{ "_meta": { "dataset": "Landlord Atlas 50-State Landlord-Tenant Law Dataset", "dataset_version": "1.28.1", "published_at": "2026-09-05T13:40:00Z", "license": "https://landlordatlas.com/data/license/", "attribution": "Landlord Atlas (https://landlordatlas.com) — cite by name, link the relevant page, and carry the record's verification date.", "disclaimer": "Landlord Atlas is not a law firm. This dataset provides general information about state landlord-tenant statutes for informational purposes only. It is not legal advice and is not a substitute for the advice of an attorney. Use of this data does not create an attorney-client relationship. Laws change: rely on the citations and verification dates carried in each record, and confirm against the cited statute before acting.", "schema": "https://landlordatlas.com/data/schema.json", "changelog": "https://landlordatlas.com/data/changelog.json", "version_manifest": "https://landlordatlas.com/data/version.json", "contact": "contact@landlordatlas.com", "state": "Texas", "state_code": "TX", "canonical_page": "https://landlordatlas.com/laws/texas/", "per_state_url": "https://landlordatlas.com/data/states/tx.json" }, "record": { "state": "Texas", "state_code": "TX", "last_verified": "2026-07-07", "verified_by_method": "Web verification against the Texas State Law Library landlord-tenant guides (guides.sll.texas.gov, official state source summarizing Prop. Code ch. 92) and full statute text of Prop. Code §§ 92.019, 92.103, 92.104, 92.107, 92.109 via legal databases; statutes.capitol.texas.gov URLs cited for the official text. September 5, 2026 addendum: statutes.capitol.texas.gov stopped serving section text (it returns an application shell), so every statute citation on this record was re-pointed to the Texas Legislative Council's host at tcss.legis.texas.gov, and the eviction figures were re-read there the same day; the earlier reads stand as recorded.", "pending_legislation": [], "security_deposits": { "max_deposit": null, "return_deadline_days": 30, "return_deadline_conditions": "The clock starts when the tenant surrenders the premises, but the refund is not owed until the tenant gives the landlord a written forwarding address. Delay in giving that address does not forfeit the deposit; it simply means the clock has not started.\n\nThe refund is due on or before the 30th day after surrender (Prop. Code § 92.103), and the forwarding-address condition is § 92.107. A lease condition requiring advance notice of surrender is enforceable only if underlined or in conspicuous bold in the lease.", "itemization_required": true, "itemization_rules": "Written description and itemized list of all deductions required when any portion is retained (§ 92.104(c)), unless the tenant owes rent and there is no controversy over the amount. No deduction for normal wear and tear.", "separate_account_required": false, "interest_required": false, "interest_rules": null, "pet_deposit_rules": "No statutory cap or separate category; refundable pet deposits are treated as part of the security deposit subject to the same return and itemization rules.", "nonrefundable_fees_allowed": null, "penalty_for_violation": "A landlord who withholds a deposit in bad faith owes $100 plus three times the portion wrongfully withheld plus reasonable attorney's fees. Bad faith is presumed if the landlord neither refunds nor itemizes within 30 days.\n\nThe damages are set by Prop. Code § 92.109(a) and the presumption by § 92.109(d); the landlord bears the burden of proving the retention was reasonable. A bad-faith failure to itemize separately forfeits the right to withhold anything or to sue for damages.", "tenant_forwarding_address_duty": "Tenant must give a written forwarding address before the refund obligation arises (§ 92.107); right to the refund is not forfeited by delay.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.103", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm#92.103", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.104", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm#92.104", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.107", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm#92.107", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.109", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm#92.109", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a), (b), (d)" }, { "statute": "Texas State Law Library, Security Deposits guide", "url": "https://guides.sll.texas.gov/landlord-tenant-law/security-deposits", "official": true, "pinpoint": null } ], "summary_plain": "Texas places no cap on how much a landlord can charge as a security deposit, but the return rules have real teeth: the deposit (less lawful, itemized deductions — never normal wear and tear) is due within 30 days of surrender, once the tenant has provided a written forwarding address. A landlord who misses the 30-day mark is presumed to be acting in bad faith, and bad-faith withholding costs $100 plus three times the amount wrongfully withheld plus the tenant's attorney's fees. The tenant may not apply the deposit to the last month's rent.", "notes": [ { "label": "No cap at all — the blank field is the finding", "text": "The maximum-deposit answer is empty because no Texas statute caps a residential security deposit. The blank records an absence of law, not a missing number." }, { "label": "The deposit is not the last month's rent", "text": "§ 92.108 prohibits the tenant from withholding the last month's rent against the deposit." } ] }, "rent_increase_notice": { "notice_days_month_to_month": null, "notice_varies_by_increase_size": null, "fixed_term_rules": "Rent is fixed for the lease term unless the lease provides otherwise; increases take effect at renewal.", "rent_control_state": false, "rent_control_details": "Texas has no statewide rent control, and local rent control is effectively prohibited except in narrow disaster circumstances with the governor's approval (Tex. Local Gov't Code § 214.902).", "local_control_preempted": false, "rent_regulation_preemption": { "topic_verified": "2026-08-12", "posture": "not_preempted", "posture_qualifier": "conditional_authorization", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Loc. Gov't Code § 214.902", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/LG/htm/LG.214.htm#214.902", "official": true, "pinpoint": null } ], "summary_plain": "Texas law allows a city to adopt rent control only in a declared housing emergency caused by a disaster and only with the governor's approval of the ordinance, which must end when the disaster declaration ends." }, "frequency_limits": null, "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 91.001", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.91.htm#91.001", "official": true, "pinpoint": null } ], "summary_plain": "Texas has no statute requiring a specific notice period for rent increases; for month-to-month tenancies the practical rule comes from the termination statute — a month-to-month tenancy can be ended with a month's notice, so an increase is effectively a month's-notice proposition the tenant can accept or leave on. There is no rent control anywhere in Texas — a city may adopt it only during a declared housing emergency caused by a disaster, and only with the governor's approval of the ordinance, a pathway no Texas city has ever used.", "notes": [ { "label": "The empty answer is a finding: no rent-increase notice statute exists", "text": "The month-to-month notice field is empty because no Texas statute sets a notice period for rent increases — there is no figure to record, rather than a figure the record is missing." }, { "label": "Where the one-month expectation actually comes from", "text": "The practical month's notice is derived from the termination mechanics of § 91.001 — notice equal to at least one month for a month-to-month tenancy — not from any rent-increase statute." } ] }, "late_fees": { "statutory_cap": "Safe harbor: a late fee is presumptively reasonable up to 12% of monthly rent (structure with 4 or fewer units) or 10% (more than 4 units); higher fees are lawful only if justified as uncertain damages from late payment (§ 92.019(a-1)). Initial + daily fees combine into a single fee for the cap.", "grace_period_days": 2, "must_be_in_lease": true, "daily_fees_allowed": "Yes — an initial fee plus a daily fee per day unpaid, but the combined total is one late fee measured against the reasonableness standard.", "reasonableness_standard": "Fees within the 12%/10% safe harbor are presumed reasonable; above it, the landlord bears the burden of proving the fee tracks uncertain damages including collection costs and overhead.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.019", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm#92.019", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a), (a-1), (b), (c)" } ], "summary_plain": "Texas allows a residential late fee only if it is in the written lease and rent has remained unpaid for two full days after the due date — rent due on the 1st cannot draw a fee before the 4th. A fee is automatically considered reasonable up to 12% of a month's rent in buildings of four or fewer units, or 10% in larger buildings, counting initial and daily fees together. Charging an unlawful late fee costs the landlord $100 plus three times the fee collected plus the tenant's attorney's fees, and the statute cannot be waived by lease language.", "notes": [ { "label": "Two full days unpaid is a charging precondition, not a grace period", "text": "§ 92.019(a)(3) frames the 'two full days unpaid' rule as a precondition to charging a late fee, not as a grace period granted to the tenant." }, { "label": "Why the record still shows a 2-day grace period", "text": "This page shows the precondition as a 2-day grace period because it functions as a mandatory minimum, even though the statute is written the other way around." } ] }, "entry_notice": { "notice_hours": null, "notice_standard": "No Texas statute requires advance notice before landlord entry; entry rights are governed by the lease.", "permitted_reasons": "Texas law does not enumerate permitted entry reasons. Entry is limited to whatever the lease provides, bounded by the tenant's possessory rights — entry without lease authority can constitute trespass — and by specific statutes on lockouts (§ 92.0081) and smoke-alarm inspection duties.", "emergency_exception": true, "time_of_day_restrictions": null, "citations": [ { "statute": "Texas State Law Library, Landlord-Tenant Law guide", "url": "https://guides.sll.texas.gov/landlord-tenant-law", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.0081", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm#92.0081", "official": true, "pinpoint": null } ], "summary_plain": "Texas has no statute requiring landlords to give advance notice before entering a rental unit — entry rights come entirely from the lease. Most Texas leases (including the widely used TAA form) grant entry for repairs and showings with some notice, and a landlord entering without any lease authority risks trespass liability. The one heavily regulated entry-adjacent area is lockouts, which § 92.0081 tightly restricts.", "notes": [ { "label": "The blank means no statute exists, not that data is missing", "text": "The entry-notice answer is empty because no Texas entry-notice statute exists." }, { "label": "'No statutory notice' is not 'unrestricted entry'", "text": "Read that empty answer as the absence of a statutory floor, not as an absence of limits — entry rights are governed by the lease." }, { "label": "Why a topic with no statute still carries citations", "text": "The Texas State Law Library guide is cited because it confirms the absence of an entry-notice statute; § 92.0081 is cited because it covers the adjacent lockout rules." } ] }, "eviction_process": { "topic_verified": "2026-09-05", "notice_nonpayment_days": 3, "notice_nonpayment_rules": "That period is a lease-modifiable default, not a floor: the lease can shorten or lengthen it, and many Texas leases cut it to one day. Since January 1, 2026 a tenant never late before must instead get a notice to pay rent or vacate, and paying inside the window stops the eviction.\n\nProp. Code § 24.005(a): at least three days' written notice to vacate before filing, 'unless the parties have contracted for a shorter or longer notice period in a written lease or agreement' — the 3 days is a lease-modifiable DEFAULT, and Texas leases (including the standard TAA form) routinely shorten it to as little as one day. SB 38 (89th Leg., ch. 960, eff. Jan. 1, 2026) added a limited pay-and-stay rule: a tenant terminated SOLELY for nonpayment who was NOT late or delinquent before the month of the notice must be given a 'notice to pay rent or vacate' (paying within the notice period defeats the eviction); a tenant who was late before may be given either that form or a flat notice to vacate. There is NO statutory right to cure after suit is filed and no post-judgment reinstatement — the only later 'stay' is possession during appeal by perfecting the appeal and paying rent into the court registry (§§ 24.0053, 24.0054). Delivery per § 24.005(f-3): mail (first-class, registered, certified, or delivery service), delivery to a conspicuous place inside the premises, hand delivery to any tenant 16 or older, or (if agreed in writing) e-mail/electronic; actual receipt cures any method defect (f-4). Day counting per § 24.0042 (new, SB 38): calendar days — exclude the trigger day, count weekends and holidays, extend the last day past a Saturday, Sunday, or state/federal holiday.", "notice_lease_violation_days": 3, "notice_lease_violation_rules": "For a lease violation other than nonpayment, Texas gives the tenant no right to cure: the same three days' written notice to vacate applies, and it is unconditional unless the lease itself grants a cure right. The lease can shorten or lengthen the three days.\n\nSame statute, same default: § 24.005(a) requires at least three days' written notice to vacate for a tenant who 'defaults' (any lease violation) or holds over, lease-modifiable in either direction. Texas has NO statutory cure-or-quit ladder — the notice for a lease violation is unconditional unless the lease itself grants a cure right, making Texas an outlier against states with 10/14/30-day cure schemes. A holdover eviction additionally requires compliance with the tenancy-termination notice of § 91.001 (one month for month-to-month). No statutory repeat-violation escalation exists because there is no first-violation cure right to escalate from.", "unconditional_quit_grounds": "In Texas essentially ALL grounds are 'unconditional quit' — no statute gives a tenant a right to cure any violation (the sole statutory cure is the new SB 38 pay-or-vacate notice for first-time nonpayment, § 24.005(a)). There is no separate expedited track for criminal activity or irreparable breach against tenants. Occupants who committed forcible ENTRY (no lease, no colorable claim — squatters) may be given oral or written notice to vacate 'immediately or by a specified deadline' (§ 24.005(d)), and against them the landlord may file a sworn motion for summary disposition with the petition (§ 24.005106, new in 2026): the occupant has 4 days from service to respond, and the court may enter judgment without any trial if no facts are genuinely disputed.", "court_and_action": "The action is an 'eviction suit' — the statutory umbrella for forcible detainer (tenant holding over after termination, § 24.002) and forcible entry and detainer (occupant who entered without authority, § 24.001) — filed in the justice court of the precinct where the property sits (§§ 24.004, 24.0041); justice courts have no jurisdiction over title, counterclaims, or third-party joinder. Procedure is governed exclusively by Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 510, completely rewritten effective January 1, 2026 (Supreme Court Misc. Docket Nos. 25-9096/25-9105) to implement SB 38; the general justice-court Rules 500–507 no longer apply to eviction cases, courts may not modify or suspend Rule 510, and § 24.0043 provides that only the legislature may modify or suspend chapter-24 procedures (nullifying local eviction ordinances and judicial moratoria). Either party may demand a jury (3 days before trial); nonlawyer agents may represent parties in justice court (§ 24.011). Appeal is de novo to county court: transcript forwarded between the 6th and 10th day after appeal, county-court trial within 21 days of the papers' delivery (§ 24.005107(b)-(c)).", "filing_to_hearing": "§ 24.0051(g) (SB 38) and Rule 510.8(b)(10): trial must be set not earlier than the 10th day and not later than the 21st day after the petition is filed, and not earlier than the 4th day after the tenant is served; postponements are capped at 7 days absent the parties' written agreement. The constable/sheriff must make a diligent effort to serve the citation within 5 business days of filing, after which the landlord may substitute any trained law-enforcement officer (§ 24.0051(f)). In a summary-disposition (forcible-entry/squatter) case the court may enter judgment without trial once the 4-day response window passes (§ 24.005106). Note the pre-2026 6-day-minimum/10-day-maximum trial window is repealed — the floor is now 10 days.", "writ_and_lockout": "The possession writ is the 'writ of possession.' It may not issue before the 6th day after the judgment for possession is rendered (§ 24.0061(b)); Rule 510.18(g)(1) states it as the LATER of the 6th day after the judgment is signed or the day after the tenant's appeal deadline, and a perfected appeal (with registry rent, where required) blocks issuance. Issuance on demand is 'a ministerial act not subject to review or delay' (§ 24.0061(b-1), new). The officer must serve the writ within 5 business days of issuance or the landlord may substitute another trained officer; execution requires a written warning of at least 8-1/2 by 11 inches posted on the front door stating an execution date/time 'not sooner than 24 hours after the warning is posted' (§ 24.0061(d)(1)), after which the officer delivers possession and removes tenants and property. The writ goes stale: it may not issue more than 60 days (extendable for good cause to 90) nor be executed more than 90 days after judgment (Rule 510.18(g)). Faster path: a landlord who files and serves a possession bond may obtain an immediate writ 7 days after the tenant is served with notice, unless the tenant appeals within that window (§ 24.0061(b), Rule 510.9). CARES-covered properties: § 24.005(c-1) (SB 38) lets the landlord file without waiting out the federal 30-day notice, but the writ may not be SERVED until the time since notice delivery equals the federal period.", "appeal_window_days": 5, "timeline_uncontested": "About three weeks at the statutory minimum for an uncontested nonpayment case — roughly 20 days from notice to an enforceable lockout — though court congestion and service delays extend it.\n\nDerived from the statutory minimums cited on this page, not a promise: a 3-day notice to vacate (calendar days, last day extended past weekends and holidays; leases often shorten it), then the petition is filed and the citation served within about 5 business days, then trial no earlier than the 10th and no later than the 21st day after filing, then judgment, then the 5-day appeal window, then a writ of possession issuing no earlier than the 6th day after judgment, then a 24-hour posted warning, then the lockout. The arithmetic: 3 + 10 + 6 + 1 ≈ 20 days from notice to enforceable lockout; a lease-shortened notice or possession bond can trim a few days, while service delays, the 21-day outer trial limit, jury demands, appeals (de novo in county court with rent paid into the registry), or court congestion extend it.", "self_help_prohibited": true, "self_help_rules": "A Texas landlord may not shut a tenant out of the unit except through judicial process. An unlawful lockout or utility shutoff costs one month's rent plus $1,000, plus actual damages, court costs, and attorney's fees, and the tenant can get back in through an emergency court order.\n\nProp. Code § 92.0081(b): a landlord 'may not intentionally prevent a tenant from entering the leased premises except by judicial process,' with narrow exceptions (bona fide repairs/construction/emergency, removing abandoned contents, and a rent-delinquency lock change). The lock-change exception is NOT an eviction tool: it requires lease authorization plus 3–5 days' advance written notice, and the landlord must hand over the new key on request, 24/7, 'without regard to whether the tenant pays the delinquent rent' (§ 92.0081(f)). Violations let the tenant recover possession or terminate, plus a civil penalty of one month's rent plus $1,000, actual damages, costs, and attorney's fees (§ 92.0081(h)), plus an additional month's rent for refusing the key (i); lease waivers are void (j). Utility interruption is separately barred by § 92.008 (except a tightly regulated submetered-electric nonpayment scheme) with the same one-month's-rent-plus-$1,000 remedy (§ 92.008(f)). Tenants have fast-track remedies: an ex parte writ of reentry after an unlawful lockout (§ 92.009) and a writ of restoration after an unlawful utility shutoff (§ 92.0091), both from the justice court.