How does a Texas landlord lawfully end a tenancy, and when may a tenant leave early?

Landlord: one calendar month (counted under a later-of rule). Tenant: one calendar month.

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.

The termination date may fall on any day.

Tiers: 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.

The parties may agree to a different period, including no notice at all. 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.

A statute requires the landlord's and tenant's periods to be equal, or bars a lease from imposing a longer period on one side.

Source of the period: a termination-notice statute states it.

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.

No: no statewide rule requires a reason, and no statute expressly authorizes local ordinances.

Local just-cause or eviction-control ordinances: expressly preempted by statute. 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.

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.

The term ends on its date; no statute requires notice from either side.

After the term, no statute governs conversion; the common-law rule applies. 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.

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.

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: No statutory enhancement: the landlord recovers ordinary rent or use and occupancy.

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.

Yes: a statute imposes the duty.

When it attaches: 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 of proof: on the tenant.

The standard: 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.

No authority addresses a clause accelerating the remaining rent.

The lease may not waive the duty.

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.

No statute addresses a fee a landlord may charge for ending a lease early; the general damages rules govern.

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.

Early-exit rights by ground: domestic violence and related grounds, a statutory right to end the lease; military service beyond the federal act, a spouse or dependent may terminate in their own right; death of the tenant, a statutory route; and other statutory grounds.

Domestic violence and related grounds: a victim may end the lease on notice.

Who qualifies: 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 schemes: 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: 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. The notice and the documentation go to the landlord together.

Window: 180 days; the incident or documentation must fall within that window before the notice. 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: 30 days; the termination takes effect that many days after notice. 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 owed: 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.

Cost to the tenant: 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.

Other tenants on the lease: the statute is silent on the other tenants.

Locks: Lock changes are not addressed.

Later screening: no statutory protection.

The landlord's side: 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.

Lease disclosure: 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.

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 service: A spouse or dependent may terminate in their own right.

When the state rights attach: 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.

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.

Death of the tenant: A statute provides for ending the lease on the tenant's death. 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: 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.

No statute treats absence as ending the tenancy; the common law governs.

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.

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 in sequence: 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 delivery: only with written consent, a read receipt, or a lease clause.

What the notice must contain: 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.

Alternate address: 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.

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.

The federal CARES Act 30-day notice to vacate for covered properties, as read in this state's courts: held in force, but a filing inside the 30 days is permitted. 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. (Appellate picture read as of September 2, 2026.)

Austin Hill Country Realty, Inc. v. Palisades Plaza, Inc., 948 S.W.2d 293 (Tex. 1997) (Supreme Court of Texas; arose from a commercial lease; bears on the duty to re-let): 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.

Coinmach Corp. v. Aspenwood Apartment Corp., 417 S.W.3d 909 (Tex. 2013) (Supreme Court of Texas; arose from a commercial lease; bears on the end of a fixed term): 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.

Cave v. Kensington Apartments Austin, LP, No. 03-24-00442-CV (Tex. App. Austin July 24, 2026, mem. op.) (Court of Appeals for the Third District of Texas, at Austin; residential lease; bears on the federal 30-day notice): 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.

State of Texas v. City of Houston, No. 03-23-00531-CV (Tex. App. Austin July 18, 2025) (Court of Appeals for the Third District of Texas, at Austin; a general statement of law; bears on whether a reason is required): 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.