Squatters in Your Texas House: The New Fast-Track Removal Law, What It Costs, and 4 Ways Out in 2026

Someone is living in a house you own and you did not put them there. Maybe it’s a rental that went vacant between tenants. Maybe it’s your mother’s house, sitting empty since the funeral while probate grinds along. Maybe you got a call from a neighbor about lights on in a property you haven’t driven past since spring.

Texas changed the law on this twice in 2025, and both changes are now live. Senate Bill 1333 took effect September 1, 2025 and created a sheriff-driven removal process that did not exist before. Senate Bill 38 took effect for eviction filings on or after January 1, 2026 and compressed the court timeline substantially. Which one applies to you depends entirely on facts about the occupant — and getting that call wrong is how owners turn a trespass problem into a lawsuit against themselves.

This walks through both tracks, what each actually costs in 2026, the self-help trap that catches Texas owners every year, what adverse possession does and doesn’t mean, and how a sale works if you’d rather hand the whole thing off.

We buy occupied properties across DFW and the broader Texas market. The removal process is something we take on as the buyer — but you should understand it either way, because the decision of whether to fight it or sell it depends on numbers you can only run once you know how the process works.

First, figure out which problem you actually have

Everything downstream depends on this. Texas treats these three situations completely differently, and they are easy to confuse when you’re angry.

A true squatter broke in or entered without permission, has never had a lease with you, and isn’t family. This is the only category eligible for the new Chapter 24B sheriff fast-track.

A holdover tenant had a lease that ended, or a tenancy at will, and simply hasn’t left. They are a tenant. Chapter 24B explicitly excludes them — Section 24B.001(3)(A) disqualifies any “current or former tenant of the owner under an oral or written lease.” You are in eviction court, and the full body of residential tenant protections in Property Code Chapter 92 applies to you.

A person holding a fraudulent lease is the hard middle case, and it’s increasingly common. Someone rented the house to them — just not someone who owned it. They may have paid a deposit and rent in good faith to a scammer. SB 1333 addressed the scam side directly by creating two new Penal Code offenses: Section 32.56 makes it a Class A misdemeanor to knowingly present a false, fraudulent, or fictitious lease or deed with intent to enter or remain on real property, and Section 32.57 makes it a first-degree felony to knowingly list, advertise, sell, rent, or lease residential real property you have no legal title or authority to convey.

The Chapter 24B complaint form makes you swear, item by item, that the occupant is not a tenant and that “any lease produced by the person is fraudulent.” That’s a sworn statement under penalty of perjury. If you aren’t certain, the sheriff route is not your route.

Track one: the Chapter 24B sheriff removal

SB 1333 added Chapter 24B to the Property Code — “Removal of Certain Unauthorized Occupants of Real Property.” It is the fastest legal tool Texas has ever given a property owner, and it is narrow on purpose.

What has to be true

Under Section 24B.001, you can request immediate removal only if all of the following hold:

• The person unlawfully entered and is occupying a dwelling on the property without your consent.
• The property was not open to the public when they entered.
• The property is not the subject of pending litigation between you and that person.
• You or your agent already directed them to leave and they didn’t.
• They are not a current or former tenant under any oral or written lease.
• They are not an immediate family member of the owner.

The complaint

Section 24B.002 sets out a twelve-item sworn complaint you submit to the sheriff or constable of the county where the property is located. You initial each applicable item and sign under penalty of perjury, punishable under Penal Code Section 37.02. You attach a copy of your government-issued ID, plus documentation of your authority if you’re signing as an agent.

Two of the twelve items are the legislature putting you on notice in writing: item 9 acknowledges that a person removed as a result of your complaint may sue you for any false statement or for wrongfully submitting it, and item 10 acknowledges you may be liable for actual damages, exemplary damages, court costs, and attorney’s fees.

What the officer does

Under Section 24B.003, the sheriff or constable first verifies that you are the record owner (or the owner’s agent) and are otherwise entitled to the relief. Once verified, they must without delay serve a notice to immediately vacate and put you in possession of the dwelling.

Service can be hand delivery to an occupant or by affixing the notice to the front door. The officer attempts to verify the identity of every occupant and notes it on the return of service, and Subsection (e) allows them to arrest anyone present on an outstanding warrant, for trespass, or for any other offense supported by probable cause.

After the notice is served, Subsection (g) lets you ask the officer to remain on the property to keep the peace while you change the locks and move any personal property to near the property line.

What it costs

Section 24B.003(f) entitles the officer to a fee equal to what they’d receive for executing a writ of possession — so, in the same range as the county writ execution fees below. Subsection (h) allows a reasonable hourly rate if you ask them to stand by during the lockout.

The exposure

Section 24B.004 protects the officer from liability for loss or damage to property during removal, and protects you as well — but expressly “subject to Section 24B.005.” That section is the teeth: a person wrongfully removed can sue to recover possession and to collect actual damages, exemplary damages equal to three times the fair market rent of the dwelling, court costs, and reasonable attorney’s fees, and the court must set the hearing at the earliest practicable date.

Section 24B.006 confirms the chapter doesn’t limit your other rights or a law enforcement officer’s authority to arrest for trespassing, vandalism, or theft.

