Texas Tenant Advisor

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The Texas Tenant Advisor is intended to provide general information regarding Texas residential tenancies only.

Unique facts can render some statements inapplicable to a given situation.

We attempt to provide current information; nonetheless, you are urged to consult an attorney for legal advice and assistance.

This web site is a public service of the Texas Low Income Housing Information Service.

Watch video on late fees

A landlord can charge a reasonable late fee if you pay rent after the due date and any grace period according to your lease agreement. If you do not pay your rent on the due date (or beyond the grace period), the landlord may have the discretion to either declare you in default under the lease agreement or accept the rent and the appropriate late fee. If you offer to pay the rent and appropriate late fee, and the landlord refuses to accept it and demands that you vacate, you may still have a chance in court in an eviction case. You should read the lease carefully and argue that you offered to cure the problem according to the lease. A court may also consider your rent to be paid on time if you have established a clear and undisputed pattern of acceptance of late payment by your landlord. You should argue that if your landlord no longer wished to accept late payments, it should have given you some advance notice.

A late fee should not be more than $35 for being just one day late in a typical lease where rent is $500 per month, although there are no specific legal limits. Landlords probably can also charge additional fees for each day the rent is late. Generally, the total amount of late fees in any one month should not be more than one quarter of a month's rent. But again, a court could consider higher fees to be acceptable or lower fees to be unacceptable, there is no sure answer. You could sue the landlord in court and claim that the late fees the landlord wants to charge are "unconsionable" and request that the court declare that lease provision void. You can also request the court award you penalties because if the late fee is improperly high the landlord may have violated the Texas Deceptive Trades Practices Act.

If you notice we have not provided any statutes that specifically talk about late fees because there are none. (Note that a lease is not a loan of money. Usury laws, which put limits on interest rates and fees for loans do not apply to leases.) The Texas Legislature has not addressed late fees; that leaves the courts to decide on an individual basis (unless the Texas Supreme Court addresses the issue). In years past, when tenant advocates bring up the fact that many landlords charge unreasonable late fees with the Texas Legislature, your friends at the Texas Apartment Association (TAA) are there to help make sure that the maximum amount in the law would be very high. This would cause all the landlords in the state to raise their late fees to the maximum allowed. So rather than push this issue, tenant advocates have left it alone.

Late fee for nonpayment of late fee

Sometimes a tenant may not be aware a landlord has even charged a tenant a late fee, or sometimes a tenant disputes whether the rent was late. Being the greedy people that they are, some landlords deduct a late fee from the tenant's rent and then claim the tenant is behind on rent again. Then the landlord charges late fees again. There are no Texas laws that specifically address this scam. However, a landlord may be in violation of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act if the landlord charges an extremely excessive late fee. Especially late fees on late fees. A court also may also refuse to evict a tenant if the tenant has merely not paid an unreasonable late fee. (However, this is a very risky and is not the best strategy for challenging a late fee unless you simply don't have the money. Having an eviction even filed against you is harmful to your rental history whether you win or lose.)

Late fee deductions cannot bootstrap landlord self help remedies

A landlord should not deduct a late fee from rent to cause a default and then threaten some other action like a lockout, landlord lien, or utility shutoff for nonpayment of rent. A landlord is restricted in using these remedies, and they only are available when the tenant is actually behind on rent. A landlord may have provisions in the lease agreement allowing late fees or some other fee to be deducted first; however, the landlord cannot use this provision in order to claim nonpayment and use one of the self-help remedies described above. A lease provision used in this manner is void according to the Texas Property Code. Of course, some landlords really do not care and will do anything to get money out of tenants or make them suffer. It is up to tenants to take action against these outlaws. For a detailed discussion of these landlord self-help remedies see Lockout, Landlord's Lien, and Utility.