty and unwatched for years. That is the thread worth pulling on. Not the drama, but the ordinary condition that made it possible.
Why the Bay Area has so many quietly vacant homes
Empty homes are more common here than most people assume, and usually for undramatic reasons. Plenty of owners hold more than one property. They bought a place, moved up or moved out, and kept the old one rather than sell into a down month or trigger a tax event. Others inherited a home from a parent and have not decided what to do with it, so it waits while the family sorts through grief and logistics. Still others moved for work or family, meant to come back, and simply never did.
None of that is careless. It is how a lot of long-held Bay Area real estate ends up in limbo: valuable, paid off or nearly so, and standing empty month after month with no one really watching it. The problem is not the vacancy itself. It is that a home no one visits quietly stops being monitored, and small problems get months or years to grow before anyone notices.
What can go wrong with a long-vacant home
Squatters and unauthorized occupants
The story above is the extreme version, but the underlying risk is real and much more mundane most of the time. An empty home is an opportunity for someone to move in without permission. Once a person is established inside a property, getting them out is rarely a quick phone call. In California, removing an occupant who has settled in generally becomes an eviction-track legal process, and that process is built to be deliberate, which means it is slow and can be costly. You do not get to simply reclaim the space because you hold the deed.
This is the part owners most often get wrong, so it is worth stating plainly: this guide is general education, not legal advice. If you find someone living in a home you own, the move is to talk to a real-estate attorney before you do anything else. The specifics depend on how the occupancy started and how it is documented, and those specifics decide what path you are on. A lawyer can tell you which one you are actually facing.
Insurance: the coverage you think you have may not apply
Here is a gap that surprises even careful owners. A standard homeowners policy is written for a home someone lives in. In general terms, and your own policy controls here, most policies restrict or exclude coverage once a property has been vacant for an extended stretch, on the theory that an empty home carries more risk: no one is there to catch the leak, smell the smoke, or notice the broken window. If a loss happens during a long vacancy, you may discover the claim is limited or denied at the worst possible moment.
I am not going to put a day-count on that, because the trigger varies by carrier and by policy, and a number I made up would not help you. The right move is to call your insurance carrier and ask directly: how does my policy treat an extended vacancy, and do you offer a vacancy provision or a vacant-home endorsement (an add-on written specifically to cover a home no one is living in)? Ask the question before the home sits empty, not after something goes wrong. This is a conversation for a licensed insurance professional, and it is worth having early.
Deferred maintenance, water leaks, and pests
Most of what damages a vacant home is not dramatic. It is small and slow. A slow drip under a sink runs for months instead of hours because no one is there to hear it. A roof leak stains, then rots, then spreads. Rodents and insects move into a quiet, undisturbed house and settle in. A water heater fails and floods a room that nobody enters. In an occupied home you catch these things in a day. In an empty one, they compound, and the repair bill at the end is a multiple of what it would have been.
The neighborhood notices
A home that is obviously empty sends a signal. Piled-up mail, an overgrown yard, dark windows night after night, and a driveway that never has a car in it all say the same thing to anyone paying attention: no one is watching this place. That is exactly the read the people in the story above were looking for. Most vacant homes never attract anyone with bad intent, but the ones that look abandoned raise the odds.
A prevention checklist for owners of a vacant home
None of this requires turning your empty property into a fortress. A short routine, done consistently, closes most of the gap.
- Have someone walk through on a regular schedule. A person you trust, a property manager, or your agent should go inside, not just drive past. Set a real cadence and keep it.
- Look for signs of entry. Check doors and windows, locks that feel different, a window that will not latch, fresh marks around a frame, or anything inside that you did not leave that way. In the story above, there was no visible break-in, so pay attention to the inside of the home, not just the doors.
- Watch the mail and utilities. Have mail forwarded or collected so it does not pile up. Keep an eye on utility usage: water or power being used in a home no one lives in is a signal worth chasing down.
- Make the home look lived-in. Timed interior lights, a maintained yard, and a car in the driveway now and then all cut against the abandoned look. An occupied-seeming home is a less appealing target.
- Know your insurance status. Confirm with your carrier how your policy treats the vacancy and whether you need a vacant-home endorsement. Do not assume the coverage you bought for an occupied home still fully applies.
- Document the condition with dated photos. Walk the home, take clear photos, and note the date. If anything ever changes, whether damage or an unauthorized occupant, a dated record of how the home actually looked is far more useful than your memory.
The real decision: rent it, sell it, or keep deferring
Step back and the honest truth is that most long-vacant homes are not a plan. They are a decision that keeps getting postponed. Keeping a home empty year after year is not the same as choosing to hold it. It is choosing not to choose, and that is the state in which the risks above quietly accumulate.
There are really only two deliberate paths. You can rent it out, which means treating it as a real rental: proper tenant screening, a real lease, and either your own management or a professional's. Or you can sell it and convert a dormant asset into something you can actually use or reinvest. Both are legitimate. What serves no one is the third option by default, the home that just sits, uninsured for its actual condition and unwatched.
If you own a home that has been empty for a while and you are not sure which way to go, I am glad to think it through with you. I have been in real estate since 2007 and California licensed since 2016, and across the Bay Area I have closed 104 documented transactions and more than $115M in volume from 2017 to 2026, most of it on the buyer side. That means I have sat with a lot of owners weighing exactly this question, including owners of inherited and long-held property who did not know what a fair sale would even look like. I can help you compare what the home would bring as a sale against what it would do as a rental, and point you to the right professionals for the legal and insurance pieces. Every situation is different, and I am not going to pretend there is one right answer for everyone. Send me a message and we will start with yours.
Lily Garipova, REALTOR®, Cal DRE #02010731.
Email: lilyagaripova@gmail.com
Phone: (415) 910-3958
Web: lilygaripova.com
Fremont, CA
FAQ
How do squatters get into a house with no visible break-in?
Often through an unlocked or poorly secured door or window, a lockbox left in place, or by simply presenting themselves as if they belong there. A home that has sat empty for a long time is an easy target because no one is checking it, and by the time anyone looks, someone may already be established inside. That is why regular walk-throughs and secured entry points matter more than they seem to.
Can I just change the locks if I find someone living in my vacant house?
Generally, no. Once someone has established occupancy in a property, removing them is usually an eviction-track legal matter, not something you can resolve with a self-help lockout, and doing it yourself can put you on the wrong side of the law. The right first step is to talk to a real-estate attorney, who can tell you which process actually applies to your situation. This is general education, not legal advice.
Does my home insurance cover a vacant house?
Often not fully. Standard homeowners policies commonly restrict or exclude coverage once a home has been vacant for an extended period, because an empty home carries more risk. Rather than assume you are covered, call your carrier and ask how your policy treats an extended vacancy and whether you need a vacancy provision or a vacant-home endorsement written for exactly that situation. Have that conversation before the home sits empty.
What should I do with a home I have left empty for years?
The two deliberate options are renting it out or selling it. If you rent, treat it as a real rental with proper tenant screening and a real lease. If you sell, you turn a dormant, at-risk asset into something you can use. Leaving it empty indefinitely is usually a postponed decision rather than a plan, and it is the state in which problems accumulate. Talk it through before you default into another year of waiting.