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 24.005", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.24.htm#24.005", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a), (c-1), (d), (f-3), (f-4)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 24.0042", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.24.htm#24.0042", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 24.0051", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.24.htm#24.0051", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(f), (g)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 24.005106", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.24.htm#24.005106", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a)-(c)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 24.005107", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.24.htm#24.005107", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a)-(c)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 24.0061", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.24.htm#24.0061", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(b), (b-1), (d)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.008", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm#92.008", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a), (b), (f)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.0081", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm#92.0081", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(b), (f), (h)-(j)" }, { "statute": "Tex. R. Civ. P. 510 (eff. Jan. 1, 2026), Sup. Ct. Misc. Docket No. 25-9105", "url": "https://www.txcourts.gov/media/1461822/259105.pdf", "official": true, "pinpoint": "510.8(b)(10), 510.9, 510.18(g), 510.19(a)" } ], "summary_plain": "Texas evictions start with a written notice to vacate whose statutory default is three days — but the lease can shorten or lengthen that period, and many standard leases cut it to 24 hours. Since January 1, 2026 (Senate Bill 38, the biggest rewrite of Texas eviction law in decades), a tenant being evicted solely for nonpayment who was never late before must instead get a 'notice to pay rent or vacate' and can stay by paying within the notice period; repeat-late tenants can still get a flat notice to vacate, and no ground other than that carries any statutory right to cure. The landlord then files an eviction suit in the justice court for the precinct, the constable serves the citation within about five business days, and trial lands between the 10th and 21st day after filing under the completely rewritten Rule 510. Either side has five days after the judgment is signed to appeal for a fresh trial in county court — a tenant who appeals stays in possession only by paying rent into the court registry — and once the five days pass, the writ of possession can issue on the sixth day, the officer posts a 24-hour warning on the door, and the lockout follows: a best-case span of roughly three weeks from notice to lockout, derived from the statutory minimums. Against true squatters the landlord can seek summary disposition and win without any trial if the occupant does not raise a genuine factual dispute within four days of being served. Self-help eviction is prohibited — a landlord may exclude a tenant only through judicial process, and even the narrow lease-authorized lock-change for unpaid rent obliges the landlord to hand over the new key around the clock whether or not the tenant pays; an unlawful lockout or utility shutoff costs one month's rent plus $1,000, plus actual damages and attorney's fees, and the tenant can get back in through an ex parte writ of reentry.", "notes": [ { "label": "Stale-source trap: nearly every pre-2026 summary is wrong", "text": "SB 38 (89th Leg., ch. 960) rewrote Property Code chapter 24 and Rule 510 effective January 1, 2026. Virtually every secondary source predating 2026 misstates current law." }, { "label": "What SB 38 repealed", "text": "Gone are the old 6-day-minimum trial setting, § 24.005's old subsections (f)-(i), and the general justice-court rules' application to eviction cases." }, { "label": "The '3-day notice' is a default, not a floor", "text": "§ 24.005(a) lets the parties contract for a 'shorter or longer' notice period, so three days is a lease-modifiable default. It must not be presented as a statutory minimum." }, { "label": "The pay-or-vacate rule is already being garbled", "text": "Secondary sources are reporting the new rule as 'notice to vacate requires two months' delinquency.' The statute actually turns on whether the tenant was late before the month of the notice, not on months of arrears." }, { "label": "Summary disposition targets squatters, not holdover tenants", "text": "§ 24.005106 attaches to petitions alleging forcible entry and detainer — occupants with no colorable right. Rule 510.10(b) separately allows ordinary Rule 503.2 summary-disposition motions in forcible detainer suits." }, { "label": "CARES Act properties: the limit lands on the writ, not the filing", "text": "§ 24.005(c-1) now expressly permits filing without waiting out the federal 30-day notice period, but bars service of the writ until the federal period has run from notice delivery." }, { "label": "Day counting is set at chapter level", "text": "§ 24.0042 and Rule 510.4 impose calendar-day counting with the last day extended past a weekend or holiday. Because the rule sits at chapter level it governs the 3-day notice, the 5-day appeal, and the 6-day writ alike." }, { "label": "The 5-day appeal window runs from signing", "text": "The appeal clock starts the day the judgment is signed (§ 24.005107(a), Rule 510.19(a)), and SB 38 added the tenant's perjury-backed affirmation of a meritorious defense." }, { "label": "Manufactured-home communities are a separate scheme", "text": "Termination and eviction in manufactured-home communities run under Property Code chapter 94, subchapter E; its figures must not bleed into the chapter-24 process described here." }, { "label": "Local eviction-notice ordinances are preempted", "text": "City eviction-notice ordinances — Dallas, and Austin's pre-2026 rules, for example — are now preempted territory under §§ 24.0043 and 24.005(e)." }, { "label": "No 2026 bill can change this", "text": "Texas has a biennial legislature and the 89th's sessions concluded in 2025, so no live 2026 bill can amend these provisions." }, { "label": "Currency of the cited text", "text": "As of September 5, 2026 the cited chapter 24 and chapter 92 sections on tcss.legis.texas.gov were current through the 89th Legislature's 2nd Called Session, with the SB 38 amendments fully consolidated. Rule 510 is cited to the Supreme Court's final amendment order (Misc. Docket No. 25-9105)." } ] }, "lease_termination": { "topic_verified": "2026-09-02", "verified_by_method": "Direct reading of the statutory text on the Texas Legislative Council's static statute host, tcss.legis.texas.gov, which is the source behind the Legislature's statutes site: Property Code chapter 91 in full (five sections), chapter 92 in full (all nine subchapters, 118 sections), chapter 24 in full (26 sections), chapter 1 (four sections) for the preemption provision, chapter 54 for the landlord's-lien treatment of abandonment, and chapter 94 for the manufactured-home-lot pointer; Family Code Title 4 chapters 71, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 91, 92 and 93; Code of Criminal Procedure chapter 7B; Government Code chapters 431, 434 and 437; and Business and Commerce Code chapters 17 and 51. The chapter files carry no currency or edition banner of any kind, which was established by searching the served text for current, through, effective as of and updated; currency rests instead on the credit lines plus the session calendar. The newest credit line in any chapter read is Acts 2025, 89th Leg., 2nd C.S., Ch. 7 (H.B. 16), effective January 1, 2026, so the text incorporates the 89th Legislature's regular session and both called sessions, and Texas holds no 2026 regular session. Enactment currency was established by extracting every credit line in Property Code chapters 1, 24, 91 and 92 for acts of 2023 through 2026 and reading each 2025 act that touched this topic from its enrolled text on capitol.texas.gov, with signing dates taken from the Legislature's own bill-history pages; three different applicability shapes turned up in one session (filing-triggered, all-tenancies, and lease-triggered), which is why each act was read rather than inferred from its effective date. Court decisions read in full: Austin Hill Country Realty, Inc. v. Palisades Plaza, Inc., 948 S.W.2d 293 (Tex. 1997), from the official reporter text; Coinmach Corp. v. Aspenwood Apartment Corp., 417 S.W.3d 909 (Tex. 2013); and, from the Third Court of Appeals' own opinion documents and dockets, Cave v. Kensington Apartments Austin, LP, No. 03-24-00442-CV (July 24, 2026), and State of Texas v. City of Houston, No. 03-23-00531-CV (July 18, 2025) with its subsequent history through the August 2026 docket entries. Verification date September 2, 2026; the appellate picture for the federal 30-day notice was read the same day.", "governing_law_plain": "Two Property Code chapters carry the residential termination rules and neither displaces the other. Chapter 92 is the residential chapter: it applies only to the relationship between landlords and tenants of residential rental property, and it holds the victim-termination, military, tenant-death, casualty, lockout, security-device and disclosure provisions. Chapter 91 is headed provisions generally applicable to landlords and tenants, is not limited to dwellings, and holds the two rules at the center of this topic: the periodic-termination notice in section 91.001 and the duty to mitigate in section 91.006. Because chapter 91 is the general chapter, its duty to mitigate reaches commercial and residential leases alike, which is why the leading decision on the standard and the burden comes from a commercial case. Chapter 24 governs the eviction suit and supplies the notice to vacate, the computation of time, and, since 2026, the interaction with federal pre-eviction notice periods; a landlord ending a month-to-month tenancy has to satisfy chapter 91 first and chapter 24 second. Chapter 1 supplies the preemption rule that voids conflicting city and county ordinances. Manufactured-home lot tenancies are governed by a separate chapter and are covered on the manufactured-home-park page.", "applicability": null, "periodic_notice": { "landlord_days": 30, "landlord_days_null_reason": null, "tenant_days": 30, "tenant_days_null_reason": null, "counting_anchor": [ "later_of", "calendar_month" ], "anchor_plain": "The statute states one calendar month, not 30 days, so the practical period is 28, 29, 30 or 31 days depending on the month the notice is given. The tenancy ends on the later of the date the notice names or one month after the day the notice was given, which means the count runs forward from the day of delivery and the ending date does not have to fall at the end of a rental period. Notice given on March 10 ends the tenancy on April 10 unless the notice names a later date. Where rent is paid for a period shorter than a month, the period is the number of days in that rent-paying period instead, so a week-to-week tenancy takes seven days.", "alignment_required": "not_required", "notice_ceiling_plain": null, "tiers_plain": "One month where the rent-paying period is at least a month, and a period equal to the number of days in the rent-paying period where it is shorter, which makes a week-to-week tenancy a seven-day tenancy. A separate 30-day period applies to a purchaser at a tax sale or a trustee's foreclosure sale who will not honor the lease of a residential tenant who is paying rent and is not otherwise in default. No period turns on how long the tenant has lived there, the building type, the size of the landlord's holdings, or the county.", "tier_conditions": [ "tenancy_length", "successor_owner" ], "waivable": "including_zero", "waivable_plain": "Texas has the widest waiver clause in the country on this question. Section 91.001, subsection (e), states that the notice rules do not apply if the landlord and the tenant have agreed, in an instrument signed by both parties, on a different period of notice or that no notice is required at all. The clause is section-specific rather than chapter-wide, it runs in both directions, and it lets a signed lease reduce the period to nothing. Most Texas apartment leases set their own period, so the statutory month is a default the lease usually replaces.", "mechanism": "standalone_statute", "common_law_fill_plain": null, "symmetry_mandate": true, "rules_plain": "Either the landlord or the tenant may end a monthly or month-to-month tenancy by giving the other notice of termination, and the same period governs both sides in a single sentence of the statute (section 91.001, subsections (a) and (b)). The tenancy ends on the later of the day named in the notice or one month after the day the notice is given; where the rent-paying period is shorter than a month, it ends on the later of the day named or the day after a period equal to the rent-paying period has run. If the tenancy ends on a day that does not match the beginning or end of a rent-paying period, the tenant owes rent only up to the ending date. The statute does not require the notice to be in writing, prescribes no delivery method, and states no content requirement, so a lease signed by both parties may set a different period or dispense with notice entirely, and it may also be displaced by a breach of contract recognized by law. A landlord who wants possession has to satisfy this section first and then serve the separate notice to vacate: section 24.005, subsection (a), says a landlord filing an eviction suit on the ground that the tenant is holding over past the end of the rental term or renewal period must also comply with section 91.001. A purchaser at a tax or foreclosure sale who will not continue the lease of a paying, non-defaulting residential tenant owes that tenant 30 days' written notice to vacate." }, "just_cause": { "posture": "none", "coverage_route": null, "coverage_plain": null, "no_fault_grounds_plain": null, "relocation_payment_plain": null, "local_preemption": "express_preemption", "local_preemption_plain": "Property Code section 1.004 bars a municipality or county, unless another statute expressly authorizes it, from adopting, enforcing, or maintaining an ordinance, order, or rule regulating conduct in a field the Property Code occupies, and says an ordinance that does so is void and unenforceable. Subsection (b) names the field expressly: an ordinance regulating evictions, or otherwise prohibiting, restricting, or delaying delivery of a notice to vacate or the filing of a suit for possession under chapter 24. A person or trade association injured by such an ordinance may sue for a declaration and an injunction. A challenge to the 2023 act that added the section was dismissed for want of standing by the Third Court of Appeals in 2025, rehearing was denied in April 2026, and a petition for review is pending in the Supreme Court of Texas; no court has held the section invalid. Rent regulation runs on a different track and is covered on the rent-increase page, where Texas allows a city to adopt rent control only in a housing emergency caused by a disaster and only with the governor's approval.", "sunset_date": null, "rules_plain": "No reason is required to end a periodic tenancy or to let a fixed term expire in Texas. The landlord-tenant chapters state no good-cause or just-cause standard, no non-renewal ground, and no protected class of tenancy; section 91.001 permits either party to terminate on notice with no ground stated, and the only mention of cause in it removes the notice requirement rather than adding a ground requirement. Texas does have two statutory grounds that let a landlord end a tenancy for a specific reason: section 91.003 permits termination where a tenant or occupant has been convicted of a public-indecency offense and has exhausted or abandoned all direct appeals, on ten days' written notice given within six months, and it overrides a contrary lease term; and section 92.055 permits a landlord to close a rental unit at any time on certified-mail notice to the tenant and to the local health officer and building inspector, provided the unit is demolished or taken out of residential use. Neither is a just-cause regime, and neither limits the general power to terminate on notice." }, "fixed_term": { "expiry_default": "ends_without_notice", "notice_days": null, "notice_plain": null, "conversion_mechanism": "common_law", "conversion_plain": "No Texas statute turns an expired fixed term into a month-to-month tenancy. If the lease has a holdover clause, that clause governs. If the lease is silent and the parties make no new agreement, the Supreme Court of Texas holds that a tenant who stays with the owner's consent becomes a tenant at will and a tenant who stays without it becomes a tenant at sufferance, and the parties' conduct decides which. Accepting rent is evidence of consent rather than an automatic conversion.", "auto_renewal_reminder": null, "rules_plain": "A fixed-term lease in Texas ends on its stated end date. No statute requires either side to give notice that the term will not be renewed, and the eviction chapter assumes the opposite by speaking of a tenant who holds over past the end of the rental term or renewal period. No statute requires a landlord to remind a tenant before an automatic-renewal clause takes effect, in the landlord-tenant chapters or in the consumer-protection chapters of the Business and Commerce Code. The one Texas renewal-notice duty sits outside residential dwellings: a manufactured-home community landlord must give a lot tenant 60 days' notice of non-renewal and must either offer a renewal or give notice to vacate by the 60th day, with the offer stating the proposed rent and changed terms; those rules are on the manufactured-home-park page. If a residential tenant stays on after the term, the lease's own holdover clause controls, and where the lease says nothing the parties' conduct decides whether a new tenancy arose." }, "holdover": { "status_plain": "A tenant who stays after the right of possession ends is a forcible detainer: a tenant or subtenant wilfully and without force holding over after the termination of the right of possession, a tenant at will or at sufferance, or a tenant of someone who took possession by forcible entry. A holdover who stayed with the owner's consent is a tenant at will and holds a tenancy; one who stayed without consent is a tenant at sufferance, holds no tenancy, and cannot be sued for breaching the lease that already ended. In either case the landlord must make a written demand for possession that meets the notice-to-vacate requirements before filing.", "damages_measure": "none", "damages_qualifiers": [], "damages_plain": "Texas states no holdover damages measure at all. There is no double rent, no treble damages, no statutory holdover rent, and no cap on what a lease may charge for holding over; the landlord-tenant and eviction chapters contain no such provision. A landlord recovers possession plus whatever the lease and the ordinary law of contract damages allow, reduced by the landlord's own duty to make reasonable efforts to re-rent after an abandonment. Where the ground for the suit is holding over past the end of a month-to-month tenancy, two notices stack: the section 91.001 termination month runs first, and then the notice to vacate, which defaults to three days unless the written lease sets a shorter or longer period.", "converts_to_plain": null }, "mitigation": { "posture": "statutory", "posture_basis": null, "trigger": "abandonment_only", "duty_attaches_on_plain": "The statute attaches the duty when the tenant abandons the leased premises in violation of the lease. The Supreme Court of Texas adds that a landlord who keeps the lease alive and sues for rent as it comes due owes the duty only where the landlord actually re-enters, or where the lease lets the landlord re-enter without accepting a surrender or being treated as evicting the tenant; a suit for anticipatory repudiation of the whole lease always carries the duty.", "burden": "tenant", "standard_plain": "Objectively reasonable efforts to fill the premises after the tenant vacates in breach. The Supreme Court of Texas describes it as something less than an absolute duty: the landlord need not take any willing tenant, and the replacement tenant must be suitable under the circumstances. A landlord who fails to make reasonable efforts does not become liable to the tenant; the failure instead bars the landlord's recovery to the extent the damages could reasonably have been avoided.", "displaced_by_fee": false, "acceleration": "unstated", "waivable_by_lease": "no", "rules_plain": "Section 91.006 states the rule in two sentences: a landlord has a duty to mitigate damages if a tenant abandons the leased premises in violation of the lease, and a lease provision purporting to waive that right or exempt the landlord from that duty is void. The section sits in chapter 91, which applies to landlords and tenants generally rather than to residential tenancies alone, and it defines neither abandonment nor the standard, the burden, or the measure of damages. The Supreme Court of Texas supplies the rest. The standard is objectively reasonable efforts to fill the premises with a suitable replacement tenant. The burden is the tenant's: the tenant must show that the landlord mitigated or failed to mitigate and by how much, and a failure to mitigate has to be pleaded as an affirmative defense, though evidence that the landlord did mitigate comes in under a general denial. That decision arose from a commercial office lease and allowed commercial parties to contract out of the duty, but the statute enacted the same year made any waiver void, so a residential lease cannot waive it. No Texas statute bars a clause accelerating the remaining rent on default, and no decision limits one; the nearest control is the rule that a landlord suing for anticipatory repudiation must mitigate." }, "early_termination_fees": { "posture": "no_statute", "statutory_cap_plain": null, "damages_cap_plain": null, "rules_plain": "No Texas statute authorizes, caps, or bars a fee for ending a residential lease early. There is no re-letting-charge limit, no liquidated-damages regime, and no election-of-remedies scheme of the kind some states give landlords, so a lease may set its own early-termination or re-letting charge. The tenant's real protection is the non-waivable duty to mitigate, which reduces what a landlord may recover rather than capping what a lease may charge. Two nearby figures are not early-termination caps and should not be read as such: the late-fee safe harbors of 12 percent of a rental period's rent for a building with no more than four dwelling units and 10 percent for a larger one, which the statute says do not affect the landlord's right to terminate; and the fee a landlord may charge in place of a security deposit, which is limited to the reasonable cost of buying and administering the insurance. A qualifying victim of family violence, of a listed sex offense or stalking, a servicemember or dependent, and the representative of a deceased sole occupant each terminate without any statutory fee. This answer rests on the statutes rather than on the state's administrative rules; the landlord-tenant and eviction chapters delegate no rulemaking to any Texas agency, so no agency rule can cap a private residential early-termination fee." }, "tenant_early_termination": { "dv": { "mechanism": "right_to_terminate", "qualifying_plain": "Two groups qualify under two different sections. Section 92.016 covers a tenant who is a victim of family violence as the Family Code defines it, and it also reaches violence committed by a cotenant or by an occupant, meaning someone the landlord allowed to live in the dwelling without any obligation to pay rent. Section 92.0161 covers a tenant who is the victim of sexual assault, aggravated sexual assault, indecency with a child, sexual performance by a child, continuous sexual abuse of a young child or disabled individual, or an attempt at any of those, and separately a victim of stalking. A parent or guardian may exercise the right for a child victim only if the parent or guardian lives with the victim. Human trafficking and compelling prostitution are not on the list, so a trafficking victim qualifies only if the facts independently amount to family violence, one of the listed sex offenses, or stalking.", "separate_regimes_plain": "Texas runs two separate schemes and they differ on four points a tenant needs to know. The family-violence right in section 92.016 states no window at all, accepts a protective order or documentation from a health-care provider, a mental-health provider, or an advocate, requires 30 days' notice, and imposes no confidentiality duty on the landlord. The sex-offense and stalking right in section 92.0161 reaches only an offense that took place during the preceding six months, requires 30 days' notice with no cotenant exception, and does impose a confidentiality duty: a person who receives the tenant's documentation may not disclose it except for a legitimate or customary business purpose or where the law requires it. The stalking route alone still requires the offense to have happened on the premises or at a dwelling on the premises, and it alone requires a law-enforcement incident report, or another record a law-enforcement agency keeps in the ordinary course, alongside an order or provider documentation. A 2025 act removed that on-the-premises limit from the sex-offense route with effect from September 1, 2025 but left it standing for stalking.", "documentation_plain": "The tenant must give the landlord written notice of termination and, with it, documentation of the violence; both are required. On the family-violence route the documentation may be either a qualifying court order protecting