Squatters, Texas
Selling a Texas House With Squatters — SB 1333 Fast-Track or Cash Close
Texas changed the rulebook in 2025. SB 1333 created a sworn-affidavit fast-track that lets owners remove squatters through a Justice of the Peace court order rather than the old eviction-court path that often took 30 to 90 days. You have two real choices: use the new law yourself and then sell at retail, or sell to Diamond with the squatters still inside and we handle the removal post-close. This page walks through both options honestly, so you can pick the one that fits your situation.
The 2025 fast-track
What Texas SB 1333 actually changed — and why owners finally have leverage
Before 2025, removing a squatter from a Texas property was awkward by design. Squatting is not a tenancy — there is no lease, no rent, no landlord-tenant relationship — but the practical path to removal usually ran through the same eviction-court machinery that handles tenant-eviction proceedings. That meant filing a forcible-detainer suit, serving the occupant, waiting for the hearing, and waiting again for the writ of possession before law enforcement could remove anyone. Owners regularly described timelines of 30 to 90 days from "discovered the squatter" to "house is empty," and the longer that window ran, the more damage accumulated inside.
Senate Bill 1333, enacted by the Texas Legislature in 2025, distinguishes squatting from tenancy and creates a separate fast-track. The mechanism is a sworn affidavit filed with the Justice of the Peace court for the precinct where the property sits. The owner attests, under penalty of perjury, to a short list of facts. If the JP judge finds the affidavit sufficient on its face, the court can issue an order authorizing immediate removal — law enforcement then executes the order without the property owner having to navigate the full tenant-eviction process. The intent of the legislation is to give owners a tool that matches the actual legal situation: this person is not a tenant, they were never a tenant, and the longer the process takes, the more harm is done to the owner.
The three sworn statements at the center of SB 1333
The affidavit is short by design — the law is built around a narrow set of facts the owner has direct knowledge of. The three statements you sign, in substance, are:
- 1. You own the property. Recorded deed, title in your name (or in the name of an entity you control), or — in a probate situation — clear authority over the estate that owns the property. The JP court is not the right forum for an ownership dispute; if title itself is contested, SB 1333 is not the right tool and your problem is bigger than a squatter removal.
- 2. The person inside is not a tenant and never paid rent. No lease, written or verbal. No rent ever exchanged hands. No landlord-tenant relationship with you or with any prior owner whose authority you stepped into. This is the statement that most commonly trips owners up — if there is any history of the occupant paying the prior owner anything that could be characterized as rent, talk to a Texas real estate attorney before filing.
- 3. The person is unlawfully occupying the property. They entered without your permission. They are there now without your permission. You have demanded that they leave (in writing if possible, but even a clear verbal demand counts) and they have not left.
The honest limit of SB 1333
SB 1333 is powerful when the situation is a clean squatter case. It is not the right tool when the occupant has any plausible argument that they are a tenant — a prior verbal lease, a history of paying utilities under a rent-credit arrangement, a written agreement nobody can find, a relative who was given permission to stay by a deceased parent. In those situations the JP court may decline to issue the immediate order, or the order can be challenged, and the case bounces back into the slower regular eviction track. The fast-track exists; it is not unconditional. If your situation is ambiguous, an hour with a Texas real estate attorney before filing saves a much larger problem later.
We are a cash buyer, not your attorney. This section is general background on a brand-new Texas statute that the courts are still building practice around. For legal advice on your specific situation, consult a Texas real estate attorney. The State Bar of Texas Lawyer Referral Service can connect you with one, and the Texas State Law Library publishes free landlord-tenant and property-law guides at guides.sll.texas.gov.
How it happens
How squatters typically end up in your Texas property
The owner-blames-self reaction is almost always wrong. Squatter occupations follow predictable patterns, and the patterns have very little to do with the owner being careless. Below are the five situations that account for most of the calls we get. None of them require you to have done anything wrong. They are downstream effects of the property being unoccupied at the wrong moment for the wrong length of time.
Vacant while owner is out-of-state
The most common pattern. The house has been empty for six months or longer, the owner lives in California, New York, Colorado, or another state, and a neighbor or the utility company finally calls to say someone is living there. In the cities — Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, San Antonio — there are organized networks that monitor utility-disconnect records and uncut yards specifically to identify targets. The longer the vacancy, the higher the exposure.
