title: "Texas Residential Lease Requirements: The Core Rules in the Property Code" description: "An overview of Texas residential lease rules covering security deposits, habitability, notice periods, and the statutory disclosures required under Chapter 92 of the Property Code." slug: texas-residential-lease-requirements publishDate: "2026-04-21" wordCount: 1647 citations:
- "https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/PR/htm/PR.92.htm"
- "https://texaslawhelp.org/"
- "https://guides.sll.texas.gov/landlord-tenant-law"
- "https://www.comptroller.texas.gov/" seoTitle: "Texas Residential Lease Requirements — 2026 Tenant & Landlord Guide" seoDescription: "Texas Property Code Chapter 92 in plain language — deposits, notices, habitability, disclosures, and rights for Texas renters and landlords."
Texas organises its residential lease rules in Chapter 92 of the Property Code.[¹] The chapter is less prescriptive than the California Civil Code, which gives landlords more drafting freedom and places more weight on the language of the lease itself. That makes reading the document carefully especially important in Texas.
This article summarises the core rules and points to the statutes and official guides where the language lives. It is not legal advice. For a specific dispute, Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, Lone Star Legal Aid, and the State Bar of Texas Lawyer Referral service are useful next stops.
What Chapter 92 covers
Chapter 92 applies to residential tenancies — houses, apartments, duplexes, mobilehomes used as a primary residence — across Texas.[¹] Commercial leases fall under different rules and commercial tenants should not assume the Chapter 92 protections apply.
Within residential tenancies, several sub-chapters split the rules by topic: Subchapter A contains general provisions, Subchapter B covers security deposits, Subchapter C sets repair duties and the warranty of habitability, Subchapter D regulates access and keys, Subchapter E covers disclosure of ownership, Subchapter F sets rules on smoke alarms, Subchapter G addresses the landlord's lien, and so on. Reading the chapter top to bottom is not the fastest path; reading the subchapter that matches the issue is.
Security deposits in Texas
Texas caps are set by contract rather than by statute in most cases, but several protections apply regardless of what the lease says. Under Property Code section 92.103, the landlord must refund the deposit within 30 days after the tenant surrenders the premises and provides a forwarding address in writing.[¹] If the landlord keeps all or part of the deposit, the landlord must deliver an itemised list of deductions with the refund.
Two points tend to surprise tenants:
- The 30-day clock starts running from surrender plus forwarding address. A tenant who moves out without providing a written forwarding address may delay the clock until the landlord receives the address.
- Section 92.109 imposes significant penalties on a landlord who retains a deposit in bad faith — the tenant may recover three times the amount wrongfully withheld, plus $100 and reasonable attorney's fees.[¹]
The statute does not require the deposit to be held in a separate account. Unlike some states, Texas does not cap the deposit at a multiple of monthly rent, so the amount is whatever the parties agreed to in the lease.
Habitability and repair duties
Texas codifies the implied warranty of habitability in Property Code sections 92.051 through 92.062. The statute requires the landlord to make a diligent effort to repair any condition that materially affects the physical health or safety of an ordinary tenant, provided the tenant gave notice in writing and is not delinquent on rent.[¹]
The tenant's remedies if the landlord does not repair include terminating the lease, having the condition repaired and deducting the cost from rent (within statutory limits), and filing for judicial relief. The repair-and-deduct option under section 92.0561 has a dollar cap and procedural prerequisites — written notice, a reasonable time to cure, and a sworn statement of the condition — that a tenant should not try to navigate for the first time in a dispute.
The TexasLawHelp landlord-tenant overview walks through the notice-and-repair mechanics in practical terms.[²]
Notice periods for ending a lease
Texas does not have a single default notice period like California's 30 days. Instead, the notice rule depends on the lease.
- A month-to-month tenancy under Property Code section 91.001 generally ends at the next monthly period after one month's written notice, unless the lease sets a different period.[¹]
- A fixed-term lease ends on the stated end date. Many Texas leases include a hold-over clause that converts a tenant who stays past the end date into a month-to-month tenant at a higher rent rate.
- Military tenants who receive deployment or permanent change of station orders may terminate under the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act and Property Code section 92.017.
For a non-payment eviction, Property Code section 24.005 requires at least three days' notice to vacate before the landlord can file an eviction suit, unless the lease specifies a different period.[¹]
Required disclosures
Texas requires several disclosures at lease signing or shortly after:
- Owner or property manager identity. Property Code section 92.201 requires the landlord to disclose the name and address of the owner or the person authorised to manage the premises.[¹]
- Special flood hazard. Property Code section 92.0135 requires a landlord who knows the unit is located in a designated flood hazard area to provide a specific written notice before lease signing.
