Texas Property Code Chapter 92: A Plain-English Reference for Landlords

Chapter 92 of the Texas Property Code is long, but only four sections produce nearly all the litigation. The rest is regulatory background you should know about but probably won’t litigate.

The four that matter: the security deposit provisions (Subchapter C, especially the bad-faith presumption in § 92.109), the retaliation statute (Subchapter H, § 92.331), the habitability framework (Subchapter B, § 92.052 and § 92.0561), and the lockout statute (§ 92.0081). If you understand those four well, you understand 90% of the cases that actually get filed. Everything else in Chapter 92 sets background rules that are usually followed without incident.

This page walks the chapter at that asymmetry. The four sections that produce real cases get real attention. The rest is summarized briefly with cross-references to the dedicated pages on this site for deeper coverage.

How Chapter 92 is organized

Chapter 92 is divided into subchapters, each addressing a specific topic. The most operationally important subchapters for landlords:

• Subchapter A: General Provisions. Definitions, applicability, key terms. The starting point for any Chapter 92 analysis.
• Subchapter B: Repair or Closing of Leasehold (§§ 92.051–.062). The habitability statute. Defines the landlord’s repair obligations, the tenant’s notice requirements, and the tenant’s remedies including repair-and-deduct.
• Subchapter C: Security Deposits (§§ 92.101–.110). The deposit statute. Definition, 30-day return, deductions, bad-faith penalty, transfer on sale, advance-notice rules.
• Subchapter D: Security Devices (§§ 92.151–.170). Required locks, peepholes, latches, door viewers, window security, and tenant rekeying rights.
• Subchapter E: Disclosure of Ownership and Management (§§ 92.201–.205). Required disclosures of the landlord’s identity and the property manager’s identity.
• Subchapter F: Smoke Alarms (§§ 92.251–.262). Required smoke detectors, replacement batteries, and tenant remedies for landlord noncompliance.
• Subchapter G: Utility Cutoffs (§§ 92.301–.302). Limits on landlord shut-off of submetered or master-metered utilities.
• Subchapter H: Retaliation (§§ 92.331–.335). Bars on retaliatory eviction and other retaliatory conduct after a tenant exercises a protected right.
• Subchapter I: Application Deposits (§§ 92.351–.355). Application deposit and application fee rules, including a bad-faith retention penalty that parallels the security-deposit penalty.

Chapter 92 runs from Subchapter A through Subchapter I. There are no Subchapters J, K, L, or M. Several provisions landlords tend to think of as standing on their own actually sit inside Subchapter A, General Provisions: the lockout statute (§ 92.0081), the residential tenant’s right to vacate and avoid liability following family violence (§§ 92.016, 92.0161) or a sexual offense or stalking (§ 92.0162), the late-fee limit (§ 92.019), and the emergency-contact and military-tenant provisions. Application deposits, by contrast, have their own subchapter (Subchapter I).

The habitability framework: Subchapter B

The habitability statute (§§ 92.051–.062) sets out what a Texas landlord is required to repair and what remedies the tenant has if the landlord fails. Here’s how the duty actually works in practice:

The landlord must make a diligent effort to repair or remedy a condition if (1) the tenant specifies the condition in a notice to repair, (2) the tenant is not delinquent in rent, and (3) the condition materially affects the physical health or safety of an ordinary tenant.

The tenant’s notice to repair must be in writing if the lease so requires. If the lease is silent, the notice can be oral.

The landlord generally has seven days to begin diligent efforts to repair. Some emergencies (no heat in winter, no AC in extreme heat, sewage backup) require shorter response times.

If the landlord fails to repair after notice and the statutory waiting period, the tenant can:

• Terminate the lease. Move out and stop paying rent.
• Repair-and-deduct. Pay for the repair and deduct the cost from rent (subject to caps and procedural requirements under § 92.0561).
• Sue for damages, including a one month’s rent penalty, attorney’s fees, and a civil penalty.

The tenant cannot pursue these remedies if the lease is in default for nonpayment. This is the most important practical detail in the statute: a tenant who has stopped paying rent cannot trigger repair-and-deduct or lease termination remedies based on habitability.

For full coverage, see the Habitability and Repair-and-Deduct pages.

Security deposits: Subchapter C (the litigation hotspot)

This is the section that produces most of the cases we actually see.

Subchapter C (§§ 92.101–.110) governs every aspect of residential security deposits, and the litigation almost always traces back to one provision: § 92.109’s bad-faith presumption. The way the statute is structured, a landlord who doesn’t return the deposit within 30 days of receiving the tenant’s forwarding address, or who doesn’t account for deductions in writing, is presumed to have acted in bad faith. The penalty is $100 plus three times the wrongfully withheld amount plus reasonable attorney’s fees.

