Texas Mold Landlord Laws: What the Property Code Actually Says

If you searched for Texas mold landlord laws expecting to find a mold statute, the most useful thing this page can tell you in its first paragraph is that there isn’t one.

Texas has no law setting mold thresholds for rental housing, no mandatory remediation standard for landlords, and no mold-specific disclosure duty of the kind some states impose. That absence is not a gap in your research — it is the central fact, and every accurate answer about mold in a Texas rental starts from it.

What Texas has instead is a general repair duty in Property Code § 92.052, and mold claims are argued inside it. That changes the question you need to answer. It is never did my landlord break the mold law. It is: does this condition materially affect the physical health or safety of an ordinary tenant, and did I meet the notice conditions that switch the landlord’s duty on?

Get those two things right and Chapter 92 is a workable tool. Get them wrong — and most people get the second one wrong — and even severe mold produces no remedy at all.

Why the framing matters so much

Because there is no mold statute, there is no number to point at. You cannot tell a landlord they have exceeded a legal spore limit, because Texas has not set one. You cannot demand a specific remediation protocol, because the Property Code does not prescribe one.

What you can do is establish that a condition exists which materially affects health or safety, and that the landlord has a duty to repair or remedy it. In practice that means the strongest Texas mold claims are not really presented as mold claims at all. They are presented as water-intrusion claims: a leaking supply line, a failed window seal, a roof penetration, a slab leak, an air-conditioning condensate line that has backed up. The mould is the visible evidence that a repairable defect has gone unrepaired.

This is also why the photographs you take on day one matter more than anything you say later. Two photographs of staining prove very little. Two photographs of staining plus one of the wet pipe behind it describe a defect the landlord owns.

The three conditions on the landlord’s duty

Section 92.052 does not impose an unconditional duty. Three things have to be true.

You gave notice. Written notice, to the person to whom or the place where your rent is normally paid. Not a comment to a leasing agent, not a note in a maintenance app unless that genuinely is where rent goes. The statute is specific about the recipient because landlords are otherwise free to say they never heard about it.

You were not delinquent in rent when you gave it. This is the condition that quietly kills more Texas repair claims than any other, and it is worth stating plainly: if you stop paying rent because of the mold and then complain, you have generally given the landlord a complete answer. Bring the rent current, then serve notice.

You did not cause it. The duty does not extend to conditions caused by the tenant, their family, or their guests. Hence the emphasis on identifying the water source.

What “a reasonable time” means

Once proper notice is given, the landlord must act within a reasonable time. Section 92.056 supplies a rebuttable presumption that seven days is reasonable.

Read that as a starting point rather than a deadline. The presumption can be rebutted in both directions, and the statute points to the severity of the condition, the availability of materials and the availability of labour as the factors that move it. An active sewage backup or a bedroom that cannot be slept in argues for less than seven days. A specialist remediation job waiting on parts may justify more.

Practically: diarise the seventh day, and on that day write down what has happened and what has not. That contemporaneous note becomes the spine of any later claim.

Your three remedies, and why they are not interchangeable

When the landlord fails to repair within a reasonable time, § 92.056 opens three doors.

Terminate the lease

You may end the tenancy and receive a prorated refund of rent from the date of termination. This is the right choice when the unit is genuinely unusable and you want out. Note the trade-off: choosing termination gives up repair-and-deduct. You cannot do both.

Repair and deduct under § 92.0561

You arrange the repair yourself and take the cost off your rent — capped at one month’s rent under the lease, or $500, whichever is greater. For a $1,450 tenancy the ceiling is $1,450; for a $380 room the ceiling is $500.

This remedy carries more conditions than anything else in Chapter 92, and each one is capable of defeating it on its own:

• Your notice must have stated your intent to repair.
• The applicable waiting period must have elapsed — the statute sets different periods depending on the condition, with sewage backups treated most urgently, water and heating or cooling failures next, and other health-and-safety conditions requiring the longest wait.
• The work must be done by a company or tradesperson, not by you personally. You cannot bill your own labour.
• The repair must comply with applicable building codes.
• You must give the landlord the bills and receipts.

Miss one and the amount you deducted is simply unpaid rent, which is a considerably worse position than the one you started in.

Sue under § 92.0563

Where the money at stake exceeds what a deduction can absorb, the judicial route allows a court to order the repair, reduce the rent in proportion to the reduced rental value of the property, and award actual damages, civil penalties and attorney’s fees, as well as terminating the lease. This is the route for significant damage, prolonged uninhabitability, or a landlord who simply will not engage.

Mold as a health claim is a different case

Everything above concerns getting the condition repaired or getting out of the lease. A claim for personal injury from mould exposure — respiratory harm, aggravated asthma, medical costs — is a different kind of case altogether. It sits in negligence and premises liability rather than Chapter 92, it turns on medical causation evidence, and it is not a do-it-yourself matter. If that is your situation, the Chapter 92 process is still worth following to fix the immediate problem, but talk to a lawyer about the injury claim separately.

If you are in Austin

Travis County adds practical texture rather than different law — the same Property Code governs, but local court practice, filing costs and the pace of Justice of the Peace dockets all matter to how a dispute actually unfolds. That is covered in Mold in your Austin apartment.

For the broader repair process, including conditions other than mould, see Forcing repairs under § 92.052. If the tenancy has reached the point of ending, breaking a Texas lease covers what termination costs.

This page summarises Texas Property Code Chapter 92 as it stands in August 2026 and links to the official text at every point. It is general information, not legal advice for your situation. Verify the current statute before relying on it, and consult a Texas tenant attorney where health or significant money is involved.