the tenant or an occupant, which means a temporary injunction under the Family Code's protective-order subchapter, a temporary ex parte order, a protective order, or an order of emergency protection under the Code of Criminal Procedure, or, in place of any order, documentation of the violence from a licensed health-care provider who examined the victim, a licensed mental-health provider who examined or evaluated the victim, or an advocate as the Family Code defines one. No police report is required and no court order is required, because the provider or advocate route stands on its own. On the sex-offense and stalking route the tenant supplies provider or advocate documentation or a protective order issued under the Code of Criminal Procedure's protective-order chapter, and a stalking victim must add a law-enforcement incident report or, if none is available, another record a law-enforcement agency keeps in the ordinary course of business, with a pseudonym form where the record uses one. Where the family violence was committed by a cotenant or an occupant, the accepted set narrows: a temporary ex parte order no longer counts.", "documentation_is_cumulative": true, "recency_window_days": 180, "recency_window_kind": "look_back", "recency_window_plain": "The window applies to one of the two schemes only. The sex-offense and stalking right reaches an offense that took place during the preceding six-month period, which the figure here states in days; the statute says six months rather than a day count, so a reader should measure it by the calendar. It is a look-back on when the offense happened, not a deadline for the tenant to act, and the tenant may give notice at any time while an offense still falls inside it. The family-violence right states no window at all: the statute sets no limit on how long ago the violence occurred and no deadline for giving notice.", "notice_days": 30, "notice_days_kind": "lead_time", "notice_days_plain": "Under both schemes the tenant gives written notice of termination on or before the 30th day before the date the lease is to end, and the right takes effect only after that 30th day has passed, the documentation has been given, any order the tenant obtained has been signed, and the tenant has moved out. So 30 days is a lead time the tenant sets running, and the tenancy does not end until the tenant has actually vacated. One route drops the period entirely: where the family violence was committed by a cotenant or by an occupant of the dwelling, the tenant is not required to give the 30 days' notice at all, and the termination can be immediate. The sex-offense and stalking route has no such exception.", "rent_liability_plain": "A qualifying tenant avoids liability for future rent and for all other sums that would come due under the lease after the termination takes effect. Rent already delinquent when the lease ends still stands, and so do the tenant's other obligations up to that date, with one large exception: if the lease does not contain the disclosure sentence the statute prescribes, the tenant is released from all delinquent, unpaid rent as well.", "tenant_cost_plain": "No fee, penalty, or forfeiture. Texas charges a qualifying tenant nothing for the termination, and none of the three sections authorizes a landlord to impose a charge for it. The security deposit is returned under the ordinary deposit rules, which are covered on the deposits page.", "cotenant_effect": [ "not_addressed" ], "cotenant_plain": null, "lock_change": "not_addressed", "lock_change_plain": null, "screening_shield": "none", "adverse_action_bar_plain": null, "confidentiality_duty": false, "quit_deadline_plain": null, "revocability_plain": null, "landlord_side_rights_plain": "The landlord's position is defensive rather than discretionary. The statute gives no power to refuse a termination that meets its conditions, no verification right beyond receiving the documentation the tenant supplies, and no right to recover from the person who committed the violence. A landlord who violates either section owes the tenant actual damages, a civil penalty of one month's rent plus $500, and attorney's fees. On the sex-offense and stalking route the landlord also owes a confidentiality duty: information received with the tenant's notice may not be passed on except for a legitimate or customary business purpose or where the law requires it. Neither right may be waived, except by the narrowly drawn waiver the military section allows for its own ground.", "statutory_lease_disclosure_plain": "The lease has to say the right exists, and the price of leaving it out is money. Two sentences are prescribed. A lease that does not contain language substantially equivalent to \"Tenants may have special statutory rights to terminate the lease early in certain situations involving family violence or a military deployment or transfer\" releases a terminating tenant from all delinquent, unpaid rent owed on the effective date of the termination, and the parallel sentence for the other scheme reads \"Tenants may have special statutory rights to terminate the lease early in certain situations involving certain sexual offenses or stalking.\" The release reaches back rent the tenant would otherwise still owe, so the omission costs the landlord more than the future rent the termination already discharges.", "rules_plain": "A tenant who is a victim of family violence, or of one of the listed sex offenses or of stalking, may end the lease early, move out, and stop owing rent. The tenant gives the landlord written notice on or before the 30th day before the lease is to end, hands over the documentation the statute accepts, and vacates; the right takes effect once all of those have happened. Where the family violence was committed by a cotenant or an occupant, no notice period is required. The sex-offense and stalking route reaches only an offense in the preceding six months, and for stalking the offense must have happened on the premises. Future rent and other sums are discharged, arrears are not unless the lease omitted the prescribed disclosure sentence, and no fee may be charged. Neither section releases other tenants on the lease, removes the person who committed the violence, or gives the victim a lock-change right; on locks, Texas instead gives every tenant a general right to demand rekeying or an additional security device as often as the tenant likes, but at the tenant's own expense, capped at what a third-party contractor charges for materials, labor, taxes and extra keys. Neither section protects the tenant in later screening: no Texas statute stops a landlord or a screening service from reporting or characterizing the termination, and none bars a landlord from refusing to rent to someone who once ended a lease this way." }, "military": { "state_extension": "dependents_independent", "extension_limbs": [], "rights_attach_plain": "Texas borrows the federal act's definitions of servicemember, dependent, and military service wholesale, so the state right attaches only where the federal act's own definition of military service is met. Two consequences follow. State active duty ordered by the governor for the Texas National Guard or the Texas State Guard is outside the section where it falls outside that federal definition. And Texas has no counterpart to the federal stop-movement ground, so a tenant held in place by a stop-movement order relies on the federal act alone. The cross-reference in the section still points to the old federal codification, which was moved in 2015; the meaning is unchanged.", "rules_plain": "Texas gives a dependent of a servicemember the right to end the lease in the dependent's own name. Section 92.017 lets a tenant who is a servicemember or a dependent of a servicemember vacate and avoid liability for future rent where the lease was signed by or for someone who then entered military service, or where a servicemember already in service signed the lease and afterwards received orders for a permanent change of station or to deploy with a unit for 90 days or more. That is the genuine addition: the federal act reaches a dependent only through the servicemember's own termination, on the servicemember's death in service, or on a catastrophic injury. Everything else tracks the federal floor rather than beating it. The 90-day deployment threshold is the federal threshold. The effective date is the federal rule as well: on a monthly lease the termination takes effect 30 days after the first rent-due date that follows delivery of the notice, so notice given on March 10 with rent due the first ends the lease on May 1, and on any other lease it takes effect on the last day of the month after the month the notice was delivered. The tenant supplies written notice plus a government document evidencing entry into military service or a copy of the orders. Texas adds three things of its own: the landlord must refund rent and other amounts paid in advance for any period after the effective date within 30 days; a landlord who violates the section owes actual damages, a civil penalty of one month's rent plus $500, and attorney's fees; and the right is non-waivable except by a separate signed writing where the tenant or dependent moves into base housing or other housing within 30 miles, a waiver that itself fails if the move is in with family or relatives or is caused wholly or partly by a drop of 10 percent or more in household income because of the military service." }, "tenant_death": { "posture": "statutory", "rules_plain": "A representative of the estate of a tenant who dies before the lease ends may terminate it, but only where the tenant was the sole occupant of the dwelling at the time of death; a deceased cotenant's estate gets nothing from this section. The representative gives the landlord written notice of the termination, has the deceased tenant's property removed under the statutory procedure, and signs an inventory of the removed property if the landlord asks for one. Termination takes effect on the later of the 30th day after the notice was given or the day all of those conditions are met, so the 30 days is a floor rather than the answer: the tenancy runs until the property is out and any required inventory is signed. Future rent and other sums after that date are discharged, but the estate still owes delinquent rent and the cost of damage beyond normal wear and tear. On written request the landlord must give the person who gave notice a copy of the lease, and the landlord is protected for letting that person enter. What happens to the property itself is covered separately from this page." }, "other_grounds_plain": "Texas scatters early-termination rights across the residential chapter, and there are ten beyond the family-violence, sex-offense, military, and death grounds. A tenant who suffers substantial loss or damage to personal property from flooding may end the lease where the landlord failed to give the required floodplain disclosure, by written notice within 30 days of the loss; substantial means repair or replacement costing at least half the property's market value on the day of the flood, and the termination takes effect when the tenant surrenders possession, with prepaid rent refundable within 30 days. A tenant unlawfully locked out, or whose doors or locks were removed, may either recover possession or terminate, plus a civil penalty of one month's rent and $1,000, actual damages, costs, and fees. The same choice follows a landlord's wilful interruption of utilities. Where the utility company gives notice of a future cutoff because the landlord has not paid, the tenant may terminate by written notice with a move-out within 30 days and a pro rata refund of advance rent. After a casualty loss that leaves the premises as a practical matter totally unusable for residential purposes and was not the tenant's fault, either side may terminate by written notice any time before repairs are finished, with the tenant entitled to a pro rata rent refund and the deposit. Failure to install or rekey a required security device, failure to give the ownership-and-management disclosure, and a smoke-alarm violation each let the tenant end the lease without going to court, subject to the landlord's statutory defenses. On the landlord's side, section 91.003 permits termination for a public-indecency conviction and section 92.055 permits closing the unit for demolition or a change of use, with moving expenses and a pro rata rent refund owed where the closure follows a tenant's repair notice. Ending a lease because the landlord will not repair, and protection against a retaliatory termination, are covered on the habitability page. Section 92.062 is often listed as a natural-disaster termination right and is not one: it caps the term of the replacement lease when a landlord moves a tenant into another of its units after a disaster." }, "abandonment": { "trigger": [ "none" ], "notice_days": null, "rebuttal_window_plain": null, "rules_plain": "Texas has no abandonment statute for residential tenancies. Nothing deems a tenancy ended after a stated absence, no landlord serves a notice of belief of abandonment, and there is no rebuttal window, because there is no presumption to rebut. The word appears only three times in the relevant chapters and never as a termination trigger: once as the event that starts the landlord's duty to make reasonable efforts to re-rent, once as a carve-out permitting a landlord to remove the contents of premises a tenant has abandoned without going to court, and once in an appellate-procedure sense that has nothing to do with tenancies. None of them defines the term. The practical consequence is the publishable point: an abandoned tenancy in Texas does not end by itself. The landlord still has to terminate it, under section 91.001 for a month-to-month tenancy or under the lease for a fixed term, and the tenant's rent obligation runs until then, reduced by whatever the duty to mitigate requires the landlord to recover from a new tenant. The landlord's lien chapter uses the word for its own remedies and lets a landlord remove the contents of abandoned premises, and what may then be done with the property is covered separately from this page." }, "notice_service": { "methods_plain": "The two notices follow different rules. The section 91.001 termination notice has no statutory form, method, or content requirement at all: the statute says only that a party gives notice of termination to the other, so the lease decides how it travels, and a lease signed by both parties may even say no notice is required. The notice to vacate that precedes an eviction suit has had a closed list of methods since January 1, 2026: mail, including first class, registered, certified, or a delivery service; delivery to the inside of the premises in a conspicuous place; hand delivery to any tenant of the premises who is at least 16 years old; or, where the parties have agreed in writing, electronic communication including email. That list does not apply where the tenant actually receives the notice. The older method of taping a sealed envelope marked IMPORTANT DOCUMENT to the outside of the door and mailing a copy the same day was repealed with the rest of the previous scheme; a nearly identical sentence still sits in a different section governing a landlord's notice of a rule or policy change about the tenant's property outside the dwelling, and it is easy to mistake for the surviving rule.", "documents_plain": "Ending a Texas tenancy without cause and then recovering possession takes two documents in sequence. First the section 91.001 notice of termination, which ends the tenancy. Then, if the tenant does not leave, the notice to vacate, which is the written demand for possession the eviction chapter requires and which defaults to three days unless the written lease sets a shorter or longer period. The eviction statute says so directly: a landlord filing suit on the ground that the tenant is holding over past the end of the rental term or renewal period must also comply with section 91.001.", "electronic_permitted": "conditional", "mail_added_days": null, "mail_rule_is_cap": null, "mail_addon_plain": null, "officer_service_required": false, "content_requirements_plain": "The termination notice itself has no prescribed content: nothing requires it to be in writing, to state a ground, or to carry an advisory. The notice to vacate is prescribed in one respect only. Against a tenant whose right of possession is ending solely because of unpaid rent, and who was not late or delinquent before the month the notice is given, it must be given as a notice to pay rent or vacate; where the tenant was previously late, either form works. Periods stated in the eviction chapter are counted under a rule added in 2026: the day of the triggering event is not counted, Saturdays, Sundays and state or federal holidays are counted, the last day is counted, and if the last day falls on a Saturday, Sunday or holiday the period runs to the next day that is not one. That rule reaches the notice to vacate. It does not reach the section 91.001 termination month, which sits in a different chapter and carries its own measure of one month after the day the notice was given.", "language_requirement_plain": null, "alternate_address_rule_plain": "A tenant who does not live in the leased dwelling as a primary residence may redirect the landlord's notices. If, when signing the lease or a renewal, the tenant gives the landlord written notice that the dwelling is not the tenant's primary residence, asks in writing that notices go to the primary residence, and supplies that address, the landlord must mail all notices of lease violations, all notices of lease termination, all notices of rent increases at the end of the term, and all notices to vacate to that address. Regular mail is enough and the notice counts as given on the postmark date, which is the one deemed-delivery rule Texas still has for termination notices. An oral change of address is not enough, and where several tenants share the lease the landlord need mail to only one. The rule does not apply where the notice is hand delivered to and received by someone occupying the dwelling." }, "federal_overlay": { "federal_overlay_note": "Texas has legislated the interaction with federal pre-eviction notice rules, and it is the only state to have done so. Since January 1, 2026 the eviction statute provides that where a federal law or rule requires a landlord to give a tenant notice before requiring the tenant to leave, a landlord who satisfies the state notice requirements need not delay filing an eviction suit on account of the federal requirement, a Texas court may not delay or abate the suit on that basis, and a writ of possession may not be served until the time between delivery of the state notice and service of the writ equals or exceeds the federal period. The companion subsection lets the state notice period run concurrently with any response period a federal rule or the lease gives the tenant, at the landlord's option, and lets the state notice itself carry the required opportunity to respond. Those rules reach every federal pre-eviction notice, not only the one in the CARES Act. Separately, no Texas court has decided whether the CARES Act notice is still in force; the one Texas appellate discussion assumed it without deciding.", "cares_30day_notice": { "status": "in_force_filing_permitted_within_30d", "authority_plain": "Texas reaches this position by statute rather than by decision. Property Code section 24.005, subsection (c-1), effective January 1, 2026, lets a landlord who has satisfied the state notice requirements file an eviction suit without waiting out a federal notice period, bars a Texas court from delaying or abating the case on that ground, and holds back only service of the writ of possession until the federal period has run from delivery of the state notice. On the separate question whether the CARES Act's 30-day notice survives at all, Texas has no appellate holding: in Cave v. Kensington Apartments Austin, LP, No. 03-24-00442-CV (Tex. App. Austin July 24, 2026, mem. op.), the Third Court of Appeals noted that the 30-day notice provision carried no expiration date and that other jurisdictions have held it still applies, then assumed without deciding that it does and found the landlord had complied because the notice was delivered on December 12, 2023 and the suit filed on January 11, 2024. That opinion is not yet final; rehearing was not sought by the August 2026 deadline and the mandate was calendared for October 5, 2026. The Third Court is so far the only Texas appellate court to have written about the provision at all.", "as_of": "2026-09-02" } }, "provenance": { "published_text_differs_from_enacted": false, "kinds": [], "basis": "none", "plain": null }, "future_versions": [], "pending_legislation": [], "notable_failed_legislation_plain": null, "negative_basis": { "landlord_tenant_chapter": "Tex. Prop. Code ch. 91 (Provisions Generally Applicable to Landlords and Tenants) read entire — the chapter contains exactly five sections, §§ 91.001, 91.003, 91.004, 91.005 and 91.006; ch. 92 (Residential Tenancies) read entire across all nine subchapters, §§ 92.001–92.026, 92.051–92.062, 92.101–92.113, 92.151–92.170, 92.201–92.208, 92.251–92.264, 92.301–92.302, 92.331–92.335 and 92.351–92.355; ch. 24 (Forcible Entry and Detainer), §§ 24.001–24.011; ch. 1 (§§ 1.001–1.004) for the preemption section; and ch. 54 (Landlord's Liens) for the abandonment consequences. Terms run across the combined raw text of chs. 1, 24, 91 and 92: good cause, just cause, nonrenew, non-renew, renewal of the lease, automatically renew, automatic renewal, abandon, double, treble, twice the, holdover, holding over, early termination, termination fee, reletting, re-letting, liquidated damages, buyout, buy-out, acceler, screening, consumer report, credit report, rental history, tenant selection, traffick, Spanish, language other than English, adopt rules, by rule, ordinance, municipal, county, and every occurrence of terminat*. Also read for the auto-renewal question: Bus. & Com. Code ch. 17 (Deceptive Trade Practices) entire, and ch. 51, which was read to exclude it (it is the Business Opportunity Act). Prop. Code ch. 94 (manufactured-home tenancies) read for the lot-tenancy pointer only.", "dv_title": "Family Code Title 4 (Protective Orders and Family Violence), chs. 71, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 91, 92 and 93, each chapter's raw text read entire, with the terms lease, tenan, landlord, rental agreement and lock run in each (a lease regex also matches release, and every hit was read in context so that bail and confinement usages were discarded rather than counted). No lease-termination right exists anywhere in Title 4; the only lease-adjacent provision is Fam. Code § 85.021, which grants exclusive possession of a jointly owned or leased residence rather than any right to end a tenancy. Code of Criminal Procedure ch. 7B (protective orders for sexual assault, stalking and trafficking) also read entire: zero hits on lease, tenan and landlord.", "military_title": "Gov't Code ch. 437 (Texas Military), ch. 431 (State Militia) and ch. 434 (Veterans Affairs), each read entire with the terms lease, landlord, tenan, rental agreement and residential run in each. Chapter 437 returns zero hits on landlord, tenan, rental agreement and residential; its fourteen hits on lease are all about the state's own property (armories owned or leased by the state, post-exchange authority to sell, lease or rent goods and services, surface leases of department property, and the department's acquisition of leasehold estates). Chapter 431 returns zero hits on