Leasing an property in Texas? Use this free Texas lease agreement template to help protect your interests as a landlord or agency.
Managing lease agreements is crucial for landlords, property managers, and tenants. A Texas lease agreement template can streamline this process, ensuring compliance with state laws and protecting the rights of all parties involved.
A Texas lease agreement is a legally binding contract between a landlord and a tenant that outlines the terms and conditions for renting a property in Texas.
This legal document paves the way for the rental relationship between the landlord and tenant in months (or years) to come, so it needs to cover the ins and outs of the transaction in detail, covering everything from the rental payment schedules to who is responsible for maintaining the leased property.
It's estimated that, as of 2019, 38 per cent of Texas households were renting their property. This is slightly higher than the renter fraction in the US broadly, which was around 26 per cent, and it has remained stable since around 2013.
When it comes to price, Zillow estimate that the median rent for all bedrooms and property types in Texas currently sits at $1,926, which is 8 per cent lower than the national median in the US.
These are important statistics to consider when drafting and negotiating your lease agreements in Texas, as they'll help you remain competitive.
Several laws in Texas govern lease agreements, ensuring that they are fair and legally binding. Let's explore these in a bit more detail now.
This is the primary and most comprehensive set of laws that govern rental properties in Texas. It covers everything from security deposits and lease agreements to repairs and tenant rights. Here are some key provisions summarized:
The Texas Fair Housing Act also applies to lease agreements in Texas. This law, modeled after federal fair housing laws, prohibits discrimination in housing based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, familial status, or disability.
It covers all aspects of housing, including lease agreements, and ensures that tenants cannot be unfairly treated or denied housing based on these protected characteristics. Any violations by landlords or letting agencies in Texas can result in legal consequences, including fines or civil litigation.
The DTPA protects tenants from misleading, fraudulent, or unfair practices by landlords or property managers. This law also extends to other goods and services.
Under this law, tenants can take legal action if a landlord misrepresents material facts in the lease agreement, fails to disclose important property conditions, or engages in deceptive conduct that affects the lease.
If impacted by these practices, tenants can recover economic damages and attorney fees if successful in their claim.
In most cases, the management of Texas lease agreements falls to property managers or landlords.
Property managers handle the day-to-day operations of rental properties, including lease preparation, tenant screening, rent collection, and property maintenance. However, for smaller properties, it's the individual landlords that often manage these tasks for themselves.
That said, it's crucial to also involve a legal professional when drafting a Texas lease agreement. This can be in in-house lawyer or external counsel, depending on the scale of your operations and how your team is set up.
A Texas lease agreement is used in a variety of rental situations to formalize the landlord-tenant relationship and ensure both parties understand their rights and responsibilities under Texas law.
But the document you use won't be one-size-fits all. There are some important distinctions between the type of lease agreements used in Texas, so let's explore these now.
A residential lease, or rental agreement is used when an individual or family rents out a house, apartment, or condominium instead of purchasing it.
If the property being rented is a multi-unit building, you can also expect the lease to cover details on shared amenities, for example.
Commercial leases are used when a business owner decides to rent out a property for commercial use in Texas. Most often, these commercial leases are applied to office spaces, retail stores, or industrial properties.
You can expect terms around property improvements, hours of operation, and signage regulations in these contracts.
Vacation or short-term rental agreements are commonplace in tourist-heavy areas in Texas like Galveston or Texas Hill Country. These are used to set terms for guests staying for a few days, or weeks.
Due to the short contract duration, it's common for Texas short-term rental agreements, like Airbnb rental agreements, to include check-in/check-out policies, cleaning fees, and house rules.
Texas is a hotspot for students. This means that student housing leases are frequently used in Texas. In fact, it's estimated that the state has 1.5m college students, which is the second highest in the US after California.
These leases typically align with academic terms and may include clauses about subletting during summer breaks or shared housing arrangements.
As you just read, there are various different types of lease agreement used in Texas, each with its own added clauses and quirks. However, there are a few standardized sections that any lease agreement used in Texas should have:
Managing lease agreements in Texas doesn't have to be painful. There are a few simple things you can do to streamline and improve your current processes. We'll go through five now.
As we mentioned already, Texas has specific laws regulating leases, like Chapter 92 of the Texas Property Code, which covers tenant rights, repair obligations, and security deposits.
Before you can confidently manage lease agreements in the state, you need to know what these provisions are, what they say, and how they impact your rights and responsibilities as a landlord or property manager.
Legal jargon and vague terms don't help anyone. You need to specify everything—rent amounts, due dates, late fees, maintenance responsibilities, and conditions for termination. Any gaps in your lease agreement template make you vulnerable to disputes, and in the worst cases, legal action.
Instead, strive to make your agreement as detailed and jargon-free as possible. For advice on how to achieve that, check out these guides to plain language contracts and contract design.
When managing a lease agreement, remember to keep comprehensive records of all agreements, payments, repairs, and tenant communications. If there’s a disagreement, this written documentation can serve as evidence to protect both landlord and tenant rights.
For example, you should document tenant repair requests and the timeline of your response to comply with Texas Property Code on necessary repairs. That way, you cover yourself if they dispute your effort to fix the issue.
Laws and regulations can change, so it's important to make sure your lease agreements are regularly updated to reflect the latest requirements. This includes things like changing rent control ordinances or updated fair housing laws. It's best practice to review agreements regularly and speak to a legal expert on the changes in the world of real estate law.
Lease agreements often come with deadlines, from rent payments to contract renewal dates. These may be easy to track when you lease just one property, but they can be difficult to track accurately at scale without the right system in place.
If you want to stay on top of your lease agreement milestones, you should consider using a contract management solution like Juro to keep track of lease end dates, renewal windows, and rent due dates by receiving automated contract reminders.
Managing multiple leases manually is time-consuming and prone to errors. Juro’s AI-powered platform simplifies this by automating contract creation, streamlining negotiations, and tracking lease renewals.
With Juro, you can generate legally compliant Texas lease agreements, securely store them, and allow tenants to sign digitally—making the entire process faster and more efficient. This helps ensure compliance with Texas laws while cutting down the amount of repetitive admin involved in leasing.
Juro allows users to create automated contract templates. You can quickly generate lease agreements by filling out a simple Q&A form. These templates include built-in rules and conditions to customize the lease based on the provided data, reducing errors and ensuring compliance with Texas laws.
With Juro, you can set up customizable approval workflows. This ensures that all necessary stakeholders review and approve the lease before it’s finalized. You can define the sequence of approvers and use conditional logic to speed up the process while maintaining essential checks.
Juro’s mass actions feature lets you sign multiple contracts simultaneously, which is particularly useful for property managers handling numerous leases. Select all contracts that need signing and apply electronic signatures in bulk, saving time and reducing administrative burdens.
Juro provides a data-rich contract repository, offering instant visibility into your lease agreements. You can easily search, filter, and report on contracts, ensuring you never lose track of important documents—crucial for real estate professionals managing a high volume of leases.
Juro’s automated alerts and reminders help you stay on top of key dates, such as lease renewals and termination dates. Set up reminders for any date field in your contracts, ensuring you never miss a deadline and helping you manage long-term leases more effectively.
Juro integrates seamlessly with various real estate tools and CRMs through Zapier. This allows you to pull transaction data directly from your CRM into your lease agreements, reducing manual data entry and ensuring consistency across your records.
Juro’s AI-native contract automation platform empowers all teams to create, agree, execute and manage contracts up to 10x faster than traditional tools. To find out more, hit the button below to book your personalized demo.
If your property portfolio extends beyond Georgia, you may benefit from these other free lease agreement templates, too:
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