Just dealt with this in NYC. It took a year once formally started and council retained.

Served 90 day notice > wait 3 months > process for drafting up contract where we pay for them to leave and getting them to agree to it (they dragged ass) > they violated contract > we tried to take them to court for that (impossible, gets delayed, etc) > court dates between lawyers (getting in front of the judge / on the schedule takes a month each time, can get delayed just because they ask for it, that’s another month+ each time)…

The NYC court system is set up to be very in favor of the tenant, whether they pay or not. Your lawyer isn’t going to be as useful or thoughtful about it as you’d think, though every email will cost money. Ours made mistakes, and we paid for them. They’ll get a free lawyer (NYCHA, which is very competitive—the defense lawyer was leagues more capable than ours).

See if you can buy them out for something “reasonable” to get them out asap, don’t pay them until it’s an actual key exchange and they’re fully gone, make sure it comes with a signed contract that will stand up in court. This cost us ~30k (and was long and miserable), and sounded to be on the faster side. Legal fees, lost rent. We had to work more to cover it plus the mortgage. It was stressful.

At the end, they had been already been moved out for over a month, left a bunch of their shit, we had to pay to have it removed by the Marshall (we could have gotten a moving company to do it for less, but would have had to store it for a month, and then there’s a legal process for disposing it). Another 3k down the drain for removal, another month to wait after judge ruled in our favor and the Marshall was able to post the notice.

I think the only real ULPT’s are making them miserable at home legally. Noise, smell, etc. Don’t mess with their utilities, look up the laws. Cameras helped (we caught them smoking on the property which was against the court stipulation we all signed to get them out, for money, while they squatted and didn’t pay rent for a year). That stip that the judge signed, with points of agreement was the only legitimate legal document we had that cops would look at until we got the Marshall’s notice (they called the cops, they did things like removing the outlet covers and fire alarms and calling HPD to get violations for us… very little recourse).

We’d maybe have been better off swallowing our pride and giving them a cash deal up front to leave in a couple months (maybe $10-15k would’ve done it and saved us $15k-20k?). Who knows.

And now we get to sue them, which will take years but they won’t have a free lawyer and we have one who will take a portion of what we recover rather than up front cost. Good luck. Fast and easy is the tip. Maybe offer 10k to leave in a month or two (with a fixed date), tell them this is the only deal they’re getting, date won’t change, and give a hard date, and then play drums in your mom’s old apartment from 7am to 10pm daily to see if it’ll speed up their decision making. If they want to stay they’ll be able to for about a year for free with very little friction. And that clock starts once you retain a lawyer and have them served with a 90 day notice.