every term; chapter 434's single residential hit refers to a residential treatment facility. No Texas servicemember lease-termination right exists outside Prop. Code § 92.017.", "administrative_code": "The Texas Administrative Code could not be read: the Secretary of State's rules host at texreg.sos.state.tx.us has moved, and the successor portal serves no rule text to a reader outside its application. The fee negative therefore rests on a structural reading instead: Prop. Code chs. 91, 92 and 24 contain zero rulemaking delegations — the terms adopt rules, by rule and attorney general return no hits, and the four hits on the commission, the department and the agency were each read and are an education-agency reference in a subchapter-D exemption list, a licensed nursing or convalescent home in a smoke-alarm exemption, and two references to a government agency that pays a tenant's rent. No Texas agency has rulemaking authority under the residential landlord-tenant chapters, so no administrative rule can cap a private residential early-termination fee. The fee block says in its own plain-language rules that the administrative rules were not consulted." }, "leading_cases": [ { "case_name": "Austin Hill Country Realty, Inc. v. Palisades Plaza, Inc.", "reporter_cite": "948 S.W.2d 293 (Tex. 1997)", "court": "Supreme Court of Texas", "year": 1997, "holding_plain": "A landlord has a duty to make objectively reasonable efforts to fill the premises when a tenant breaches the lease and abandons the property. The duty is not absolute, the replacement tenant must be suitable under the circumstances, and a landlord's failure to try does not give the tenant a claim but bars the landlord's recovery to the extent the damages could reasonably have been avoided. The court placed the burden of proof on the tenant to show that the landlord mitigated or failed to mitigate and by how much, and required a failure to mitigate to be pleaded as an affirmative defense. The case arose from a commercial office lease, and the court's proviso allowing commercial parties to contract out of the duty was overtaken for every lease by the statute enacted the same year, which makes any waiver void.", "url": "https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/1711367/austin-hill-country-realty-inc-v-palisades-plaza-inc/", "residential_scope": "commercial", "applies_to": "mitigation" }, { "case_name": "Coinmach Corp. v. Aspenwood Apartment Corp.", "reporter_cite": "417 S.W.3d 909 (Tex. 2013)", "court": "Supreme Court of Texas", "year": 2013, "holding_plain": "A tenant who stays past the end of a lease becomes a tenant at will where the owner consents and a tenant at sufferance where the owner does not; a lease may provide that its terms continue to apply to a holdover, and where the lease is silent and the parties make no new agreement, their conduct decides which the holdover has become. A tenant at sufferance holds no tenancy and cannot be liable for breaching the lease that already ended. The dispute concerned a commercial laundry sublease at an apartment complex, but the holdover doctrine it states is the general Texas rule and no statute displaces it for dwellings.", "url": "https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/2831336/coinmach-corp-fka-solon-automated-services-inc-v-aspenwood-apartment/", "residential_scope": "commercial", "applies_to": "fixed_term" }, { "case_name": "Cave v. Kensington Apartments Austin, LP", "reporter_cite": "No. 03-24-00442-CV (Tex. App. Austin July 24, 2026, mem. op.)", "court": "Court of Appeals for the Third District of Texas, at Austin", "year": 2026, "holding_plain": "The court noted that the CARES Act's 30-day notice requirement, unlike the eviction moratorium, carried no expiration date and that courts elsewhere have held it still applies, then assumed without deciding that it does and held the landlord had complied: the notice to vacate was delivered on December 12, 2023 and the eviction suit filed on January 11, 2024, thirty days later. Texas therefore has no appellate holding on whether the provision survives, and this opinion measures compliance from delivery of the notice to the filing of the suit.", "url": "https://search.txcourts.gov/Case.aspx?cn=03-24-00442-CV&coa=coa03", "residential_scope": "residential", "applies_to": "federal_overlay" }, { "case_name": "State of Texas v. City of Houston", "reporter_cite": "No. 03-23-00531-CV (Tex. App. Austin July 18, 2025)", "court": "Court of Appeals for the Third District of Texas, at Austin", "year": 2025, "holding_plain": "The court reversed the trial court judgment that had declared the 2023 preemption act unconstitutional and rendered judgment dismissing the cities' suit without prejudice for want of subject-matter jurisdiction, holding that the cities' own pleadings negated their standing because they showed neither an injury in fact nor injuries fairly traceable to the state. The holding is jurisdictional and decides nothing about the act's validity, but it removes the only judgment that had ever declared the act invalid. Rehearing and rehearing en banc were denied in April 2026 and a petition for review is pending in the Supreme Court of Texas.", "url": "https://search.txcourts.gov/SearchMedia.aspx?MediaVersionID=e603c2ea-5bdd-4363-99f0-1510ecedc5c2&coa=coa03&DT=Opinion&MediaID=1ca1da27-4890-44b1-a94f-280fa2c601b0", "residential_scope": "mixed_or_general", "applies_to": "just_cause" } ], "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 91.001", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.91.htm", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a)–(e)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 91.003", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.91.htm", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a)–(c)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 91.006", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.91.htm", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a)–(b)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 1.004", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.1.htm", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a)–(b)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 24.002", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.24.htm", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a)–(b)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 24.005", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.24.htm", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a), (b), (c-1), (e), (f-3), (f-4)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 24.0042", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.24.htm", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.012", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a)–(e)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.016", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a)–(g)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.0161", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(c)–(j)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.0162", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a)–(e)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.017", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a)–(k)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.055", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a), (d), (e)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.019", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a-1), (e)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.156", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(b)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.052", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(b)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Fam. Code § 85.021", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/FA/htm/FA.85.htm", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Acts 2025, 89th Leg., R.S., Ch. 960 (S.B. 38)", "url": "https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/89R/billtext/html/SB00038F.HTM", "official": true, "pinpoint": "SECTIONS 4, 15, 17, 18" }, { "statute": "Acts 2025, 89th Leg., R.S., Ch. 365 (H.B. 47)", "url": "https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/89R/billtext/html/HB00047F.HTM", "official": true, "pinpoint": "SECTION 20" } ], "summary_plain": "In Texas either the landlord or the tenant may end a month-to-month tenancy by giving one month's notice, and no reason is required. The month runs from the day the notice is given and the tenancy ends on the later of that date or the date the notice names, so the ending date need not fall at a rental-period boundary and the tenant owes rent only to that day. A lease signed by both parties may set a different period or say no notice is required at all, which is why most Texas leases displace the statutory month. A fixed term ends on its date with no notice from either side, and no statute converts a holdover into a new tenancy or adds holdover damages. A landlord whose tenant abandons must make reasonable efforts to re-rent, the lease cannot waive that duty, and the tenant carries the burden of proving the landlord did not try. Texas runs two separate victim-termination schemes, one for family violence and one for listed sex offenses and stalking, both requiring 30 days' notice with documentation, and a lease that omits the prescribed disclosure sentence releases the tenant's back rent as well. A dependent of a servicemember may terminate in the dependent's own name, the estate of a tenant who was the sole occupant may end the lease on the later of 30 days or completion of the move-out, and Texas has no abandonment statute at all.", "notes": [ { "label": "One month, not 30 days", "text": "The statute says one month after the day the notice is given, so the real period is 28 to 31 days depending on the month. It is also a later-of rule: the tenancy ends on the later of that date or the date named in the notice, and it may end on any day of the month." }, { "label": "A signed lease can reduce the notice to nothing", "text": "Texas lets the landlord and tenant agree, in an instrument signed by both, on a different notice period or on no notice at all. Most apartment leases set their own period, so the statutory month is a default rather than a floor." }, { "label": "Two notices, in order", "text": "Ending the tenancy and recovering possession are separate steps. The termination notice runs first; only then does the notice to vacate, which defaults to three days unless the written lease says otherwise, start the eviction clock." }, { "label": "No reason needed, and cities may not add one", "text": "Texas has no just-cause statute. State law expressly voids a city or county ordinance that regulates evictions or that restricts or delays a notice to vacate or an eviction filing. A challenge to that preemption was dismissed on standing grounds in 2025 and a petition for review is pending; no court has held it invalid." }, { "label": "No holdover damages and no abandonment statute", "text": "Texas states no double rent, no treble damages, and no holdover-rent cap, and it has no statute that ends a tenancy because the tenant disappeared. An abandonment starts the landlord's duty to re-rent; the landlord still has to terminate the tenancy." }, { "label": "The tenant proves the failure to mitigate", "text": "The duty to make reasonable efforts to re-rent cannot be waived by a lease, but the tenant bears the burden of showing the landlord did not try, and must plead it as an affirmative defense." }, { "label": "Early-termination fees are unregulated", "text": "No statute authorizes, caps, or bars a fee for leaving early, and this answer rests on the statutes rather than on the state's administrative rules. The mitigation duty limits what a landlord may recover rather than what a lease may charge." }, { "label": "Two victim-termination statutes, not one", "text": "The family-violence right has no time limit on the incident and drops the 30 days' notice entirely where the violence was by a cotenant or occupant. The sex-offense and stalking right reaches only the preceding six months, carries a confidentiality duty, and for stalking still requires the offense to have happened on the premises. Trafficking is not a listed ground." }, { "label": "The disclosure sentence is a money rule", "text": "A lease that omits the prescribed sentence about early-termination rights releases a terminating tenant from all delinquent unpaid rent, not just the future rent the termination already discharges." }, { "label": "Notices to a second home", "text": "A tenant who does not live in the dwelling as a primary residence may require the landlord in writing to mail every termination notice and notice to vacate to the primary residence instead, where they count as given on the postmark date." }, { "label": "Where the other termination rules live", "text": "Notices for nonpayment or a lease breach and the court process are on the eviction page; termination for a landlord's failure to repair, and protection against a retaliatory termination, are on the habitability page; rent-increase notice is on the rent-increase page; manufactured-home lot tenancies, which do carry a 60-day non-renewal notice, are on the manufactured-home-park page; what happens to property left behind is covered separately." }, { "label": "Legislation", "text": "Two 2025 acts changed this topic and both are already in force. One rewrote the eviction chapter with effect from January 1, 2026, replacing the delivery rules with a four-method list that allows email by written agreement, adding a computation-of-time rule, and writing the federal-notice interaction into the statute. The other removed, from September 1, 2025, the requirement that a listed sex offense have happened at the rental property, leaving that limit in place only for stalking. Texas holds no 2026 regular session, so nothing is pending; the next regular session convenes January 12, 2027." } ] }, "mobile_home_parks": { "topic_verified": "2026-08-19", "verified_by_method": "Direct read of the full official text of Texas Property Code chapter 94 (§§ 94.001-94.303, every section of Subchapters A through G) as served by the Texas Legislature's Texas Constitution and Statutes site, together with Property Code § 24.005 and § 24.0061, Water Code §§ 13.501-13.506, Utilities Code §§ 184.011-184.014, Local Government Code §§ 214.902 and 214.906, Occupations Code § 1201.217, and the Texas Legislature Online bill pages for H.B. 2037 and S.B. 38 of the 89th Legislature (2025).", "tier": 2, "act_name": "Manufactured Home Tenancies", "act_citation": "Tex. Prop. Code ch. 94", "fallback_act": null, "fields": { "enforcement_agency": { "status": "regulated", "value": "No state agency enforces the manufactured home tenancy chapter; the Public Utility Commission of Texas handles water and wastewater billing complaints, and the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs handles home titling, installation and abandoned homes", "detail": "Chapter 94 is enforced by residents and community owners in court, not by a state agency. The Public Utility Commission has exclusive jurisdiction over complaints about submetered or allocated water and wastewater charges in a manufactured home rental community and may order the owner to repay a tenant who was overcharged. The Manufactured Housing Division of the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs administers statements of ownership, installation and the abandoned-home process for the home itself, and has no role in lot-tenancy disputes.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.301", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.301", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Water Code § 13.505", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/WA/htm/WA.13.htm#13.505", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(b), (c)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Occ. Code § 1201.217", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/OC/htm/OC.1201.htm#1201.217", "official": true, "pinpoint": null } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "private_right_of_action": { "status": "regulated", "value": true, "detail": "A resident may sue a community owner who breaks the chapter and may recover actual damages, a civil penalty of two months' rent plus $500, and reasonable attorney's fees and costs. A lease term or community rule that waives a right or a duty under the chapter is void. If the court finds the resident sued in bad faith or to harass, the same civil penalty runs the other way.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.301", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.301", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.003", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.003", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.302", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.302", "official": true, "pinpoint": null } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "min_park_size_lots": { "status": "regulated", "value": 4, "detail": "The chapter reaches a parcel of land on which four or more lots are offered for lease for installing and occupying manufactured homes. Separately, a city may not regulate a tract as a manufactured home community, park or subdivision unless it contains at least four spaces offered for lease.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.001", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.001", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(4)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Loc. Gov't Code § 214.906", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/LG/htm/LG.214.htm#214.906", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(b)" } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "secondary_thresholds": { "status": "not_regulated", "value": null, "detail": "No rule in the chapter switches on at a second community size. Once a community has four or more lots the whole chapter applies, and the definition section sets no other size line.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.001", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.001", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(4)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.002", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.002", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a)" } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "covers_park_owned_rental_homes": { "status": "regulated", "value": "general_landlord_tenant_law", "detail": "A resident who rents the home itself from the community owner is outside this chapter and is covered by Texas's ordinary residential landlord-tenant law. The chapter says in terms that it does not apply to the relationship between a landlord who owns a manufactured home and a tenant who leases that home from the landlord.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.002", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.002", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(b)(1)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code ch. 92", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm", "official": true, "pinpoint": null } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "covers_rv_park_model": { "status": "regulated", "value": "excluded", "detail": "Recreational vehicles and other movable dwellings that are not manufactured homes are outside the chapter. It does not apply where a tenant leases a lot for the placement of personal property used for human habitation other than a manufactured home, and \"manufactured home\" takes the meaning given in the state's manufactured housing law.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.002", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.002", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(b)(2)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.001", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.001", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(3)" } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "local_mhp_rent_regulation": { "status": "regulated", "value": "preempted", "detail": "A Texas city may not set lot rents except in a disaster emergency approved by the governor. State law allows a city to establish rent control by ordinance only if its governing body finds that a housing emergency exists because of a disaster and the governor approves the ordinance, and the control must be continued or ended as the governor continues or ends the disaster declaration. Chapter 94 itself says nothing about local regulation of lot rents.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Loc. Gov't Code § 214.902", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/LG/htm/LG.214.htm#214.902", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a), (b)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.002", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.002", "official": true, "pinpoint": null } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "rent_increase_notice_days": { "status": "regulated", "value": 60, "detail": "A new lot rent must be put to the resident at least 60 days before the current lease term ends. The community owner has to send either a notice to vacate or an offer to renew by the 60th day before the term expires, and a renewal offer must state the proposed rent amount and any change in the lease terms. Rent may not be raised during a term unless the lease contains a provision allowing it that the resident separately initialed, and the chapter sets no notice period for an increase made under such a provision.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.055", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.055", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a), (b)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.053", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.053", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(d)" } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "rent_increase_frequency_limit": { "status": "not_regulated", "value": null, "detail": "Texas law does not limit how often lot rent may be raised. In practice rent changes at each renewal, because a mid-term increase is possible only under a lease provision the resident separately initialed, and an increase provision the resident did not initial is void.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.053", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.053", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(d)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.055", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.055", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(b), (c)" } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "rent_increase_cap": { "status": "not_regulated", "value": null, "detail": "Texas sets no ceiling on lot-rent increases. Chapter 94 contains no cap of any kind, and a city may adopt rent control only on a finding of a housing emergency caused by a disaster and with the governor's approval. The one money limit tied to metering is that a community owner who raised rent because of higher utility costs in the 90 days before installing meters or submeters must roll that increase back and refund it.