This is a real tool. It is also a sworn accusation with a treble-damages backstop. Use it when the facts are clean.

Track two: eviction under Chapter 24, as rewritten by SB 38

If the occupant is a tenant, a former tenant, family, or anyone else outside Chapter 24B, you file a forcible entry and detainer suit in the justice court for the precinct where the property sits. SB 38 rewrote significant portions of this process for filings on or after January 1, 2026.

Notice to vacate

You still start with a written notice to vacate before filing. SB 38 added Section 24.005(f-3), which requires delivery by at least one of: mail, delivery to the premises, hand delivery to an occupant 16 or older, or an agreed electronic method. Section 24.005(f-4) makes the method irrelevant if the occupant actually received the notice. Three days is the default period when no lease says otherwise.

The new summary disposition procedure

This is the headline change. New Section 24.005106 lets a landlord who files a sworn petition include a sworn motion for summary disposition without trial. The motion must set out all supporting facts with documents attached.

If the motion shows there are no genuinely disputed facts, the justice court may enter judgment for the landlord without a trial — unless, not later than the fourth day after being served, the occupant files a response setting out supporting facts and attaching applicable documents, and the court finds both that service was proper and that the response raises a genuinely disputed fact.

The court may still enter judgment regardless of the response if it doesn’t actually identify a disputed fact. It may also accept a late response filed before judgment if that response does raise one.

If the court finds genuinely disputed facts, it sets trial no earlier than the 10th day and no later than the 21st day after the petition was filed.

Service

Section 24.0051(f) now requires the sheriff or constable to make a diligent effort to serve the citation and petition not later than the fifth business day after filing. If they don’t, the landlord may use another appropriately trained law enforcement officer.

Writ of possession

Section 24.0061(b) keeps the rule that a writ may not issue before the sixth day after the judgment for possession is rendered, absent an approved possession bond. New Section 24.0061(b-1) then does two things that matter: it declares issuance of the writ a “ministerial act not subject to review or delay,” and it requires the officer to serve the writ not later than the fifth business day after issuance — with a fallback allowing another trained officer, including an off-duty officer with proper identification, if that deadline is missed.

Section 24.0061(c) requires the court to mail a copy of a default judgment or a Section 24.005106 judgment to the premises within 48 hours of entry.

Appeal

Under Section 24.005107, a party has until the fifth day after the judgment is signed to file an appeal bond, cash deposit, or statement of inability to afford costs. A tenant appealing must affirm under penalty of perjury a good-faith belief in a meritorious defense and that the appeal isn’t for delay. The justice court forwards the record between 4 p.m. on the sixth day and 4 p.m. on the tenth day, and the county court must hold trial within 21 days of receiving it.

SB 38 also amended Section 24.011 so that parties in any justice-court eviction suit may represent themselves or use a non-attorney authorized agent — previously limited to nonpayment and holdover cases.

Realistic timelines

These are practical ranges, not promises. Docket congestion varies precinct to precinct, and a determined occupant with counsel can stretch the back end.

The self-help trap

Every year Texas owners decide the courts are too slow, change the locks, haul the belongings to the curb, and cut the power. Then they get sued, and they lose.

Outside the Chapter 24B process, that is self-help eviction. Property Code Section 92.008 makes a landlord who interrupts utility service liable for actual damages, one month’s rent plus $1,000, reasonable attorney’s fees, and court costs. Section 92.0081 governs removing a tenant’s property and excluding a tenant, imposes its own written-notice requirements before a lockout, and carries a $1,000 penalty on top of damages.

The reason this is a trap rather than a rule you can simply follow: you don’t get to decide unilaterally whether the occupant is a tenant. That’s the question the case turns on, and if you’ve already acted, you’re litigating it from the defendant’s chair. Chapter 24B exists precisely so that an officer makes the removal after verifying your standing — which is what converts the act from self-help into an authorized process.

If you’re on the fence about which category your occupant falls into, the cost of an hour with a licensed Texas real-estate attorney is trivial against a treble-damages exposure.

Adverse possession: the real risk is not what you think

“Squatters rights” gets used loosely. In Texas the actual doctrine lives in Civil Practice and Remedies Code Chapter 16, and it has several tracks:

• Three years — peaceable and adverse possession under title or color of title (Section 16.024).
• Five years — cultivating, using, or enjoying the property, paying the applicable taxes, and claiming under a duly registered deed (Section 16.025).
• Ten years — peaceable and adverse possession with cultivation, use, or enjoyment and no title instrument (Section 16.026), limited to 160 acres including improvements unless a larger area is actually enclosed.

Longer periods exist for certain recorded-instrument and disability scenarios.

Someone who kicked in a door last month satisfies none of this. The five-year track requires a registered deed and tax payments; the ten-year track requires a decade of open, continuous, peaceable possession.

So the break-in case is not your ownership risk. The ownership risk is the quiet case: an inherited house, a rural parcel, a property tangled in a family dispute, where someone has been living there openly, using it, and in some cases paying the taxes, for years — while the family assumed the place was empty. That is how these claims actually get made in Texas, and it is another argument for not letting a property sit unwatched. Our companion piece on what it costs to leave a Texas house sitting vacant walks through the rest of that cost stack.

