Texas Property Code Chapter 92: Repairs, Deposits, and Retaliation

Texas Property Code Chapter 92 sets out the tenant rights that apply to every residential rental in the state, whether your lease is written, oral, month-to-month, or year-long. It governs repairs, security deposits, locks and smoke alarms, utility shutoffs, lockouts for unpaid rent, early termination for family violence, and landlord retaliation. Most of its core protections cannot be waived, so a lease clause giving them up is not enforceable against you. Chapter 92 does not cover commercial leases.

Getting Repairs Made

Your landlord has a duty to make a diligent effort to fix any condition that materially affects the physical health or safety of an ordinary tenant, including a failure to supply hot water.¹ Two things have to be true before that duty kicks in: you must be current on rent when you give notice, and you must send the notice to the person or place where you normally pay rent.

Oral notice technically satisfies the statute if your lease is oral. If your lease is written and requires written notice, so does your request. Even when writing isn’t strictly required, put it in writing anyway. You want a record.

The faster route is to send that first notice by certified mail (return receipt requested), registered mail, or another trackable method. Do that and you don’t have to send a second notice. Skip the tracked delivery and the statute requires a second written notice after a reasonable time passes with no repair. Seven days is the rebuttable presumption for what counts as reasonable, though a burst pipe shortens it and a hard-to-source part can stretch it.²

The landlord is treated as having received your notice either when they actually get it or when the Postal Service attempts delivery. A landlord who ducks the mail carrier does not stop the clock.²

What You Can Recover If the Landlord Won’t Act

If you followed the notice steps and repairs still haven’t happened, Section 92.0563 gives a court several tools to use on your behalf:

An order directing the landlord to take reasonable action to fix the condition.
A rent reduction backdated to your first notice, proportionate to how much the condition lowered the rental value.
A civil penalty of one month’s rent plus $500.
Actual damages for out-of-pocket costs caused by the unrepaired condition.
Court costs and reasonable attorney’s fees, except attorney’s fees tied to personal injury claims.³

The exposure is worse for a landlord who tries to write the repair duty out of the lease. Knowingly including a waiver clause exposes the landlord to actual damages, a civil penalty of one month’s rent plus $2,000, and reasonable attorney’s fees.³

Security Deposit Return

Texas does not cap the amount a landlord can charge as a security deposit. The refund side is regulated. After you surrender the premises, the landlord has 30 days to return the deposit.⁴ If any amount is withheld, the balance must come back with a written, itemized description of every deduction. The only carve-out is when you owe undisputed rent at move-out.⁵

Normal wear and tear cannot be charged against your deposit. Faded paint and worn traffic patterns in carpet are wear; damage from negligence or abuse is not, and that can be deducted.⁵

The 30-day clock does not start until you give the landlord a written forwarding address. Providing that address forfeits nothing; it simply tells the landlord where to send the money or the accounting.

Bad-Faith Penalties

A landlord who retains a deposit in bad faith owes you $100, three times the wrongfully withheld portion, and reasonable attorney’s fees. A landlord who acts in bad faith by failing to send the itemized list forfeits the right to withhold anything at all and owes your attorney’s fees on top.

Locks and Security Devices That Must Already Be There

Every residential rental in Texas has to come equipped with a specific set of security hardware, installed at the landlord’s expense and without any request from you. Section 92.153 requires a latch on every exterior window; a doorknob lock or keyed deadbolt, a keyless bolting device, and a door viewer on every exterior door; and a pin lock plus either a handle latch or a security bar on every sliding glass door.⁶

The keyless bolting device is the one tenants most often miss when walking a unit. It’s the interior lock you can engage without a key. If your exterior doors don’t have one, the landlord is out of compliance.

Rekeying at Move-In

When a new tenant takes possession, the landlord has seven days to rekey or change the security devices on all exterior doors. That is true whether or not the last tenant handed back their keys, and the landlord pays for it.⁷ If you move in and the locks are the same ones the last tenant used, put the request in writing immediately.

Smoke Alarms

Section 92.255 requires the landlord to install at least one smoke alarm in every bedroom. In a studio, the alarm goes in the room used for sleeping. Where bedrooms share a corridor, at least one alarm has to be in that hallway near the bedrooms. In a multi-level unit, every level needs at least one.⁸

The landlord installs alarms before you move in and must inspect and repair them when you submit a written request. If you send that request and the landlord does not respond within seven days, subchapter remedies open up.