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.055", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.055", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(b)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Loc. Gov't Code § 214.902", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/LG/htm/LG.214.htm#214.902", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Water Code § 13.504", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/WA/htm/WA.13.htm#13.504", "official": true, "pinpoint": null } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "rent_increase_challenge_mechanism": { "status": "not_regulated", "value": null, "detail": "There is no way under Texas law to challenge the amount of a lot-rent increase. A resident who does not want the new terms must tell the owner by the 30th day before the current lease expires that the offer is rejected and that the resident will move out; silence renews the lease on the new terms. A rent increase made to punish a resident for exercising a legal right is a separate violation the resident may raise in court.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.055", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.055", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(b), (c)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.251", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.251", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(b)(4)" } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "entrance_fee_prohibited": { "status": "not_regulated", "value": null, "detail": "Texas does not ban entrance or move-in fees in a manufactured home community. The chapter's only requirement is that the lease state any late charge and any fee or charge for a service or facility, along with the amount of any security deposit.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.053", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.053", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(c)(5), (c)(6)" } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "exit_fee_prohibited": { "status": "not_regulated", "value": null, "detail": "Texas does not ban exit or home-removal fees. What the chapter does limit is what an owner may recover when a resident leaves early: damages are capped at the rent and other amounts left on the term, or at one month's rent if the lot is re-let before the 21st day after it is surrendered, and the owner must try to re-let. A lease cancellation fee may be deducted from a deposit when a replacement resident is found for a lot the tenant never occupied.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.201", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.201", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a), (b)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.202", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.202", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.104", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.104", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(b)(1)" } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "undisclosed_fees_uncollectible": { "status": "not_regulated", "value": null, "detail": "Texas law does not say that a fee left out of the lease cannot be collected. The lease must list any late charge and any fee or charge for a service or facility, and a resident who is charged in breach of the chapter may sue for actual damages, a civil penalty of two months' rent plus $500, and attorney's fees, but the chapter does not make an undisclosed fee void.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.053", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.053", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(c)(5)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.301", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.301", "official": true, "pinpoint": null } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "utility_billing_regulated": { "status": "regulated", "value": "A community owner who bills residents for water, wastewater or electricity may not mark the service up, and the Public Utility Commission sets the billing rules", "detail": "A community owner may not charge more for utility service than the utility charged the owner. For water and wastewater the owner may pass through the cost per gallon plus applicable taxes and surcharges, may add a service charge of no more than nine percent of the submetered costs allocated to the lot, and may charge a late fee of no more than five percent of a bill paid late. Where the community is master metered and the cost is spread among residents instead of submetered, the lease must describe the calculation method in clear writing and state the average monthly bill for all units for the previous calendar year, and the owner may not bill out more than the utility actually charged. Records must be kept and made available to residents during business hours. For electricity, the owner may not charge more than the cost per kilowatt hour charged by the utility. The lease must disclose any addendum on utility submetering that is incorporated by reference.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Water Code § 13.503", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/WA/htm/WA.13.htm#13.503", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(b), (c), (d)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Water Code § 13.5031", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/WA/htm/WA.13.htm#13.5031", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Util. Code § 184.014", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/UT/htm/UT.184.htm#184.014", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(b)(1)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.053", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.053", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(c)(13)" } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "submetering_required": { "status": "regulated", "value": true, "detail": "A manufactured home community built after January 1, 2003 must measure each lot's water use, either with submeters owned by the community or with individual meters owned by the water utility. On the owner's request the utility must install its own meters unless it finds installation is not feasible, in which case the owner must install plumbing compatible with meters or submeters. An older community may submeter voluntarily, and either way the Public Utility Commission's submetering and allocation rules apply. An owner may not switch from submetered billing to allocated billing without the commission's written approval on a showing of good cause. Before billing for submetered or allocated water the owner must meet state plumbing-fixture standards, check every unit and common area for leaks and repair what is found, and replace high-flow toilets within a year.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Water Code § 13.502", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/WA/htm/WA.13.htm#13.502", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a), (b), (d), (e)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Water Code § 13.506", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/WA/htm/WA.13.htm#13.506", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a), (b)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Util. Code § 184.013", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/UT/htm/UT.184.htm#184.013", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a), (b)" } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "security_deposit_rules": { "status": "regulated", "value": "A deposit may be taken when the first lease is signed, with no cap on the amount, and must be refunded within 30 days after the lot is surrendered", "detail": "A community owner must return the lot deposit within 30 days after the resident gives up the lot. Texas sets no maximum deposit. Deductions may be taken for damages and charges the resident is legally liable for, but not for normal wear and tear, and the owner must give the balance together with a written description and itemized list of every deduction unless the resident owes undisputed rent. The owner need not return the money until the resident gives a written forwarding address, though failing to give one does not forfeit the right to a refund. An owner who keeps a deposit in bad faith owes $100 plus three times the amount wrongly withheld plus attorney's fees, and an owner who misses the 30-day deadline is presumed to have acted in bad faith. A new owner of the community becomes liable for deposits from the date title passes.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.103", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.103", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.105", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.105", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a), (b), (c)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.107", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.107", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.109", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.109", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a), (d)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.106", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.106", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a)" } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "written_lease_required": { "status": "regulated", "value": "required", "detail": "Every lot tenancy in a Texas manufactured home community runs on a written lease. The chapter defines a lease agreement as a written agreement, and the lease must be typed or in legible handwriting and signed by both the community owner and the resident. The owner must give the resident a copy of the lease and a current copy of the community rules after signing, and must hand a prospective resident the proposed lease and the rules when the application is taken.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.053", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.053", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a), (b)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.001", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.001", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(2)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.051", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.051", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(1), (2)" } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "min_lease_term_offer_months": { "status": "regulated", "value": 6, "detail": "A community owner must offer a first lease term of at least six months. The resident may ask for a shorter or longer period and the two may agree to it, and renewals may run for any length the two agree on. The disclosure statement handed to every applicant states the six-month right in plain words.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.052", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.052", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.051", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.051", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(3)" } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "nonrenewal_notice_days": { "status": "regulated", "value": 60, "detail": "A community owner who does not want to renew must give the resident 60 days' notice before the lease term ends, and no reason is required. Whatever the length of the term, the notice to vacate or the offer to renew must come by the 60th day before the term expires; for a month-to-month lease the same 60 days runs before the date the owner intends to end the term. The resident must keep paying rent and other amounts, including late charges, through the notice period. The owner may ask the resident to leave earlier only by paying the relocation expenses in advance, including the cost of moving and installing the home somewhere else. A nonrenewal for a change in the community's land use takes 180 days instead.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.052", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.052", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(b)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.055", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.055", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a), (d)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.204", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.204", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a)" } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "rules_change_notice_days": { "status": "regulated", "value": 30, "detail": "A new or amended community rule does not take effect until the 30th day after every resident is given a written copy of it. If complying with the rule would cost a resident more than $25, the owner must allow at least 90 days from delivery of the written copy to comply. Community rules must not be arbitrary or capricious and count as part of the lease.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.008", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.008", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a), (b), (c)" } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "disclosure_document_required": { "status": "regulated", "value": "state_prescribed_document", "detail": "Every applicant must be handed a separate disclosure statement whose wording is set out in the statute. When the community owner takes an application, the applicant must receive the proposed lease, the community rules, and a separate disclosure statement carrying the statutory text in at least 10-point type, telling the applicant of the right to a six-month initial term, the 60-day nonrenewal notice, the 180-day notice if the land use will change, and the duty to keep paying rent through the notice period. The lease itself must also carry a prominent statement that chapter 94 grants the resident rights and imposes obligations on the owner.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.051", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.051", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(3)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.053", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.053", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(c)(14)" } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "assembly_rights_protected": { "status": "regulated", "value": true, "detail": "A community owner may not interfere with residents' meetings about manufactured home living. Any limit on meetings held in the common area facilities has to be written into the community rules, and common area facilities must be open or available to residents with the hours posted at the facility.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.006", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.006", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a), (b)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.005", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.005", "official": true, "pinpoint": null } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "entry_rule": { "status": "regulated", "value": "The owner may not enter the home without the resident present and consenting, or written consent naming a date and time, except in an emergency or after abandonment", "detail": "A community owner may enter a resident's manufactured home only with consent, in an emergency, or after the home is abandoned. Consent counts if the resident is present and agrees, or if the resident gave written consent that names the date and time entry is allowed, which is good only for that date and time and may be revoked in writing at any time without penalty. In an emergency or after abandonment the owner may enter in a reasonable manner at a reasonable time. The chapter sets no notice period for the owner coming onto the lot itself.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.004", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.004", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a), (b), (c)" } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "retaliation_prohibited": { "status": "regulated", "value": true, "detail": "A community owner may not retaliate against a resident for six months after the resident asserts a legal right. Protected acts include exercising a right or remedy under the lease, a city ordinance or state or federal law in good faith, giving a repair notice, and complaining to a code enforcement body, a utility or a civic or nonprofit agency in good faith. Barred responses include filing an eviction other than on the chapter's grounds, cutting services, raising the rent, ending the lease, and bad-faith conduct that materially interferes with the resident's rights. A court may not approve an eviction it finds was started as retaliation, and a resident may recover one month's rent plus $500, actual damages, costs and attorney's fees. An owner is not liable for a rent increase under a written escalation clause for utilities, taxes or insurance, or for an increase applied across the whole community, and a resident who sues in bad faith is liable to the owner.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.251", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.251", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a), (b)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.203", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.203", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(c)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.254", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.254", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.253", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.253", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a)" } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "just_cause_required": { "status": "regulated", "value": false, "detail": "Texas does not require a reason to end a lot tenancy at the end of its term. The community owner may choose not to renew for any reason as long as notice comes by the 60th day before the term expires, or 180 days ahead where the community's land use will change. Cause matters only for ending a lease before the term runs out, which the chapter allows for a lease or rule violation or for nonpayment of rent.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.052", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.052", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(b)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.205", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.205", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.206", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.206", "official": true, "pinpoint": null } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "just_cause_grounds": { "status": "not_regulated", "value": null, "detail": "Texas has no list of grounds a community owner must fit to end a lot tenancy. Two routes exist for ending a lease before its term is up: a violation of a lease provision, including a community rule written into the lease, and nonpayment where the amount owed reaches at least one month's rent and is still unpaid after a 10-day written notice. At the end of the term the owner may simply decline to renew on 60 days' notice, or 180 days where the land use will change. Whichever route is used, the owner must get a court judgment and a writ of possession before shutting a resident out or moving the home.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.205", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.205", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.206", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.206", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.203", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.203", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a)" } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "nonpayment_notice_days": { "status": "regulated", "value": 10, "detail": "A resident behind on lot rent has 10 days from receiving the written delinquency notice to pay in full. The community owner may end the lease and evict only if the unpaid rent and other amounts due under the lease together reach at least one month's rent, the owner gives written notice that the payment is delinquent, and the resident has not tendered the full delinquent amount before the 10th day after receiving that notice. A notice mailed to a resident who has asked in writing for mail at a primary residence away from the lot counts as given on the postmark date. A separate notice to vacate under the eviction chapter, at least three days unless the lease sets a different period, still comes before an eviction suit is filed.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.206", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.206", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(1), (2), (3)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.009", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.009", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a), (c)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 24.005", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.24.htm#24.005", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a)" } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "rule_violation_notice_days": { "status": "not_regulated", "value": null, "detail": "Texas sets no notice period or cure period for a lease or rule violation in a manufactured home community. The chapter says only that a community owner may end the lease and evict for a violation of a lease provision, including a community rule written into the lease. What still applies is the general eviction chapter, under which a written notice to vacate must be given at least three days before a suit is filed unless the lease sets a shorter or longer period, and the owner must obtain a writ of possession before shutting the resident out or moving the home.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.205", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.205", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 24.005", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.24.htm#24.005", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.203", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.203", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a)" } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "repeat_violation_rule": { "status": "not_regulated", "value": null, "detail": "Texas has no repeat-violation rule for manufactured home communities. The chapter treats a violation of a lease provision or of a community rule written into the lease as a ground for termination and eviction without distinguishing a first breach from a later one, and it sets no window within which a repeated breach loses the right to cure.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.205", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.205", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.008", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.008", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(b)" } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "home_removal_or_sale_period_days": { "status": "regulated", "value": 30, "detail": "After a judgment for possession the home may stay on the lot for 30 days if the resident pays the rent due for that period. A court may not issue a writ of possession before the 30th day after judgment where the resident has paid the rent amount due under the lease for those 30 days. The court must mail a copy of a default judgment to the leased premises within 48 hours, and also to the home's owner and any lienholder whose name and address it has been given. If the owner removes the home after the writ is executed, a written notice of where the home has been taken must go to the resident, and to the home's owner if different, within 10 days.