What this actually costs in 2026

Court costs are public and modest. These are the real published numbers:

Both counties’ figures are from their published Justice Court fee schedules effective January 1, 2026. Fees vary by county and by precinct within a county — confirm with the specific court that will hear your case before you budget from this table.

The court costs are not the expensive part. The expensive part is what you find when you get the door open. On a house that was in ordinary condition six months earlier, we routinely see:

• Copper plumbing cut out of the walls and slab, with the resulting water damage — see our slab leak repair cost guide for what that repair runs.
• The exterior condenser stripped or the whole system gone. Our HVAC replacement cost guide covers current DFW pricing.
• Electrical wiring pulled from junction boxes and panels.
• Interior damage, hoarding-level accumulation, and biohazard conditions requiring professional cleanout rather than a dumpster and a weekend.
• Mold behind walls where water ran unnoticed for weeks.

Individually these are four-figure line items. Together, on one house, they land solidly in the five figures — and that’s before you’ve replaced a single fixture or repainted anything.

Then add the carrying costs that run the entire time: property taxes, insurance (assuming you still have coverage, which is a real question on an occupied-by-strangers property), utilities, mortgage, HOA dues, and any city citations accruing while the yard goes unmowed. Our guide to Texas HOA dues before selling covers how those balances get settled at closing.

Four ways out

1. Chapter 24B sheriff removal, then repair and keep or list. Fastest path if your facts are clean. You still own the repair bill and the carrying costs, and you’re gambling that the occupant doesn’t come back — a vacant house that attracted occupants once will attract them again unless something changes.

2. Evict under Chapter 24, then repair and sell retail. Slower, but it’s the route when the occupant is a tenant or the facts are murky. Budget two to three months if it’s contested, plus repair time, plus market time. This makes sense when the house is fundamentally sound and you have the cash and patience to carry it.

3. Cash-for-keys. Unglamorous and often the cheapest option overall. You offer the occupant money to leave voluntarily by a date, in writing, with possession verified before payment. A few thousand dollars against a contested eviction plus three months of carrying costs plus retaliatory damage is frequently the better trade. It is not a substitute for legal advice on how to paper it, and it does not work with everyone.

4. Sell the house occupied. You transfer the property with the occupants still in it and the buyer takes on the removal. This is what we do. It is the right answer when you’re out of state, when the property is tied up in an estate and the heirs can’t fund a fight, when the repair bill exceeds what you can put in, or when you simply want the problem to stop being yours.

How selling occupied actually works

You cannot sell an occupied problem property to a financed buyer. The lender needs an appraisal, insurability, and vacant possession at closing. None of those survive an unresolved possession dispute. This is a cash transaction or it doesn’t happen.

Diamond Acquisitions buys as a principal — we purchase for our own account, we are not licensed real estate agents, and we do not represent you in a fiduciary capacity. Closing runs through a Texas-licensed title company that handles the title work and pays off any liens out of proceeds.

Our offer math is ARV × 75–80% minus repairs. On an occupied house, three things push the repair number:

1. We often can’t inspect. We underwrite from the exterior, county records, comparable interior conditions, and your disclosure. Uncertainty is priced conservatively — which is exactly why telling us everything you know helps your number rather than hurting it.
2. We carry the removal. Court and constable costs, attorney time, and the weeks or months of holding costs while the process runs.
3. We expect damage on exit. Occupants who are removed involuntarily do not leave the house better than they found it.

Here’s a worked example on a DFW-area house:

Any city abatement liens, delinquent property taxes, or mortgage payoff come out of your proceeds at closing through the title company — you don’t fund them up front.

That is a real discount and we’re not going to pretend otherwise. What you’re buying with it is a closing date, no removal process, no repair bill, and no more carrying costs on a house you can’t use. Whether that trade is right depends on your numbers, and on how long you can afford to carry the alternative. Our breakdown of how a cash offer is calculated shows the full math.

What to do this week

1. Document everything. Photograph the exterior, save the neighbor’s texts, pull your deed, and get a printout of your county appraisal district record showing you as owner. Chapter 24B requires the officer to verify you’re the record owner.
2. Determine the category. Squatter, holdover tenant, fraudulent-lease occupant, or family member. This decides your track and you cannot skip it.
3. Send a written demand to leave. Chapter 24B requires it, and it’s the first step of an eviction anyway. Keep proof of delivery.
4. Call the county sheriff or constable’s office where the property sits and ask how they’re handling Chapter 24B complaints. Implementation varies by county and the process is still new.
5. Talk to a licensed Texas real-estate attorney before you do anything self-help. One consultation is cheap against treble damages.
6. Run the numbers on selling occupied in parallel. Not because you have to take it, but because you can’t evaluate options one through three without knowing what option four pays.

If you want an offer on an occupied property, tell us about the house — including what you don’t know because you haven’t been able to get inside. We buy houses across Dallas–Fort Worth and the wider Texas market with occupants in place, and we’d rather price the problem accurately up front than discover it after you’ve signed something.