That structure produces asymmetric risk. A landlord disputing a $1,800 deposit is technically arguing about $1,800. But a procedural slip on the 30-day window or the written accounting can turn the same dispute into a judgment for $5,500 plus the tenant’s attorney’s fees. The substantive merits of the deduction never even get reached. The case is decided on the procedure.

The key provisions:

• § 92.102 defines security deposit broadly. Pet deposits, “cleaning deposits,” “redecoration deposits,” and other “deposits” all count as security deposits under the statute. Lease language that calls them something else doesn’t change the analysis.
• § 92.103 imposes the 30-day return rule, but only after the tenant has provided a written forwarding address. The forwarding-address requirement is often misunderstood: a landlord doesn’t owe the deposit back until the tenant has provided a written forwarding address. If the tenant never provides one, the 30-day clock never starts.
• § 92.104 requires a written description of damages and deductions for any non-refund. The description has to be specific, itemized, and provided within the 30-day window. Generic descriptions (“damages to the unit,” “cleaning”) routinely lose at trial.
• § 92.105 governs transfer of deposits when the property is sold mid-tenancy. The transferring landlord has to provide written notice to the tenant of the transfer and the new landlord’s identity, or the transferring landlord remains liable for the deposit.
• § 92.104(b) limits retention for damages from normal wear and tear. “Normal wear and tear” is a question of fact at trial. Most JP courts read it generously to tenants on routine items (carpet wear, paint scuff, minor fixtures); they read it more strictly on actual damage (holes in walls, broken appliances, unauthorized alterations).
• § 92.109 is the bad-faith penalty. The presumption of bad faith arises from failure to comply with the procedural requirements. The presumption can be rebutted with evidence of good-faith dispute over deductions, but the burden shifts to the landlord and is harder to carry than landlords expect.

For deeper treatment, including the practical handling of bad-faith disputes and the typical-case walkthrough, see the Handling Security Deposits page.

The maintenance and safety subchapters (D, F, G)

Subchapters D, F, and G handle the operational maintenance and safety requirements that residential landlords have to meet. These are subchapters landlords need to comply with operationally but rarely litigate.

Security devices (Subchapter D, §§ 92.151–.170). Every residential unit requires a keyless bolting device (deadbolt) on each exterior door, a door viewer or peephole on each exterior door (except where there’s an adjacent window), and latching mechanisms on windows. The landlord must rekey or replace exterior keys at the start of each new tenancy, and the tenant can request additional rekeying at the tenant’s expense at any time. Failure to install or maintain the required devices is a basis for tenant remedies including lease termination. The Security for the Tenant page has the detail.

Smoke alarms and fire extinguishers (Subchapter F, §§ 92.251–.262). Smoke detectors are required in or near each separate sleeping area, must be functional and maintained, and must be tested at the beginning of each tenancy. Subchapter F is titled Smoke Alarms and addresses smoke detectors and fire safety; it imposes no carbon-monoxide-detector duty, and no 2025 amendment added one. Failure to install or maintain functional detectors is a basis for tenant remedies. The Smoke Alarms page has the detail.

Utility cutoffs (Subchapter G, §§ 92.301–.302). The landlord cannot interrupt submetered or master-metered utilities (water, electric, gas, wastewater) to force a tenant out. Brief interruptions for repair, maintenance, or emergency are permitted. A violating landlord faces actual damages, one month’s rent plus $1,000, reasonable attorney’s fees, and court costs. The Interrupting Utilities page has the detail.

Retaliation: Subchapter H (the other litigation hotspot)

The retaliation statute (§§ 92.331–.335) bars retaliatory eviction and other retaliatory conduct after a tenant exercises a protected right.

The protected acts are broad: filing a complaint with a government agency about a habitability issue, requesting a repair under the habitability statute, filing a Fair Housing Act complaint, joining or organizing a tenants’ association, or asserting any right under Chapter 92.

The mechanic that makes retaliation cases dangerous for landlords is the six-month presumption window. Any adverse action against the tenant within six months of the protected act is presumed retaliatory. The burden is on the landlord to rebut the presumption with non-retaliatory grounds.

In practice, the rebuttal succeeds when the landlord has a clean documented basis for the action that pre-dates the tenant’s protected conduct, or that’s substantively unrelated to it. A nonpayment eviction where the rent has been months in arrears, and the arrearage is documented, generally survives the retaliation challenge. The cases where retaliation defenses win are the cases where the landlord’s action looks suspicious in timing or where the documentation of the underlying basis is thin.

What this means for documentation discipline: from the moment a tenant raises a habitability complaint or files anything with a code authority, the landlord’s documentation needs to be airtight on the actual reason for any subsequent adverse action. The retaliation defense doesn’t require the tenant to prove retaliation; it just shifts the burden of proof on motive.