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.203", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.203", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(d), (e), (f)" } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "abandonment_procedure_exists": { "status": "regulated", "value": true, "detail": "Texas has a statutory route for declaring a manufactured home abandoned, and it sits in the state's manufactured housing law rather than in the tenancy chapter. The owner of the land may declare a home abandoned if it has been continuously unoccupied for at least four months and any debt secured by the home or owed under the lease is delinquent. Written notice of the intent to declare abandonment must go by certified mail to the home's record owner, every lienholder listed on the statement of ownership, the tax collector for each taxing unit and any intervening lien or equitable interest holder, and it must say where the home is. Those people may enter to remove the home and must be given the location and reasonable access. If the home is still there 45 days after the notice is postmarked, all liens on it are extinguished and the landowner may apply for a statement of ownership in its own name. The route is closed to a landowner who holds or ever held an interest in the home. Within the tenancy chapter, abandonment matters only as a ground for the owner to enter the home.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Occ. Code § 1201.217", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/OC/htm/OC.1201.htm#1201.217", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a), (b), (c), (d), (f)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.004", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.004", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(c)(2)" } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "mandatory_mediation": { "status": "not_regulated", "value": null, "detail": "Texas requires no mediation or other dispute-resolution step in a manufactured home community. Disputes under the chapter go to court, where the justice, county and district courts share jurisdiction over repair claims and venue follows the general rule for suits about real property. The one administrative route outside the courts is a complaint to the Public Utility Commission about submetered or allocated water and wastewater charges.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.301", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.301", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.012", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.012", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Water Code § 13.505", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/WA/htm/WA.13.htm#13.505", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(c)" } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "change_of_use_notice_months": { "status": "regulated", "value": 6, "detail": "A community owner who is changing the land use must give 180 days' notice, which is six months. The notice has to go out no later than the 180th day before the date the land use will change, to the resident, to the home's owner if that is someone else, and to any lienholder whose name and address the owner has been given in writing; it must state the date the use will change and tell them the home must be moved. The owner must also post a notice in a conspicuous place in the community stating that the land use will change and on what date. This is the only route by which the owner may decline to renew a lease in order to change the land use.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.204", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.204", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a), (b)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.052", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.052", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(b)" } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "change_of_use_variants": { "status": "not_regulated", "value": null, "detail": "Texas has one closure notice period and it does not vary. The 180-day notice applies to every covered community whatever its size and whatever the reason for the change in land use, and the chapter provides no shorter or longer variant. The related disclosure is that a lease must state the expiry date of a temporary zoning permit for the community's land use where one exists.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.204", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.204", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.053", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.053", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(c)(15)" } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "relocation_payment_required": { "status": "not_regulated", "value": null, "detail": "No relocation payment is owed when a Texas community closes or changes its land use. The change-of-use section requires notice and nothing more, and there is no state relocation fund. The chapter requires the community owner to pay moving costs in only one situation: where the owner asks a resident to leave before the 60-day notice period has run, the owner must compensate the resident in advance for relocation expenses, including the cost of moving and installing the home at a new location.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.204", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.204", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.055", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.055", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(d)" } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "relocation_payment_amounts": { "status": "not_regulated", "value": null, "detail": "Texas sets no relocation figures. The one payment the chapter requires is open-ended: where the community owner asks a resident to leave before the 60-day notice period ends, the owner must compensate the resident in advance for relocation expenses including moving and installing the home at a new location, with no dollar amount or schedule stated.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.055", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.055", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(d)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.204", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.204", "official": true, "pinpoint": null } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "relocation_payer": { "status": "regulated", "value": "none", "detail": "Nobody pays relocation money when a Texas community closes. The change-of-use section requires 180 days' notice and no payment, and the state has no relocation fund for displaced manufactured home owners. The single exception is not a closure rule: a community owner who wants a resident out before the 60-day notice period ends must pay the moving and installation costs in advance.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.204", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.204", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.055", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.055", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(d)" } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "government_notice_on_closure_required": { "status": "not_regulated", "value": null, "detail": "No government body has to be told when a Texas community closes. The change-of-use section lists exactly who gets the 180-day notice: the resident, the home's owner if different, and any lienholder whose name and address the community owner has in writing, plus a notice posted in the community. No city, county or state agency is named.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.204", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.204", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a)(1), (a)(2)" } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "park_sale_notice_required": { "status": "not_regulated", "value": null, "detail": "Texas residents have no right to be told that the community is for sale or has been sold. The chapter has no sale-notice section. It touches a change of ownership only in two places: the new owner becomes liable for security deposits from the date title passes, and the former owner stays liable until the new owner gives each resident a signed statement acknowledging the deposit and its exact amount. A resident may also ask in writing for the name and address of the record titleholder and of any off-site management company, which must be supplied within seven days.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.106", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.106", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a), (b)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.010", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.010", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a), (b)" } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "park_sale_notice_trigger": { "status": "not_regulated", "value": null, "detail": "Nothing triggers a notice to residents that the community is being sold, because Texas requires no such notice. Listing the community, receiving an offer and closing a sale all pass without any duty to tell residents. The only duty tied to a transfer is the signed statement about the security deposit that a new owner gives each resident.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.106", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.106", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(b)" } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "resident_purchase_right": { "status": "regulated", "value": "none", "detail": "Texas gives residents no right to buy the community. There is no right of first refusal, no opportunity to match an offer, no notice of an intended sale and no window to organize and bid. A resident association may of course negotiate with an owner willing to sell, but nothing in state law requires the owner to deal with it.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.106", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.106", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.204", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.204", "official": true, "pinpoint": null } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "resident_response_days": { "status": "not_regulated", "value": null, "detail": "There is no response window, because Texas gives residents no purchase right and requires no notice of a sale. The only deadline the chapter puts on a resident about the future of the tenancy is the reply to a renewal offer, which must reach the community owner by the 30th day before the current lease expires.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.055", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.055", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(c)" } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "association_threshold_pct": { "status": "not_regulated", "value": null, "detail": "Texas sets no share of residents that must join together to act on a sale, because there is no purchase right to exercise. The chapter recognizes residents acting collectively only by protecting meetings about manufactured home living and by allowing a civic association to sue on a resident's behalf to stop a refusal of cash rent payments.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.006", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.006", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.007", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.007", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(c)" } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "park_sale_exceptions": { "status": "not_regulated", "value": null, "detail": "Texas lists no exempt transfers because it imposes no rules on the sale of a community in the first place. Foreclosure, family transfers, transfers between related entities and ordinary market sales are all treated alike, with one narrow carve-out on deposits: a mortgage lienholder who takes title by foreclosure does not pick up liability for deposits taken by the former owner.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.106", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.106", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(c)" } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "assignment_right": { "status": "not_regulated", "value": null, "detail": "Texas residents have no purchase right to assign to a nonprofit or a city, because the state grants no purchase right at all. On the separate question of assigning the lot lease itself, the chapter lets the community owner prohibit assignment and subletting outright if the prohibition is written into the lease.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.057", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.057", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a), (b)" } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "violation_penalty": { "status": "not_regulated", "value": null, "detail": "Texas sets no penalty tied to the sale of a community because it sets no sale rules. The chapter's general remedy covers any breach of it: a resident may recover actual damages, a civil penalty equal to two months' rent plus $500, and reasonable attorney's fees and costs, and these remedies are in addition to any other the law provides.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.301", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.301", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.303", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.303", "official": true, "pinpoint": null } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "sale_in_place_protected": { "status": "regulated", "value": true, "detail": "A resident may sell the home where it stands, provided the community owner approves the buyer in writing and the buyer signs a lease. The chapter states the right in those terms, so a sale with the home staying on the lot is contemplated by statute rather than left to the lease. The protection is only as strong as the approval condition, since the chapter sets no standard the community owner must meet in deciding whether to approve a buyer.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.252", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.252", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a)" } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "sale_commission_prohibited": { "status": "regulated", "value": true, "detail": "A community owner may not take a commission or fee out of the sale of a resident's home unless the resident agreed in writing. The same section bars the owner from requiring the resident to contract with it as agent or broker for the sale.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.252", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.252", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(b)(1), (b)(2)" } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "buyer_approval_allowed": { "status": "regulated", "value": true, "detail": "Yes, the community owner screens the buyer, and its written approval is a condition of a sale with the home staying on the lot. The buyer must also sign a lease agreement, which means taking a new tenancy rather than stepping into the seller's remaining term.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.252", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.252", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a)(1), (a)(2)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.057", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.057", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a)" } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "buyer_approval_standard": { "status": "not_regulated", "value": null, "detail": "Texas sets no standard and no deadline for approving a buyer. The chapter requires written approval and a signed lease but does not say the community owner must act reasonably, must give reasons for a refusal or must answer within any period. The nearest limit is the general one that community rules must not be arbitrary or capricious, and the separate bar on retaliation.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.252", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.252", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.008", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.008", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.251", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.251", "official": true, "pinpoint": null } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "age_size_style_rejection_prohibited": { "status": "not_regulated", "value": null, "detail": "Texas does not bar a community owner from turning down a home because of its age, size or style. The chapter says nothing about the characteristics of a home a community must accept, and it does not bar requiring a home to be moved off the lot when it is sold; instead it makes an in-place sale depend on the owner approving the buyer.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.252", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.252", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.008", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.008", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a)" } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "presale_repairs_may_be_required": { "status": "not_regulated", "value": null, "detail": "Texas law neither allows nor forbids a community owner to demand repairs to a home before it is sold. The chapter is silent on the point. It does make clear that the community owner's own repair duties stop at the lot line, since the repair section does not apply to a condition in or on the resident's home, and that community rules must not be arbitrary or capricious.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.252", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.252", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.153", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.153", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.008", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.008", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a)" } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null }, "for_sale_sign_protected": { "status": "not_regulated", "value": null, "detail": "Texas does not protect a for-sale sign on a resident's home or lot. The chapter says nothing about signs, so the question is left to the community rules, which must not be arbitrary or capricious and take effect only 30 days after every resident receives a written copy.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.252", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.252", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.008", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.008", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a), (c)" } ], "effective_from": null, "sub_state_variation": null } }, "fhfa_protections": { "p1": { "meets": false, "basis": "Neither limb is met: the term that must be offered is six months, not a year, and a community owner may decline to renew for any reason on 60 days' notice, so there is no cause requirement.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.052", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.052", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a), (b)" } ] }, "p2": { "meets": true, "basis": "A community owner must send an offer of renewal stating the proposed rent amount by the 60th day before the current term expires, which is more than 30 days' written notice of a lot-rent increase and applies statewide; a rent increase within a term is possible only under a lease provision the resident separately initialed, which is void without the initials.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.055", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.055", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a), (b)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.053", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.053", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(d)" } ] }, "p3": { "meets": "partial", "basis": "The cure limb is met and the grace limb is not: a resident has 10 days after the written delinquency notice to pay in full, and termination requires the arrears to reach one month's rent, but a late penalty may be assessed as soon as payment is not remitted by the date stipulated in the lease, so there is no fee-free period after the due date.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.206", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.206", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(1), (3)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.056", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.056", "official": true, "pinpoint": null } ] }, "p4": { "meets": true, "basis": "The chapter grants the owner of a manufactured home the right to sell a home located on the leased premises, so a sale does not require the home to be moved out; the conditions are that the landlord approve the purchaser in writing and that the purchaser sign a lease, and the chapter sets no express bar on removal beyond that grant. How the buyer is approved is the subject of the next protection.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.252", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.252", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a)" } ] }, "p5": { "meets": "partial", "basis": "There is a fixed 30-day period after a judgment for possession in which the court may not issue the writ, so the home stays on the lot, but it is conditioned on the resident paying the rent due for those 30 days and the chapter grants no right to sell the home in place after an eviction.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.203", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.203", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(d)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.252", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.252", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a)" } ] }, "p6": { "meets": "partial", "basis": "A buyer may take a lot tenancy but only as a new tenant and with no unreasonableness standard: the buyer must be approved in writing by the community owner and must sign a lease agreement, and the owner may prohibit assignment and subletting outright by putting the prohibition in the lease.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.252", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.252", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a)(1), (a)(2)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.057", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.057", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a)" } ] }, "p7": { "meets": false, "basis": "The chapter says nothing about a for-sale sign; signs are left to the community rules, which need only avoid being arbitrary or capricious.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.008", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.008", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.252", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.252", "official": true, "pinpoint": null } ] }, "p8": { "meets": "partial", "basis": "The closure limb is met and the sale limb is missing: a change in the community's land use takes 180 days' notice to the resident, the home's owner and any lienholder, but nothing requires residents to be told that the community is being sold.