Texas Repair Obligations Under Property Code Chapter 92

Texas landlord repair obligations come from Chapter 92, Subchapter B of the Texas Property Code, which requires your landlord to make a diligent effort to fix any condition that materially affects the physical health or safety of an ordinary tenant, plus any failure to supply hot water of at least 120 degrees Fahrenheit. The duty kicks in once you give proper notice and are current on rent. If the landlord doesn’t act within a reasonable time, you can hire someone to make the repair and deduct the cost from rent, terminate the lease, or take the landlord to court.¹

What Your Landlord Must Repair

The statute uses a deliberately high bar: the condition must “materially affect” the health or safety of an ordinary tenant. A squeaky hinge or peeling paint that poses no danger doesn’t qualify. Conditions that typically do include sewage backups, broken plumbing that causes flooding, faulty wiring, rodent or roach infestations, missing smoke detectors, and heating or cooling failures. If a city building, health, or fire code inspector would flag the problem, that strengthens the argument.

Hot water gets its own separate rule. Even if lukewarm water at the tap wouldn’t rise to a health hazard on its own, the statute independently requires the landlord to keep hot water reaching at least 120°F.¹

The duty disappears when the tenant, someone in the household, or a guest caused the condition, unless the damage came from normal wear and tear. The landlord also has no obligation to supply utilities from a company whose lines aren’t reasonably available in the area, and the statute never requires the landlord to provide security guards.

One more prerequisite: you must not be behind on rent at the time you send your notice. If rent is past due when the notice goes out, the landlord owes no statutory response. But this cuts one direction only. If you were current when you sent the notice and later fall behind, the duty that already attached doesn’t retroactively vanish.²

How to Give Notice That Triggers the Duty

There are two ways to notify the landlord, and which one you pick determines how many notices you’ll need to send.

One Notice by Trackable Mail

Send your notice by certified mail with return receipt requested, registered mail, or any other mail service that provides delivery tracking from the U.S. Postal Service or a private carrier. One notice does the job, and the tracking record proves delivery.² This is usually the smarter route because it simplifies the proof you’ll need later.

An Initial Notice Plus a Follow-Up

The other option is to deliver a first notice to the person or place where you normally pay rent. This first notice can be oral if your lease is oral, or if your written lease doesn’t require written notices. After a reasonable time passes without a fix, you then send a second written notice. That second notice is what locks in the landlord’s liability. The downside is that you need two separate contacts and proof of both.

What the Notice Should Say

The statute doesn’t prescribe a rigid format. Include a clear description of the condition, the address of the unit, the date, and your name, and direct it to whoever receives legal notices under your lease. If you plan to use the repair-and-deduct remedy later, your notice also has to state that you intend to repair the condition yourself and include a reasonable description of the planned repair.³

The landlord is treated as having received the notice when the landlord, their agent, or an employee actually gets it, or when the Postal Service attempts delivery. A refused delivery still counts as receipt.

How Long the Landlord Has to Fix It

Texas law creates a rebuttable presumption that seven days is a reasonable amount of time to complete a repair after the landlord receives your notice.² This isn’t a hard deadline. The landlord can argue that more time was reasonable by pointing to when the notice arrived, the nature and severity of the condition, and the availability of materials, labor, or utility company cooperation.

A major plumbing repair with special-order parts might justify more than seven days. A sewage backup in the middle of summer might justify fewer. The presumption works in your favor: seven days is assumed reasonable unless the landlord proves otherwise. If the landlord sits on the problem for two weeks with no explanation, the presumption goes uncontested and your remedies open up.

Fixing It Yourself and Deducting From Rent

One option after the landlord fails to act is to hire someone to fix the problem and deduct the cost from your next rent payment. The cap on this deduction is the greater of one month’s rent or $500.³ If your rent is $1,200, you can deduct up to $1,200 in a month on qualifying repairs. If your rent is $400, you can still deduct up to $500. For tenants receiving a government rent subsidy, the cap is based on fair market rent rather than the subsidized amount you actually pay.

You can use this remedy more than once, as long as total deductions in a single month don’t exceed the cap. But it only applies to a narrow set of conditions:

Raw sewage overflow or flooding from broken pipes or natural drainage inside the dwelling.
A total loss of potable water, where the landlord agreed (expressly or implicitly) to supply it and service has completely stopped.
Inadequate heating or cooling, where the landlord agreed to provide it, the equipment isn’t working properly, and a local housing, building, or health official has confirmed in writing that the failure affects tenant health or safety.
Any other condition that a local official with jurisdiction has notified the landlord in writing materially affects health or safety.