Mid-probate vacancy
A parent passes, the house sits empty while the estate works through probate, and the heirs have not yet formally taken possession or listed it for sale. Probate timelines in Texas commonly run six to twelve months even on uncontested estates, and a house empty for that long with no clear point of contact is a target. The heir often finds out about the squatter at the same time they find out the probate filing is delayed.
Recently-evicted tenant returns
The lease ended badly, the tenant was evicted through the standard process, and a few weeks or months later they returned to the property and let themselves back in. This is technically still squatting under SB 1333 — the prior tenancy was terminated, the prior right to occupy ended with it, and the current occupancy is not under any lease. But the prior history can muddy the affidavit, so this is a situation where an attorney conversation pays for itself.
Vacation home between owner visits
A Hill Country or East Texas vacation home occupied four to six weeks of the year, empty the rest. Between visits, the property visibly looks vacant, and in some markets that is enough to draw an occupant. Snowbird-style winter-only houses fall into the same pattern — the owner returns in the fall to find the house occupied and the utilities transferred into someone else\'s name.
Investor-owned vacant property
A real estate investor with multiple Texas properties has one sitting between tenants while renovations stall, financing tightens, or the strategy changes. Professional squatter networks specifically track investor-owned vacant inventory because the owner is rarely on site and the discovery window is long. Out-of-state investors are at higher risk than local operators.
Our broader vacant house Texas guide walks through the upstream prevention — the insurance gap, the carrying-cost math, and the monitoring options that reduce squatter exposure on long-vacant property. If your house is empty now and you are reading this before the squatter arrives, that page is the right next read.
The fork in the road
Your two real paths forward — pick the one that fits
Once you have confirmed there is a squatter in your property and you have decided you want them out and the house off your hands, the practical choice narrows to two paths. One nets you more money at sale; the other nets you less friction and faster resolution. Neither is wrong. The right answer depends on where you live, how much time you have, and how willing you are to navigate a JP court process you have likely never used before.
Use SB 1333 yourself, then sell
File the sworn affidavit with the Justice of the Peace court in the precinct where the property sits. Get the JP judge\'s order. Have law enforcement execute the removal. Then clean the house out and decide whether to list it on the open market or sell it as-is to a cash buyer like us. This path nets you the highest possible sale price because the buyer is not pricing the SB 1333 risk and post-removal cleanout into their offer — both are already done. Total time is typically two to four weeks for the removal plus the cleanout plus however long the sale takes. Best for owners who live in Texas, have time to coordinate the JP court process, and want to maximize sale price.
Sell to a cash buyer with squatters still in place
We close on the property as-is, with the squatters still inside. Title transfers, you wire the proceeds, you walk away. Diamond — now the legal owner — files the SB 1333 affidavit and handles the removal post-close in our own name. We absorb the timeline risk, the JP court process, the cleanout, and any interior damage. The offer comes in lower than Path A because we are pricing all of that into the number — but the seven-day cash close is real, you never set foot in Texas if you do not want to, and you never appear in a JP court. Best for out-of-state owners, mid-probate heirs, investors who want to exit a problem property, and anyone who simply does not want to navigate the legal system themselves.
We will say which path we think fits your situation honestly on the first call. If you live ninety minutes from the property, have a relationship with a Texas attorney, and there is meaningful equity in the house, Path A usually nets more. If you live out of state, are mid-probate, or have already decided you do not want to keep this house no matter what, Path B is almost always the cleaner exit even at the lower price. The conversation is free either way.
Path B in detail
What we do when squatters are still in the house at closing
Four steps. The whole process is built around the fact that we do not enter the property while squatters are inside — that is their occupancy until SB 1333 removes them, and crossing that line creates legal exposure for us and for you. Every step below works around that constraint.
- 1
Phone call — bring everything you have on the history
The most useful documents you can put in front of us on the first call are any prior eviction filings, any lease history (even old leases with prior tenants), any JP court records, any written communication with the occupant, and any city code-violation letters about the property. We are not trying to build a case in that conversation — we are trying to understand whether the SB 1333 affidavit is clearly available or whether the situation is ambiguous enough to need an attorney first. Address, situation, who is on the title, what you know about the occupant, and your timeline. That is the whole intake.