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.204", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.204", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.106", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.106", "official": true, "pinpoint": null } ] } }, "pending_legislation": [], "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code ch. 94", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.001", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.001", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 94.002", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.94.htm#94.002", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code ch. 24", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.24.htm", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Water Code §§ 13.501-13.506", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/WA/htm/WA.13.htm#13.501", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Util. Code §§ 184.011-184.014", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/UT/htm/UT.184.htm#184.011", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Loc. Gov't Code § 214.902", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/LG/htm/LG.214.htm#214.902", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Occ. Code § 1201.217", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/OC/htm/OC.1201.htm#1201.217", "official": true, "pinpoint": null } ], "summary_plain": "Texas regulates manufactured home community tenancies in chapter 94 of the Property Code, which covers a resident who owns the home and rents a lot in a community of four or more lots, and its strength is paperwork rather than tenure: the lease must be written and signed, must carry sixteen specified items including the grounds for eviction and the change-of-land-use disclosure, and the community owner must offer a first term of at least six months and hand every applicant a disclosure statement whose wording the statute prints. Ending a tenancy needs no reason, only 60 days' notice before the term expires, and 180 days where the community's land use will change; a nonpayment eviction needs arrears of at least one month's rent and a 10-day written chance to pay, and after a judgment the home stays on the lot for 30 days if the resident pays that period's rent. New or amended community rules take effect 30 days after every resident gets a written copy, and a resident gets 90 days to comply where compliance costs more than $25. Texas sets no rent cap and no notice period for a mid-term rent increase, which is possible only under a lease provision the resident separately initialed; there is no relocation payment, no notice that the community is for sale and no resident right to buy it. A resident may sell the home in place if the community owner approves the buyer in writing and the buyer signs a lease, and the owner may not take a commission on that sale without the resident's written agreement.", "notes": [ { "label": "Four lots is the line", "text": "The chapter reaches a parcel with four or more lots offered for lease for manufactured homes. A smaller property is outside it, and separately a Texas city may not regulate a tract as a manufactured home community unless it has at least four leased spaces." }, { "label": "Renting the home instead of the lot is a different law", "text": "If the community owns the home and rents it out, chapter 94 does not apply and the ordinary residential landlord-tenant chapter governs. The chapter also does not reach a lot leased for a recreational vehicle or other movable dwelling that is not a manufactured home, or an employee or agent of the community owner." }, { "label": "The lease is where the money terms live", "text": "Because there is no rent cap and no frequency limit, the operative protections are the required lease contents and the rule that a provision allowing a rent, fee or charge increase during the term is void unless the resident initialed it. A rent change otherwise arrives with the renewal offer, which must come at least 60 days before the term ends and must state the proposed amount." }, { "label": "Notices can turn on a postmark", "text": "A resident who does not live on the lot may ask in writing, when signing or renewing, for notices to go to a primary residence address. Those notices may travel by regular mail and count as given on the date of the postmark, which is worth watching where a 10-day or 60-day clock is running." }, { "label": "Utility billing is policed by a different agency", "text": "Water, wastewater and electricity charges passed on to residents are governed by the Water Code and Utilities Code rather than by chapter 94. A community owner may not charge above the utility's own cost per gallon or per kilowatt hour, may add a service charge of up to nine percent on submetered water costs, and may charge a late fee of up to five percent of a water bill paid late. Complaints go to the Public Utility Commission, which has exclusive jurisdiction and may order repayment of an overcharge." }, { "label": "An abandoned home has its own route", "text": "Declaring a home abandoned is done under the state's manufactured housing law, not the tenancy chapter: the home must have been unoccupied for four months with a delinquent debt, notice goes to the record owner, lienholders and taxing units, and after 45 days the landowner may apply for a statement of ownership. The route is closed to a landowner who has ever held an interest in that home." }, { "label": "The legislature meets in odd years", "text": "Texas holds a regular legislative session only in odd-numbered years. The last regular session ended in June 2025 and the next one begins in January 2027, so no bill affecting the chapter is before the legislature in 2026." } ] }, "application_screening_fees": { "topic_verified": "2026-08-26", "verified_by_method": "Direct read of Texas Property Code chapter 92 in full, in particular subchapter I (sections 92.351, 92.3515, 92.352, 92.353, 92.354 and 92.355), together with Property Code section 1.004 and Business and Commerce Code sections 1.109, 17.45, 17.46, 17.50, 20.02 and 20.22, on the Texas Legislative Council document host that serves the state's statute site. Backed by a term search of all 93 retrievable Property Code chapters and all 120 retrievable Business and Commerce Code chapters for application fee, screening, credit report, holding deposit, reusable, portable, advertising and related terms, and by a sweep of the 2025 session of the 89th Legislature, whose amendments to chapter 92 were read section by section. Bills read on the legislature's own bill pages: S.B. 340, H.B. 3198 and H.B. 4305 of the 89th Legislature.", "application_fee_cap": null, "fee_limited_to_actual_cost": null, "screening_fee_rules": null, "receipt_required": null, "refund_required": true, "refund_rules": "Rejection without the required selection-criteria notice returns both the application fee and any application deposit; an application deposit is refundable on rejection; an applicant is treated as rejected if no notice of acceptance is given by the seventh day.\n\nAn applicant is deemed rejected if the landlord gives no notice of acceptance on or before the seventh day after the applicant submits a completed application on the landlord's form, or after the landlord accepts an application deposit where no form was furnished. Rejection of one co-applicant is rejection of all. A landlord is presumed to have given notice of acceptance or rejection by telephone to the applicant, a co-applicant, or a person living with either on or before the required date, or by United States mail postmarked on or before that date. If the applicant asks for the money to be mailed, the refund check must go to the address the applicant furnished. Where the required date falls on a Saturday, Sunday, or state or federal holiday, it extends to the end of the next day. An application fee is nonrefundable where the notice was made available, and the statutory acknowledgment wording tells the applicant so.", "disclosure_rules": "At the time the applicant is given a rental application, the landlord must make available a printed notice of the tenant selection criteria and the grounds on which the application may be denied, and the applicant signs an acknowledgment that it was made available.\n\nThe notice must cover the applicant's criminal history, previous rental history, current income, credit history, and failure to give accurate or complete information on the application form. If the acknowledgment is not signed there is a rebuttable presumption the notice was not made available. The acknowledgment must carry wording substantively equivalent to the statutory paragraph, which tells the applicant that the criteria may include those factors and that an application may be rejected and the application fee kept. The acknowledgment may sit inside the rental application itself if the notice is underlined or in bold print. Texas requires no disclosure of the fee amount or its basis, and sets no duty to re-notice when criteria change.", "adverse_action_rules": null, "reusable_report_rules": null, "holding_deposit_rules": "Money given with a rental application is an application deposit, refundable if the applicant is rejected, and it sits outside the security deposit rules; Texas sets no cap on it and does not regulate money taken after acceptance to hold a unit until signing.\n\nAn application deposit is a sum given to the landlord in connection with a rental application that is refundable to the applicant if the applicant is rejected. The security deposit definition expressly excludes a rental application deposit, so the accounting and thirty-day refund rules for security deposits do not reach it. The seven-day deemed-rejection clock, the notice and mailing mechanics, and the bad-faith penalty for failing to refund all apply. There is no statutory cap on the amount, no written-statement duty, and no rule on money collected after an applicant is accepted to hold the unit pending a signed lease.", "junk_fee_limits": null, "penalty_for_violation": "A landlord who in bad faith fails to refund an application fee or deposit owes $100, three times the amount wrongfully retained, and the applicant's reasonable attorney's fees.\n\nThe penalty attaches to the refund duties of the rental application subchapter and requires bad faith. The selection-criteria notice duty carries no separate money penalty of its own; its consequence is that the fee and any deposit must be returned when the applicant is rejected, and withholding that refund in bad faith then triggers the penalty. A provision of a rental application that purports to waive a right or exempt a party from a liability or duty under the subchapter is void.", "pending_legislation": [ { "bill": "S.B. 340 (89th Legislature, 2025)", "summary": "Would have required the printed tenant selection criteria notice to be made available before an application fee is accepted, required that notice to tell the applicant they may submit evidence of inaccuracies in their criminal history, of rehabilitation, or of other mitigating factors, and added a penalty of $500 plus reasonable attorney's fees for any violation of the notice section.", "status": "Referred to the Senate Business and Commerce Committee on February 3, 2025, and left there; the regular session it was filed in adjourned on June 2, 2025 and the next regular session begins in January 2027.", "lifecycle": "dead", "signed_on": null, "effective_on": null, "checked": "2026-08-26" }, { "bill": "H.B. 3198 (89th Legislature, 2025)", "summary": "Identical companion to S.B. 340, carrying the same changes to the tenant selection criteria notice and the same $500 penalty.", "status": "Referred to the House Trade, Workforce and Economic Development Committee on March 20, 2025, and left there; the regular session it was filed in adjourned on June 2, 2025.", "lifecycle": "dead", "signed_on": null, "effective_on": null, "checked": "2026-08-26" }, { "bill": "H.B. 4305 (89th Legislature, 2025)", "summary": "Would have required fixed recurring fees to be disclosed alongside the rent in any lease quote, rental application, advertisement or listing, required a rental application to itemize nonrefundable application-stage charges including application fees, hold fees and processing fees, and given a prospective tenant a written demand for return of all money paid where the application did not comply, payable within five business days.", "status": "Referred to the House Trade, Workforce and Economic Development Committee on April 1, 2025, and left there; the regular session it was filed in adjourned on June 2, 2025.", "lifecycle": "dead", "signed_on": null, "effective_on": null, "checked": "2026-08-26" } ], "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.351", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(1-a)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.002", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.351", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.3515", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.3515", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(b)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.011", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(b)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.3515", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(e)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.351", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(1)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.352", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a), (b)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.353", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a)-(c)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.3515", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(e), (f)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.351", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(1), (1-a), (6)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.3515", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a)-(d)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.352", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Bus. & Com. Code § 20.02", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/BC/htm/BC.20.htm", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(b)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code §§ 92.351-92.355", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Bus. & Com. Code § 20.22", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/BC/htm/BC.20.htm", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a)(3)(D)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.102", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.354", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Bus. & Com. Code § 17.45", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/BC/htm/BC.17.htm", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(1)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Bus. & Com. Code § 17.46", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/BC/htm/BC.17.htm", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(b)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.355", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code §§ 92.351-92.355 (Rental Application)", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.3515", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a)-(f)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 1.004", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.1.htm", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a)" } ], "summary_plain": "Texas puts no dollar limit on a residential rental application fee and instead regulates the paperwork around it. The landlord must make the tenant selection criteria available in printed form when the application is handed over, and must return the application fee and any application deposit if the applicant is rejected without that notice having been made available. An application deposit is refundable when the applicant is rejected, and an applicant counts as rejected if the landlord gives no notice of acceptance by the seventh day after the completed application is submitted or the deposit is taken. A landlord who in bad faith keeps money that should have been refunded owes $100, three times the amount kept, and the applicant's attorney's fees. Texas does not require a receipt, does not tie the fee to the cost of screening, has no portable screening report law, sets no state denial-notice duty beyond federal law, and has no rental fee-transparency statute.", "notes": [ { "label": "Two different pots of money", "text": "Texas distinguishes an application fee, which is nonrefundable by definition, from an application deposit, which is refundable if the applicant is rejected. Which label applies turns on the statutory definitions rather than on what a form calls the payment." }, { "label": "The notice is the lever", "text": "Almost every applicant-side right at this stage runs through the printed tenant selection criteria notice. Where it was made available and the acknowledgment signed, the fee stays with the landlord; where it was not, rejection returns both the fee and any deposit." }, { "label": "Silence counts as a rejection", "text": "There is no duty to say no. If the seventh day passes with no notice of acceptance, the applicant is treated as rejected, which is what starts the refund obligation for an application deposit." }, { "label": "What the fee rules do not reach", "text": "No cap, no cost-based limit, no receipt duty, no cap or separate rules for money taken after acceptance to hold a unit until the lease is signed, and no requirement to accept a screening report the applicant already paid for." }, { "label": "Advertised prices", "text": "Texas has no statute requiring an all-in advertised rent or an itemization of mandatory fees in a listing. The state's general consumer statute reaches leases of real property and addresses misleading conduct, but it sets no fee-disclosure standard for rental advertising." }, { "label": "Local rules", "text": "This record covers state law only. Two Texas statutes, one in the Property Code and one in the Business and Commerce Code, both added in 2023, bar a municipality or county from regulating in a field the respective code occupies." }, { "label": "2025 session", "text": "The 89th Legislature amended chapter 92 in five places in 2025, none of them in the rental application subchapter, which has stood unchanged since January 1, 2008. Three 2025 bills that would have changed application-stage rules were left in committee." }, { "label": "Where the text is published", "text": "The chapter is published by the Texas Legislative Council and is also readable through the Council's statute site at tcss.legis.texas.gov." }, { "label": "About the application fee rule", "text": "Texas sets no maximum on a residential rental application fee. The rental application subchapter defines the fee as a nonrefundable sum given to the landlord to offset the costs of screening an applicant, and then regulates notice and refund rather than amount. The amount is left to the lease market, subject to the general consumer statute where an advertised or quoted charge is misleading." }, { "label": "How the cost limit works", "text": "No Texas statute ties the application fee to the amount the landlord actually spends on screening. The phrase in the definition, that the fee offsets the costs of screening an applicant, states the fee's purpose; no section caps the fee at cost, requires an itemized cost basis, or requires any surplus over cost to be returned." }, { "label": "Screening charges", "text": "The rental application subchapter places no conditions on the screening charge itself. It does not say who may charge it, does not limit a household to one charge, does not require the landlord to order or use a report, and sets no vacancy or written-agreement prerequisite. The duties Texas does impose at the application stage are the selection-criteria notice and the refund triggers, each recorded in its own entry." }, { "label": "What the receipt duty covers", "text": "No Texas statute requires a receipt or payment record for application or screening money. Chapter 92 does require a written receipt and a record-book entry, but only for a cash rent payment from a sitting tenant. The signed acknowledgment the application subchapter requires confirms that the selection-criteria notice was made available, not that money was paid." }, { "label": "When money must come back", "text": "Two circumstances force return of money. If the landlord rejects an applicant and had not made the printed tenant selection criteria notice available, the landlord must return the application fee and any application deposit. Separately, an application deposit is by definition refundable to an applicant who is rejected." }, { "label": "Denial notices", "text": "Texas places no state duty on a landlord to give reasons for a denial, to hand over a copy of a screening report, or to name the agency that supplied it. The section that would carry such a duty instead treats silence as a denial, deeming an applicant rejected when no notice of acceptance arrives by the seventh day. The state consumer reporting chapter regulates reporting agencies rather than landlords, and its adverse-action clause only bars an agency from stopping a user from showing the report to the person it describes. The federal Fair Credit Reporting Act supplies the denial-notice duty in Texas." }, { "label": "Reusable screening reports", "text": "Texas has no portable or reusable tenant screening report statute. No section requires a landlord to accept a report an applicant already paid for, bars a fee where one is used, or sets a validity window. The rental application subchapter is where such a rule would sit, and it does not appear there or anywhere else in the Property Code." }, { "label": "Advertising and fee transparency", "text": "No Texas statute requires an all-in advertised rent for a dwelling, an itemization of mandatory fees in a listing, or disclosure of application-stage charges before payment. What governs instead is the general consumer statute, the Deceptive Trade Practices-Consumer Protection Act, which reaches leases of real property because its definition of goods covers real property purchased or leased for use. That act addresses false, misleading and deceptive acts generally rather than setting a fee-transparency standard for rental listings." } ] }, "deposit_interest": { "topic_verified": "2026-08-28", "verified_by_method": "Direct read of Texas Property Code chapter 92, subchapter C (Security Deposits), in the Texas Legislative Council's published statute text — all fifteen sections, §§ 92.101 through 92.113, read in full, including §§ 92.112 and 92.113 as added in 2025. Every occurrence of interest, account, escrow, trust, bank, commingling, separation and financial-institution terms in the subchapter examined in context, and the rest of chapter 92 searched for the same terms as a control. Currency taken from the sections' own enactment credits, which carry Acts 2025, 89th Legislature, Regular Session, ch. 732 (House Bill 2037), § 2, effective September 1, 2025.", "interest_required": "no_silent", "rate_mechanism": null, "current_rate_plain": null, "rate_rules": null, "accrual_payment_rules": null, "coverage_conditions": null, "segregation_required": null, "interest_bearing_account_required": null, "custody_rules": null, "penalty_for_violation": null, "local_rules": null, "rate_tables": null, "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code