That last category is the catch-all, and it requires an official’s written notice to the landlord. For problems like rodent infestations or faulty wiring that don’t fit the first three, you’ll typically need a code enforcement letter before repair-and-deduct becomes available. Your notice to the landlord must also have stated your intent to make the repair yourself, so plan ahead.

Breaking the Lease Over Unrepaired Conditions

You can end the lease entirely if the landlord fails to repair after proper notice. This is one of the strongest tools in the statute because it frees you from future rent and other lease obligations, and it doesn’t require a court order. You can vacate once the conditions under Section 92.056 are satisfied: proper notice, reasonable time elapsed, landlord’s failure to act, and rent current at the time of notice.²

The reverse also matters. The landlord cannot terminate your lease while a repair request is pending if you’ve paid your rent. A landlord who does faces liability for the security deposit amount, one month’s rent plus $500, actual damages, and reasonable attorney’s fees.⁴ The only exception is a landlord who genuinely intends to demolish or permanently close the unit, gives at least 30 days’ written notice, and refunds any prepaid rent.

Suing the Landlord

When self-help isn’t enough, the statute offers a full menu of judicial remedies. Justice courts, county courts, and district courts all have jurisdiction.⁵ A court can order the landlord to take reasonable action to fix the condition. It can reduce your rent, going back to the date of your first repair notice, in proportion to how much the condition diminished the value of the dwelling. It can impose a civil penalty of one month’s rent plus $500 on top of other damages. It can award actual damages for provable losses such as temporary housing, damaged belongings, or medical expenses. And a prevailing tenant can recover court costs and reasonable attorney’s fees, though attorney’s fees related to personal injury claims are excluded.

Justice court judgments are capped at $20,000 (excluding interest and court costs), so larger claims belong in county or district court.

Protection From Retaliation

Tenants who request repairs or complain to a government agency about code violations are protected from payback. Within six months of your protected action, the landlord cannot file an eviction, cut services, raise rent, terminate the lease, or otherwise interfere with your rights in bad faith.⁶ Any of those actions during that window is presumed retaliatory, and the landlord has to prove a legitimate reason.

Protected acts go beyond repair requests. Participating in or attempting to form a tenants’ organization is covered, as is exercising any right under the lease, a local ordinance, or state or federal law. A tenant who proves retaliation can recover a civil penalty of one month’s rent plus $500, actual damages, court costs, and reasonable attorney’s fees.

Lease Clauses That Try to Waive These Rights

A landlord cannot contract away the repair duty. Any lease clause that purports to waive a tenant’s rights or the landlord’s duties under Subchapter B is void, with very narrow exceptions.⁴ A landlord who knowingly includes such a clause faces a civil penalty of one month’s rent plus $2,000, plus actual damages and attorney’s fees. You bear the burden of proving the landlord acted knowingly, and if the lease is written and doesn’t otherwise violate the statute, the proof must be clear and convincing.⁵

Landlords and tenants can agree that the tenant will pay for drain clogs caused by foreign objects in lines serving only that unit, and for damage to doors, windows, or screens. Even then, the landlord still must fix those problems at landlord expense when they result from deterioration, faulty construction, or broken equipment.

When Fire or Storms Damage the Unit

When fire, hail, an explosion, or a similar insured casualty damages the property, the landlord’s repair clock pauses until the insurance proceeds arrive. That delay is built into the statute and doesn’t count against the seven-day presumption.⁴

If the casualty makes the unit totally unusable for residential purposes and you didn’t cause the damage, either party can terminate the lease in writing before repairs finish. You get a prorated rent refund from the move-out date and a refund of the security deposit. If the unit is only partially unusable, you’re entitled to a proportional rent reduction, but a county or district court sets the amount unless the lease says otherwise.

1
State of Texas. Texas Property Code Section 92.052 – Landlords Duty to Repair or Remedy
2
State of Texas. Texas Property Code Section 92.056 – Landlord Liability to Tenant
3
State of Texas. Texas Property Code Section 92.0561 – Tenants Repair and Deduct Remedies
4
State of Texas. Texas Property Code Chapter 92 – Residential Tenancies
5
State of Texas. Texas Property Code Section 92.0563 – Tenants Judicial Remedies
6
State of Texas. Texas Property Code Section 92.331 – Retaliation by Landlord