Tenants have their own duties here. Removing a battery without immediately replacing it with a working one, or knowingly disconnecting or damaging an alarm, makes you liable. If the lease contains the required boldfaced notice about tampering, the landlord can pursue a civil penalty of one month’s rent plus $100, court costs, and attorney’s fees when you fail to fix the alarm within seven days of being told to.⁹

Utility Shutoffs

A landlord cannot shut off your water, wastewater, gas, or electricity to pressure you to pay rent. The only lawful reasons for interrupting service are repairs, construction, or a genuine emergency, and any lease clause that tries to waive this is void.¹⁰

If your utilities are cut off illegally, you can either recover possession of the unit or terminate the lease outright. You can also recover actual damages, one month’s rent plus $1,000, reasonable attorney’s fees, and court costs, minus any rent you actually owe.¹⁰

Lockouts for Unpaid Rent

Texas is unusual in allowing a landlord to change the locks on a delinquent tenant, but only if every one of four conditions is satisfied:

The lease specifically grants the landlord the right to change locks for nonpayment.
The tenant is delinquent in paying some or all of the rent.
The landlord mailed written notice at least five calendar days before the lockout, or hand-delivered or posted a notice on the inside of the front door at least three calendar days before.
The notice states the earliest proposed lockout date, the amount of rent owed, where to discuss or pay the delinquent rent, and the tenant’s right to get a new key at any hour regardless of whether the tenant pays.¹¹

After the lock change, the landlord has to post a notice on your door telling you where to pick up a new key. The key must be available 24 hours a day, and the landlord must hand it over whether or not you pay the overdue rent. A lockout is a pressure tool, not permanent exclusion.¹¹

Break any of these rules and the landlord owes a civil penalty of one month’s rent plus $1,000, actual damages, court costs, and reasonable attorney’s fees. A specific refusal to hand over the new key adds another month’s rent on top.¹¹

Ending a Lease Early After Family Violence

Section 92.016 lets a tenant who is a victim of family violence terminate the lease early and avoid liability for future rent. The tenant must provide the landlord with documentation of the violence in one of two forms: a court order (temporary injunction, temporary ex parte order, protective order, or order of emergency protection) or professional documentation from a licensed healthcare provider, licensed mental health professional, or family violence advocate who examined or assisted the victim.¹²

The tenant then gives 30 days’ written notice before the termination date and vacates. If the abuser is a cotenant or occupant of the same dwelling, the 30-day written notice requirement is waived and the tenant can leave once the documentation is provided and the other procedural steps are met.¹²

Protection Against Retaliation

For six months after you exercise a right under Chapter 92, send a repair notice, file a complaint with a government agency about a code violation, or participate in a tenant organization, your landlord is barred from retaliating against you. Prohibited retaliation includes filing an eviction proceeding (with narrow exceptions), cutting back services, raising the rent or terminating the lease, depriving you of the use of the premises, and engaging in bad-faith conduct that materially interferes with your lease rights.¹³

The six-month window is what gives the protection real teeth. Send a repair notice in March, get hit with an eviction filing or a rent hike in June, and the timing itself puts the landlord on the defensive.

1
State of Texas. Texas Property Code 92.052 – Diligent Effort to Repair
2
State of Texas. Texas Property Code 92.056 – Landlord Liability and Tenant Remedies; Notice and Time for Repair
3
State of Texas. Texas Property Code 92.0563 – Tenant’s Judicial Remedies
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State of Texas. Texas Property Code 92.103 – Obligation to Refund
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State of Texas. Texas Property Code 92.104 – Retention of Security Deposit; Accounting
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Texas Statutes. Texas Property Code 92.153 – Security Devices Required Without Tenant Request
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Texas Constitution and Statutes. Texas Property Code 92.153 – Security Devices Required Without Tenant Request
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State of Texas. Texas Property Code 92.255 – Installation and Location
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State of Texas. Texas Property Code 92.2611 – Tenant’s Disabling of a Smoke Alarm
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State of Texas. Texas Property Code 92.008 – Interruption of Utilities
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State of Texas. Texas Property Code 92.0081 – Removal of Property and Exclusion of Residential Tenant
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State of Texas. Texas Property Code 92.016 – Right to Terminate Lease
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State of Texas. Texas Property Code 92.331 – Retaliation by Landlord