ch. 92, subch. C (Security Deposits, §§ 92.101 through 92.113)", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/Docs/PR/htm/PR.92.htm", "official": true, "pinpoint": "§§ 92.101-92.113" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.106 (records; the whole of the landlord's holding-side duty)", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/Docs/PR/htm/PR.92.htm", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.103 (obligation to refund; creditor priority)", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/Docs/PR/htm/PR.92.htm", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a), (c)" }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.105 (cessation of owner's interest)", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/Docs/PR/htm/PR.92.htm", "official": true, "pinpoint": "(a), (b-1)" } ], "summary_plain": "Texas requires no interest on a residential security deposit — nothing in the Property Code's security-deposit subchapter mentions interest at all. Subchapter C of chapter 92 runs from § 92.101 to § 92.113 and applies, by its own terms, to all residential leases, with no small-landlord exemption. It defines the deposit, requires a refund on or before the thirtieth day after the tenant surrenders the premises, sets the conditions for retention and the accounting that has to accompany it, provides for a landlord's liability for withholding wrongfully, and — since September 1, 2025 — governs fees charged in lieu of a deposit and notice given by e-mail. The whole of the landlord's holding-side duty is a single sentence in § 92.106: 'The landlord shall keep accurate records of all security deposits.' That is a records duty, not a funds duty; it says nothing about where the money sits, in whose name, or what it earns. The closest Texas comes to a trust concept is § 92.103(c), under which 'the tenant's claim to the security deposit takes priority over the claim of any creditor of the landlord, including a trustee in bankruptcy' — a rule about insolvency rather than custody, and the clause most often misread into a Texas escrow requirement that does not exist.", "notes": [ { "label": "The only holding duty Texas imposes is a recordkeeping duty", "text": "Section 92.106 is one sentence long and is the entire text: 'The landlord shall keep accurate records of all security deposits.' It has stood unchanged since the subchapter took effect on January 1, 1984. Nothing requires an escrow, a trust account, a separate account, or a named financial institution, and none of those phrases appears anywhere in the subchapter." }, { "label": "Creditor priority is not a trust account", "text": "Section 92.103(c) protects a tenant if the landlord goes under, putting the tenant's claim ahead of other creditors including a bankruptcy trustee. It creates no obligation while the tenancy is running and does not require the money to be held apart. Sources that report a Texas trust-account rule appear to be reading this clause as if it were one." }, { "label": "The subchapter grew in 2025 and gained no interest rule", "text": "Sections 92.112 (agents for delivery of notice) and 92.113 (notice by e-mail) were added by the 89th Legislature's House Bill 2037, chapter 732 of the 2025 regular session laws, effective September 1, 2025. Subchapter C now runs to § 92.113 rather than stopping in the low 92.10x range, as older summaries have it, and the additions carry no interest or account provision." }, { "label": "Every 'interest' in the subchapter means ownership", "text": "The word appears only in § 92.105, on the cessation of the owner's interest: 'if the owner's interest in the premises is terminated by sale, assignment, death,' and 'the person who no longer owns an interest in the rental premises is liable for a security deposit received while the person was the owner.' There is no accrual, rate, timing, or payment provision anywhere." } ] }, "habitability": { "topic_verified": "2026-08-30", "verified_by_method": "Direct reading of Texas Property Code chapter 92, subchapter B (sections 92.051 through 92.062, every section read in full) and the retaliation subchapter H (sections 92.331 through 92.335) on the Legislature's official statutes site, current through the 89th Legislature's 2025 called sessions; the enrolled text of H.B. 2037 (89th Legislature, R.S., chapter 732) read on the Legislature's bill archive to confirm the exact scope of the 2025 amendment; and Kamarath v. Bennett, 568 S.W.2d 658 (Tex. 1978), read in full in the official reporter text.", "duty_source": "statutory_only", "duty_source_plain": "The duty comes from Texas Property Code chapter 92, subchapter B (sections 92.051 through 92.062). Section 92.061 makes the subchapter's duties and remedies stand in place of the earlier common-law and statutory warranties for maintenance, repair, habitability, and nonretaliation, so the implied warranty the Texas Supreme Court recognized in Kamarath v. Bennett (1978) does not operate alongside the statute for the leases the subchapter covers — those executed, entered into, renewed, or extended on or after September 1, 1979.", "applicability": null, "standards_source": "statutory_general", "standards_plain": "The statute states one general standard rather than a list: the landlord must make a diligent effort to repair or remedy a condition that materially affects the physical health or safety of an ordinary tenant. The one enumerated specific is hot water — the duty covers a device supplying hot water of at least 120 degrees Fahrenheit. The duty does not extend to conditions caused by the tenant, a member of the tenant's family, or a guest (other than normal wear and tear), to furnishing utilities from a utility company where the lines are not reasonably available, or to providing security guards. Municipal housing codes add local standards, and a written violation notice from a local housing, building, or health official is the trigger that opens the tenant's repair-and-deduct remedy for most condition classes.", "heat_duty_type": null, "heat_plain": null, "waivability": "delegation_carve_out_limited", "waivability_plain": "Subchapter B duties and remedies may not be waived, with three narrow exceptions written into section 92.006: the parties may agree that the tenant will repair covered conditions at the landlord's expense; they may agree that the tenant will repair covered conditions at the tenant's own expense only if the landlord owns just one rental dwelling, the unit starts the lease free of health-or-safety conditions with none expected to recur, and the agreement is specific, clear, knowing, voluntary, made for consideration, and underlined or in boldface in a written lease or a separate addendum; and, under the same formalities, the tenant may take on the cost of repairing damage from wastewater stoppages caused by foreign or improper objects in lines serving only the tenant's dwelling, damage to doors, windows, or screens, and damage from windows or doors left open. A knowing violation of the waiver rules is itself actionable, with actual damages, a civil penalty of one month's rent plus $2,000, and attorney's fees.", "notice_cure_days": 7, "notice_cure_plain": "Seven days is a rebuttable presumption of a reasonable time, not a fixed deadline: liability turns on whether the landlord made a diligent effort within a reasonable time, weighing the date the notice arrived, the severity and nature of the condition, and the availability of materials, labor, and utilities. The tenant starts the clock by giving notice to the person to whom, or the place where, rent is normally paid, and must not be delinquent in rent when any required notice is given. A second notice after a reasonable time is required before remedies attach — unless the first notice went by certified mail, registered mail, or another mail service with delivery tracking, which makes one notice enough. Notice must be in writing only if a written lease requires written notice. The landlord can lawfully extend the timeline by delivering a sworn affidavit explaining the delay: up to 15 days when parts are delayed through no fault of the landlord, or up to 30 days during a general shortage of labor or materials after a natural disaster, with all affidavit delays together capped at six months.", "repair_deduct": { "posture": "statutory", "cap_plain": "The deduction may not exceed the greater of one month's rent or $500 in any one month, and repairs and deductions may be made as often as necessary within that monthly ceiling. For a tenancy subsidized by a government agency, the one-month measure means the fair market rent for the dwelling rather than the rent the tenant actually pays.", "rules_plain": "The remedy is available only when the landlord is already liable under the notice-and-cure rules and at least one of the tenant's notices states an intent to repair and reasonably describes the intended work. It then attaches by condition class: immediately for backup or overflow of raw sewage inside the dwelling or flooding from broken pipes or natural drainage; after 3 days for a total stop of drinking water the landlord agreed to furnish; after 3 days for inadequate heat or cooled air from lease-furnished equipment, but only once a local housing, building, or health official has notified the landlord in writing that the failure materially affects an ordinary tenant's health or safety; and after 7 days for any other qualifying condition flagged in writing by such an official. The work must be done by an independent company, contractor, or repairman — licensed where the municipality requires it — never by the tenant or the tenant's family, employer, or employees unless the parties agree otherwise, and never on the foundation or load-bearing structural elements of a building holding two or more dwelling units. A tenant who terminates the lease gives up this remedy, and deducting outside the statute is penalized: after written warning, a bad-faith violation makes the tenant liable for the landlord's actual damages plus a civil penalty of one month's rent plus $500." }, "withholding_escrow": { "posture": "none_no_authority", "mechanisms": null, "rules_plain": "No Texas statute authorizes a tenant to withhold rent over the condition of the premises, and no court or agency escrow program exists. The statute runs the other way: a tenant who withholds rent or deducts repair costs in violation of the subchapter is liable for the landlord's actual damages, and, once the landlord has given written notice of the illegality, a bad-faith violation adds a civil penalty of one month's rent plus $500. A lawful deduction under the repair-and-deduct sections is a defense to a nonpayment eviction; withholding outside them is not." }, "termination": { "posture": "statutory", "rules_plain": "Once the landlord is liable under the notice-and-cure rules, the tenant may terminate the lease, with a pro rata rent refund from the termination or move-out date (whichever is later) and the right to deduct the security deposit from rent or recover it under the deposit law; a tenant who terminates gives up the repair-and-deduct remedy and the judicial repair-order and rent-reduction remedies. Separate rights apply after casualty and closure: if fire, flood, or another insured casualty leaves the premises totally unusable through no fault of the tenant's side, either party may end the lease by written notice with a pro rata refund; and a landlord who closes the rental premises under the statute owes the tenant's actual, reasonable moving expenses, a pro rata refund, and the deposit, with a penalty of one month's rent plus $100 plus fees for violations." }, "essential_services": { "posture": "statutory", "rules_plain": "Essential failures ride faster repair-and-deduct clocks than the general 7-day track: backup of raw sewage or interior flooding can be repaired and deducted immediately after the intent-to-repair notice, and a total stop of drinking water the landlord agreed to furnish after 3 days. Heating and cooling equipment failures get the 3-day track once a local official has given the landlord written notice. Utility interruptions the landlord causes on purpose are a different subject, covered with the eviction rules." }, "retaliation": { "posture": "statute_general", "window_days": 180, "window_plain": "The statute protects the tenant for six months after the protected act; the window counts in months from the tenant's action, and eviction or other retaliatory conduct inside it is presumptively suspect unless a listed ground applies.", "mechanism_plain": "A landlord who retaliates within the window is liable to the tenant, and retaliation is also a defense in an eviction suit. The statute lists conduct that is not retaliation even inside the window: rent increases under an escalation clause tied to utilities, taxes, or insurance; increases or service reductions applied across the whole project; and six eviction grounds including rent delinquency when notice to vacate is given, intentional property damage or threats to safety, other serious lease breaches, and holdovers. A landlord who proves the action was not for purposes of retaliation is not liable. If an official determines in writing that a tenant's complaint was invalid, the tenant is rebuttably presumed to have acted in bad faith, and a bad-faith retaliation claim lets the landlord recover possession plus one month's rent plus $500 with costs and fees.", "protected_acts_plain": "Exercising or attempting in good faith to exercise a right or remedy granted by the lease or by law; giving the landlord a repair notice; complaining to a government entity responsible for enforcing building or housing codes, to a public utility, or to a civic or nonprofit agency; and establishing, attempting to establish, or participating in a tenant organization." }, "damages_defenses_plain": "Judicial remedies for an unrepaired condition are an order directing the repair, rent reduced in proportion to the reduced rental value from the date of the first repair notice until the condition is fixed, a civil penalty of one month's rent plus $500, actual damages, and court costs and attorney's fees (personal-injury fee claims excluded). Retaliation adds a civil penalty of one month's rent plus $500 and actual damages, with delinquent rent offset against the recovery and the penalty measured from fair market rent for subsidized tenancies. Enhanced penalties attach to affidavit-for-delay abuse (one month's rent plus $1,000) and to a foreclosure buyer who ignores surviving repair rights (one month's rent plus $2,000). The landlord's stated defenses: conditions caused by the tenant, the tenant's family, or guests; casualty timing, since the repair period does not start until insurance proceeds arrive; and proof that an action was not retaliatory. The burden of proof generally rests on the tenant, but shifts to the landlord if the landlord fails to give a written explanation for delay within 5 days of the tenant's written demand for one. Suits under the chapter fit justice court up to that court's $20,000 civil ceiling, the landlord may appeal a justice-court repair judgment without an appeal bond, a lease cannot waive the tenant's right to a jury trial, and repair claims may not be joined with an eviction suit.", "leading_cases": [ { "case_name": "Kamarath v. Bennett", "reporter_cite": "568 S.W.2d 658 (Tex. 1978)", "court": "Supreme Court of Texas", "year": 1978, "holding_plain": "Recognized an implied warranty that a rented dwelling is habitable and fit for living — no latent defects in facilities vital to residential use at the start of the lease, with essential facilities remaining livable. For leases executed, entered into, renewed, or extended on or after September 1, 1979, the Legislature replaced that court-made warranty: the statute's duties and remedies now stand in its place.", "url": "https://static.case.law/sw2d/568/html/0658-01.html" } ], "local_rules": "Municipal housing codes do real work in Texas: home-rule cities set minimum property standards, and a written violation notice from the local housing, building, or health official is what opens the repair-and-deduct remedy for most condition classes. The city code where the property sits belongs beside the state rules on this page.", "citations": [ { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.051 (application of subchapter B)", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm#92.051", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.052 (landlord's duty to repair or remedy)", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm#92.052", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.053 (burden of proof)", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm#92.053", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.054 (casualty loss)", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm#92.054", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.055 (closing the rental premises)", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm#92.055", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.056 (landlord liability and tenant remedies; notice and time for repair)", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm#92.056", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.0561 (tenant's repair and deduct remedies)", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm#92.0561", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.0562 (landlord affidavit for delay)", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm#92.0562", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.0563 (tenant's judicial remedies)", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm#92.0563", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.006 (waiver or expansion of duties and remedies)", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm#92.006", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.058 (landlord remedy for tenant violation)", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm#92.058", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.061 (effect on other rights)", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm#92.061", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.331 (retaliation by landlord)", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm#92.331", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.332 (nonretaliation)", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm#92.332", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.333 (tenant remedies for retaliation)", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm#92.333", "official": true, "pinpoint": null }, { "statute": "Tex. Prop. Code § 92.335 (eviction suits)", "url": "https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/PR/htm/PR.92.htm#92.335", "official": true, "pinpoint": null } ], "summary_plain": "Texas law requires a landlord to make a diligent effort to repair or remedy any condition that materially affects the physical health or safety of an ordinary tenant, once a tenant who is current on rent gives notice at the place where rent is paid. The duty and its remedies live entirely in statute — Property Code chapter 92, subchapter B — which expressly stands in place of the older court-made warranty of habitability. After notice and a reasonable time (seven days is presumed reasonable, and the presumption can be rebutted in either direction), the tenant's lawful options are to terminate the lease, to have the condition repaired by an independent contractor and deduct the cost up to the greater of one month's rent or $500 per month, or to sue for a repair order, a proportionate rent reduction, a civil penalty, and damages. Texas gives tenants no right to withhold rent, and unlawful withholding carries its own penalty. Retaliating against a tenant's good-faith repair complaints is barred for six months, with listed safe harbors for ordinary landlord decisions.", "notes": [ { "label": "A statute in place of the court-made warranty", "text": "The Texas Supreme Court adopted an implied warranty of habitability in Kamarath v. Bennett (1978), and the Legislature answered the next year: subchapter B applies to every lease executed, entered into, renewed, or extended on or after September 1, 1979, and its duties and remedies are in lieu of the common-law warranties for maintenance, repair, habitability, and nonretaliation. Claims about a freestanding Texas implied warranty of habitability describe pre-1979 law. A separate court-made warranty of suitability exists for commercial leases; it covers offices and shops, not homes, and is a common source of confusion." }, { "label": "Heat and air conditioning", "text": "Subchapter B states no temperature figure and no stand-alone duty to supply heat. Heating and cooling enter through the repair-and-deduct remedy: when the lease expressly or impliedly obligates the landlord to furnish heating or cooling equipment and the equipment produces inadequate heat or cooled air, the tenant can use the 3-day track — but only after a local housing, building, or health official has notified the landlord in writing that the failure materially affects health or safety. The claim that Texas added an air-conditioning repair right in 2025 is wrong: the 2025 amendment (H.B. 2037) changed only who may perform tenant-ordered repairs, and the heating-and-cooling language dates from 1989 and 1997." }, { "label": "The two-notice rule and tracked mail", "text": "Remedies attach only after a second notice given a reasonable time after the first — unless the tenant sent the first notice by certified mail, registered mail, or another mail service with delivery tracking, which makes the single notice enough. Tracked mail on the first notice is the practical difference between a one-step and a two-step process, and the landlord counts as having received a notice when the postal service first attempts delivery." }, { "label": "The landlord's affidavit can lawfully pause the clock", "text": "A landlord who needs more time can deliver a sworn affidavit before the tenant contracts for repairs, summarizing the reasons for the delay and the diligent efforts made so far, with dates and the names and contact details of the contractors or suppliers involved: up to 15 days where parts are delayed through no fault of the landlord, up to 30 days during a general shortage of labor or materials after a natural disaster, and never more than six months in total from the first affidavit. Grounds outside the statute are unlawful and of no effect, and abusing the affidavit brings the full set of judicial remedies with the civil penalty raised to one month's rent plus $1,000." }, { "label": "A misprint inside the statute", "text": "Section 92.0561(e)(2) gives the 3-day clock for a stop of drinking water 'as referred to in Paragraph (A)' of the condition list, but the drinking-water condition actually sits in paragraph (B); paragraph (A) is the sewage-and-flooding class, which already has its own immediate clock. The official text prints the cross-reference this way, and the 3-day water clock is universally applied to the drinking-water class." }, { "label": "Dollar figures worth pinning", "text": "Repair suits fit justice court, whose civil ceiling has been $20,000 (excluding interest and costs) since September 1, 2023 — older sources still show $10,000. The repair-and-deduct ceiling is the greater of one month's rent or $500 per calendar month, and for government-subsidized tenancies the one-month measure means the fair market rent set by the subsidizing agency, not the tenant's own payment." } ] } } }