- Lead-based paint (federal). For units built before 1978, federal law requires the landlord to provide the EPA's lead-based paint pamphlet and a specific disclosure before the tenant becomes obligated on the lease.
- Smoke alarms. Property Code section 92.253 requires working smoke alarms at the beginning of the tenancy.
The Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs publishes a landlord-tenant handbook that enumerates the disclosures with sample language.[³]
Access, entry, and the landlord's lien
Texas law does not impose a bright-line 24-hour notice rule for landlord entry the way California does. The lease generally controls the notice period and the permitted reasons for entry. In the absence of a lease provision, most Texas courts look for reasonable notice and reasonable purposes.
The landlord's lien in Subchapter G is distinctive. Property Code section 54.041 gives the landlord a statutory lien on the tenant's non-exempt property for rent that is due and unpaid, but the statute limits which property the lien can touch (exempt property includes clothing, tools of trade, family photographs, and others) and how the lien can be enforced. A lease that grants the landlord broader lien rights than the statute allows may be unenforceable to that extent.
Late fees, bad-check fees, and other charges
Under Property Code section 92.019, a late fee is enforceable only if it is stated in the lease, the rent is at least two days late, and the fee is a reasonable estimate of the uncertain damages the landlord cannot readily ascertain.[¹] The statute contains a safe harbour: a late fee up to 12 percent of the rent for a unit with four or fewer dwelling units, or up to 10 percent for larger properties, is presumed reasonable.
Bad-check fees, utility-administration fees, and similar charges must be stated in the lease. A charge that is not mentioned in the lease typically cannot be added during the tenancy.
Eviction in Texas
Texas eviction — called forcible entry and detainer — is governed by Property Code Chapter 24 and the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure. The timeline is fast: after the notice-to-vacate period expires, the landlord files in justice court, a hearing is usually set within 10 to 21 days, and a tenant who loses has five days to appeal to county court for a trial de novo.
Self-help eviction — locking out, removing belongings, cutting utilities — is illegal under Property Code section 92.0081 except in narrow circumstances and creates landlord liability.
The TDHCA and TexasLawHelp materials both lay out the eviction mechanics with the forms involved.[²][³]
Practical reading of a Texas lease
A Texas tenant reading a lease should check the following clauses most carefully:
- The deposit amount and the refund mechanics — section 92.103 sets the floor but the lease can raise the bar.
- The late fee clause — compare against the section 92.019 safe harbour.
- The repair-request procedure — the warranty of habitability requires written notice, so the lease's requirements for how to send that notice matter.
- The termination and hold-over clauses — Texas leases often roll a fixed-term lease into month-to-month at an inflated rate.
- The attorney's-fees clause — Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code section 38.001 allows recovery of attorney's fees in many contract actions.
For comptroller analysis of Texas rental-market trends and the statutes that apply to them, the Fiscal Notes archive at the Texas Comptroller's office is a useful context resource.[⁴]
Subleases and assignment in Texas
Property Code section 91.005 addresses subleases: a residential tenant generally cannot sublease the premises without the landlord's consent unless the lease says otherwise. Many Texas leases contain a flat no-sublease clause; some allow a sublease subject to landlord approval. An assignment, which transfers the full lease to a new tenant, is usually treated similarly under Texas law. A tenant who wants to leave early and find a replacement should read both the sublease clause and the early-termination clause before acting — the two clauses sometimes contradict each other in practice.
Death of a tenant and abandonment
If a sole tenant dies, Property Code section 92.014 sets rules for how the landlord handles the unit and the tenant's property. The landlord may remove and store personal property after a reasonable notice period, and the statute addresses who may claim the property. When a unit appears abandoned, the landlord must still follow the statutory notice-to-vacate and eviction path — walking into a seemingly empty unit and renting it to someone new without a judgment creates exposure even if the tenant appears to have left.
For DocAssessment users
For DocAssessment's deterministic extraction pipeline — which pulls these clauses and disclosures out of an uploaded lease and flags the ones that deviate from the Property Code's defaults — see the methodology page. The extraction runs before any AI model sees the document, so the facts surfaced for review come directly from the lease text.
References
- Texas Property Code, Chapter 92 — Residential Tenancies — accessed April 2026.
- TexasLawHelp: Overview of Landlord-Tenant Laws in Texas — accessed April 2026.
- Texas State Law Library: Landlord-Tenant Law Research Guide — accessed April 2026.
- Texas Comptroller: Fiscal Notes — Housing coverage — accessed April 2026.