Retaliation defenses are now routine in JP eviction cases. The defense is one of the top reasons we tell landlords to bring counsel into a habitability situation early, before the eviction is filed.

For full coverage, see the Retaliation page.

Lockouts: § 92.0081 (the third litigation hotspot)

Section 92.0081 regulates self-help lockouts; it does not flatly forbid them. A Texas landlord may not lock a tenant out to obtain possession or as a shortcut around the eviction process, and may change the locks only for a reason the statute allows. One of those reasons is rent delinquency: § 92.0081(b)(3) lets a landlord change the locks of a tenant who is delinquent in paying at least part of the rent, but only on strict conditions. The lease must authorize the practice, the landlord must post the written notice the statute requires, and the landlord must provide a new key to the tenant at any hour, on demand, regardless of whether the tenant pays the overdue rent (§ 92.0081(c)). The statute also allows changing locks at the tenant’s request and for bona fide repairs or security needs. A delinquency lockout never gives the landlord possession, so it is not a substitute for eviction. For full coverage, see the Changing the Locks page.

The penalties are why this section produces real litigation: a violating landlord faces actual damages, one month’s rent plus $1,000, reasonable attorney’s fees, and court costs. The “one month’s rent plus $1,000” recovery means even short or accidental lockouts produce real exposure. Worse, the case is hard to defend on the merits because the statute is unambiguous about what counts as a lockout.

The lockout cases we see are usually one of two patterns. In the first, a landlord acts on what they believed was a legitimate security concern (tenant disappeared, broken lock replaced, etc.) without documenting the basis adequately. In the second, a landlord acts at the end of a frustrating eviction process, after the case has dragged out, and decides to “just change the locks.” The second pattern produces the worst outcomes because the conduct is unambiguous.

For full coverage, see the Changing the Locks page.

The compliance subchapters (late fees, app deposits, VAWA)

The remaining substantive subchapters cover specific compliance topics that landlords need to handle correctly but that rarely produce major litigation when they are.

Late fees (§ 92.019). A late fee must be reasonable. Section 92.019(a-1) sets a safe harbor rather than a hard cap: a fee is presumed reasonable if it does not exceed 12% of the monthly rent for a property with four or fewer dwelling units, or 10% for a property with more units. A higher fee is still allowed under § 92.019(a-1)(2) if it is a reasonable estimate of uncertain damages the landlord cannot readily ascertain. Section 92.019(b) also permits an initial late fee plus a daily late fee for each day the rent remains unpaid, so a properly drafted daily fee can be valid. A late fee may be charged only after the rent is unpaid past its due date and any grace period. See the Late Fees page for the detail.

Application deposits and fees (Subchapter I, §§ 92.351–.355). An application deposit holds the unit while the application is being processed and must be refunded if the application is rejected. An application fee covers processing cost and is generally not refundable. Bad-faith retention triggers a $100 + 3x penalty plus attorney’s fees under § 92.354, structurally similar to the security deposit penalty. See the Handling Security Deposits page for the practical handling.

Domestic violence and sexual offense protections (§§ 92.016, 92.0161, and 92.0162, all in Subchapter A). A tenant who is the victim of family violence, sexual offense, or stalking can terminate the lease without penalty by providing required documentation (typically a protective order or a sexual offense conviction). The landlord cannot use the protected conduct as a basis for eviction. These protections supplement and sometimes overlap with the federal VAWA protections; the VAWA page covers the practical interaction in full. The Chapter 92 sections themselves are short and operationally straightforward.

Putting it together: how Chapter 92 actually works

Chapter 92 looks complicated because it covers so many topics, but most landlord questions fall into a small number of patterns:

• “Can I deduct ___ from the deposit?” goes to Subchapter C, especially §§ 92.104 and 92.108.
• “Do I have to fix this?” goes to Subchapter B, especially § 92.052.
• “Can I charge a late fee of ___?” goes to § 92.019.
• “What security devices do I need?” goes to Subchapter D.
• “Did the tenant just trigger the retaliation statute?” goes to Subchapter H, especially § 92.331.
• “Can I lock the tenant out?” goes to § 92.0081 (only in the limited ways the statute allows, such as a § 92.0081(b)(3) rent-delinquency lockout with a new key available on demand; never to seize possession).
• “Can I shut off the water?” goes to Subchapter G (no, with narrow exceptions).
• “Tenant invoked the family violence statute, what now?” goes to §§ 92.016–.0162 in Subchapter A.

For the routine question patterns, the answers are well-defined and don’t change much from case to case. The unusual cases (multi-issue disputes, tenant counterclaims that combine several Chapter 92 violations, fact patterns at the edges of the statutes) are where landlord counsel becomes important.