- 2
Title pull and exterior condition assessment
We pull the county appraisal record, the deed and lien history, recent comparable sales in the immediate area, and any city records on file — code citations, abatement charges, mowing-and-cleaning fees. We drive the property and do an exterior assessment from public access only. We do not knock on the door. We do not enter. If you have prior interior photos from before the squatter arrived, those help; if you do not, we underwrite to a reasonable interior-unknown assumption that accounts for likely damage.
- 3
Written offer with the SB 1333 timeline and cleanout priced in
The offer comes in writing, with the math shown. Comparable retail sales, renovation budget at investor-retail rates, the cost of the SB 1333 filing and the JP court process on our side, professional cleanout and biohazard remediation if needed, likely interior damage repair, holding costs through the removal timeline, and the margin we need to underwrite the risk. What you sign is what funds — no inspection-driven renegotiation, no last-minute reductions, no assignment fee buried in the addendum.
- 4
Close at title — Diamond files SB 1333 post-close
Title transfers in our name. The squatters are now occupying our property, not yours. A mobile notary handles your signature wherever you live; you do not have to fly to Texas. Funds wire to your bank account on the day of close. Diamond files the SB 1333 affidavit with the JP court for the precinct where the property sits, gets the order, coordinates with law enforcement, and handles everything that happens after — the removal, the cleanout, the eventual renovation, and the resale. None of that lands on you.
Our broader process is documented on the how it works page, and the general cash-offer overview for any Texas property lives on sell your house. For the broader landscape of complex sales, see the situations index.
The post-removal reality
What we typically find after the squatters are out
The reason we underwrite squatter-occupied properties differently than a clean vacant house is what is usually waiting on the other side of the SB 1333 order. We are describing what we expect to find, not casting judgment on the people who left it — squatters are often vulnerable people in their own difficult situations, and the condition of the house when they leave is a downstream effect of months of unsupervised occupancy by people without resources to maintain it. The list below is what gets priced into the offer.
Code violations and city liens
Cities issue citations against the property regardless of who is living there. Overgrowth, broken windows, accumulation, unsecured entries, junked-vehicle fines — most squatter-occupied houses accumulate a stack of these by the time the occupation is discovered. The fines roll into liens. The title company runs the search; we pay what is filed at the closing table. Our forthcoming code violations Texas guide covers this side of the work in detail.
Hoarder-level mess and full cleanout
Several months of occupancy by people who could not legally come and go from the property like normal residents — couldn\'t arrange trash service, couldn\'t move belongings out, often couldn\'t even safely store food properly — produces a recognizable kind of interior chaos. Professional cleanout, junk removal, and often biohazard remediation are baseline assumptions in the offer. See our hoarder houses Texas guide for the cleanout-specific detail on how that work runs.
Unauthorized modifications
Walls removed for "more space." Plumbing tapped in non-code-compliant ways for additional fixtures. Wiring patched together when the electrical was cut by the utility — sometimes off neighboring service, sometimes off automotive batteries. None of these meet code. Most require demolition and proper redo before resale. We underwrite to it; you do not pay to remediate it before talking to us.
Biohazard and waste
Without functional plumbing or trash service for months, biohazard accumulation is common. Professional remediation — by licensed crews using proper PPE and disposal protocols — is the only safe path. We use established remediation vendors who handle this category of work routinely. The cost is in the offer math, not something you handle before closing.
Drug-residue contamination
In a minority of cases, the occupancy involves methamphetamine production or other chemical contamination that requires environmental testing and possible remediation of drywall, flooring, HVAC, and porous surfaces. Texas does not have a uniform statewide testing standard for residential meth contamination the way some states do, but the remediation reality is the same. When we suspect this category — usually from exterior signs visible during the assessment — the offer accounts for the testing protocol and the worst-case remediation budget.
Statewide service area
Where we buy squatter-occupied houses in Texas
Statewide. SB 1333 applies to every county in Texas — Dallas County, Tarrant County, Harris County, Travis County, Bexar County, and every rural county between them. The Justice of the Peace courts are organized by precinct within each county, and the affidavit is filed at the precinct where the property sits. The mechanics do not change from urban to rural; the practical timeline does, because JP dockets and law enforcement responsiveness vary by precinct. We have worked the process from both large-metro and small-county precincts and the offer math accommodates either.
Cities with dedicated guides
Squatter-occupied houses show up across our coverage area, with higher rates in the major metros and lower but real volume in the smaller cities. Each link below walks through the local context for that city.
Major metros and statewide coverage
Squatter activity is highest in the urban cores where organized networks monitor vacant inventory most aggressively. The SB 1333 process is the same on our side regardless of metro, with local JP precincts driving the timeline variance.
- Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex — Dallas, Fort Worth, Plano, Arlington, Irving, Frisco, McKinney, Denton, Garland, Mesquite, Richardson, and surrounding suburbs.
- Houston metro — Houston proper, Pasadena, Pearland, Sugar Land, The Woodlands, and outer-loop neighborhoods where investor-owned vacant inventory clusters.
- Austin and San Antonio metros — Austin, San Antonio, Round Rock, Cedar Park, New Braunfels.
- East Texas — Tyler, Longview, Marshall, Nacogdoches, Lufkin, Palestine.
- Central and West Texas — Waco, Killeen, Temple, Abilene, Midland, Odessa, San Angelo.
- South Texas and the Valley — Corpus Christi, Brownsville, McAllen, Laredo, Victoria.
Rural property without a city designation works the same way — we drive in. The farther the drive, the more travel and logistics enter the offer math, but the SB 1333 process is identical.
Honesty matters
What we do not do — and why we say it out loud
The cash-for-houses category is full of marketing language designed to make every situation sound like a guaranteed win. Squatter-occupied property is exactly the kind of situation where vague promises cost owners money. Three things we deliberately will not do, and why.
We do not enter the property while squatters are inside
That is their occupancy until SB 1333 removes them. Crossing that line creates legal exposure for us as buyers and for you as the current owner, and it can poison the affidavit later. Our pre-close assessment is exterior-only, from public access. If somebody tells you they will "go in and take care of it" for you, they are describing something that is not legal and likely will not result in the outcome they are promising.
We do not take "any condition" sight-unseen
We need title clarity, recent comparable sales, and an exterior condition assessment before we write an offer. The "sight-unseen, any condition, instant cash" marketing pitch in this category usually translates into wholesale assignments that get re-traded down at the last minute. We do not do that. The written offer is the funded offer.
We do not replace your attorney
If you want to navigate SB 1333 yourself (Path A), talk to a Texas real estate attorney before filing the affidavit. We can describe the statute in plain English; we cannot give legal advice on your specific facts. The State Bar of Texas Lawyer Referral Service and the Texas State Law Library are both useful starting points. The cost of an hour with the right attorney is small compared to the cost of a flawed affidavit.
This page is general background on Texas SB 1333 and the cash-buyer option for squatter-occupied property, not legal or financial advice. The decisions you make about filing the affidavit, hiring an attorney, selling the property, or any related action should be made with the help of a licensed Texas real estate attorney. SB 1333 is new law and the courts are still developing consistent practice around it — your specific situation matters.
Squatters FAQ
The questions owners ask first
How do I prove the person is a squatter and not a tenant?
The legal line between a squatter and a tenant in Texas turns on whether the person ever had your permission to live there. A tenant is someone who entered the property under a lease (written or verbal), paid rent (in cash, services, or some agreed-upon exchange), or otherwise had a landlord-tenant relationship with the owner. A squatter is someone occupying the property without ever having that permission. The Texas SB 1333 affidavit asks you to swear that the occupant is not a tenant and has never paid rent — and the strength of that sworn statement depends on what is actually true. Old lease paperwork, prior eviction filings, rent ledgers, and any communication that establishes (or fails to establish) a tenancy all matter. If you genuinely do not know whether the person ever paid the prior owner rent — common in inherited or recently-acquired properties — talk to a Texas real estate attorney before filing the affidavit. Filing a false affidavit is its own legal problem.
What if the squatter is paying utilities — does that make them a tenant?
Not automatically, but it complicates the picture. Paying utilities in your own name is one of the facts a court can weigh when deciding whether a quasi-tenancy was created. It is not on its own dispositive — squatters routinely transfer utilities into their own name precisely because it creates the appearance of legitimacy. But if utility bills are being paid, the JP judge reviewing your SB 1333 affidavit may want a clearer record before issuing the immediate-removal order. Other facts that complicate the analysis: the occupant receiving mail at the address for an extended period, the occupant making improvements with the prior owner's apparent knowledge, or a verbal agreement that the prior owner made with the occupant. None of these guarantee tenant status, but each is a fact pattern a Texas real estate attorney should review before you swear the affidavit.
How fast can SB 1333 actually remove someone?
The honest answer is "it depends on the county, the JP court's docket, and how clean your paperwork is." The statutory mechanism is fast — sworn affidavit filed, JP judge can issue an order quickly, law enforcement can execute the removal. In practice, a clean filing in a responsive JP court can move from affidavit to removal in roughly one to four weeks, which is meaningfully faster than the 30 to 90 days a traditional eviction often took before the law passed. But we have no firsthand SB 1333 deal data to point to and the courts are still building consistent practice around the statute. Treat any specific timeline claim — including ours — as an estimate, not a guarantee. The county where the property sits drives a lot of the variance.
Can you buy the property with squatters still in it?
Yes. We have two paths and you can pick the one that fits. Path A is that you use SB 1333 yourself (with or without a Texas attorney), get the squatters out, then we close on a clean property at a higher offer. Path B is that we close while the squatters are still inside, take title, and Diamond files the SB 1333 affidavit post-close in our own name as the new owner. Path B is meaningfully better for owners who live out of state, are mid-probate, or just do not want to navigate the JP court system themselves. The trade-off: Path B offers come in lower because we are pricing the SB 1333 timeline risk, the post-removal cleanout, and likely interior damage into the offer.
What if the squatter is hoarding inside?
This is more common than you would expect. Squatter-occupied houses, especially after several months of occupancy, often have hoarder-level accumulation inside — abandoned belongings, accumulated trash, and sometimes biohazards. Our offer accounts for full professional cleanout if needed, including hazmat-grade remediation. Hoarding is a separate practical issue from the legal removal, and we treat it that way: SB 1333 deals with the people, professional cleanout deals with the stuff. See our hoarder-houses Texas guide for the cleanout-specific detail on how that side of the work runs.
What if there are unpaid utility bills or city liens?
They get paid at the closing table out of the proceeds, the same way they would on any other distressed-property sale. Squatter-occupied houses often accumulate code-violation citations during the occupancy — mowing-and-cleaning fees, broken-window citations, accumulation citations, abatement charges — and those liens attach to the property regardless of who triggered them. The title company runs the full lien search before funding. We pay what is filed. You do not negotiate with the city or with the utility. If the bills are in the squatter's name (sometimes the case), those are not your obligation; if they are in your name or attached to the address as municipal liens, they clear at closing.
How does SB 1333 work in DFW versus Houston versus rural Texas?
The statute is statewide — SB 1333 applies the same way in Dallas County, Tarrant County, Harris County, Travis County, Bexar County, and every rural county in Texas. The mechanics do not change. What does change is the JP court's practical docket and how responsive local law enforcement is to executing the order once the JP judge issues it. Larger urban JP precincts often have more crowded dockets, which can stretch the timeline; rural JP courts often move faster on paperwork but may have less experience with the specific affidavit format. The right Texas real estate attorney for your county can usually tell you the local court's practice in a single call. We work statewide and the SB 1333 process is the same on our side regardless of where the property sits.
Is this page legal advice?
No. This page is general background on Texas SB 1333 and the cash-buyer option for squatter-occupied property — it is not legal advice and we are not your attorney. SB 1333 is new law (enacted in 2025), the JP courts are still developing consistent practice around it, and the specifics of any single situation matter enormously. If you are considering filing the SB 1333 affidavit yourself, talk to a Texas real estate attorney first — the State Bar of Texas Lawyer Referral Service can connect you, often the same day. The Texas State Law Library publishes free, plain-English landlord-tenant and property-law guides at guides.sll.texas.gov that are a useful first read.
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