The Eviction Process in Houston: Timeline, Notices and Costs Under the 2026 Texas Rules

Evicting a tenant is the part of owning a Houston rental that nobody plans for, and in 2026 Texas rewrote the rulebook in the landlord’s favor. Senate Bill 38 took a process that used to drift for months and put a firm deadline on nearly every step. This guide walks the whole thing as it actually works today — the notice, the precinct, the constable, the judgment, the writ — with the Harris County courts, the published fee schedules, and realistic day counts for Houston-area owners. Want a team that handles all of this for you? Get a free rental analysis.

Informational, not legal advice. This summarizes Texas law as of September 2026 for general guidance. For a specific case, confirm with a Texas attorney. Statutes referenced: Texas Property Code Chapter 24, as amended by Senate Bill 38, 89th Texas Legislature (2025), which applies to eviction suits in which the petition is filed on or after January 1, 2026.

The Short Answer

A Houston eviction runs five steps: a written notice to vacate, usually three days; a sworn petition filed in the justice of the peace court for the precinct where the property physically sits; service of the citation by a constable; a judgment, which under the 2026 rules can be entered on the papers with no trial at all; and a writ of possession the constable executes. An uncontested case realistically takes three to four weeks from notice to lockout and about $294 in published court and constable costs for a single defendant.

Houston eviction 2026 by the numbers: notice to vacate: 3 days minimum · constable service deadline: 5 business days after filing · tenant response window on summary disposition: 4 days after service · trial window if facts are disputed: days 10–21 after filing · writ of possession: no earlier than the 6th day after judgment, executed within 5 business days of issuing · warning posted on the door: 24 hours before the lockout · published Harris County court and constable costs, one defendant, through the writ: about $294.

What Changed on January 1, 2026

Senate Bill 38 applies to eviction suits filed on or after January 1, 2026. The headline change is summary disposition: a sworn motion the landlord files with the petition that lets the justice court rule on the papers, with no trial, when nothing is genuinely in dispute. Around it, the bill put clocks on the parts that used to float — a five-business-day deadline for the constable to attempt service, a five-business-day deadline to execute the writ once it issues, a firm day-10-to-21 trial window when facts are disputed, and a bar on postponing a trial more than seven days without both sides agreeing in writing.

It also closed the appeal-and-stall play. A tenant appealing to county court must now swear, under penalty of perjury, to a good-faith belief in a meritorious defense and that the appeal is not for delay, and must start paying rent into the court registry. Two smaller changes matter in practice: the court must mail a copy of a default or summary-disposition judgment to the premises within 48 hours of entry, and issuing a writ of possession is now expressly a ministerial act not subject to review or delay.

What SB 38 did not change: the grounds for eviction, the notice requirement itself, or a tenant’s defenses in a genuinely disputed case. Faster is not the same as automatic.

One more 2025–26 change matters before you file anything. If the occupant is a true squatter who never had a lease or your permission, you may not need this process at all — Senate Bill 1333 lets a sheriff remove an unauthorized occupant on a sworn complaint with no suit filed. The full rules are in our Texas squatters and SB 1333 guide.

Step 1 — The Eviction Notice: How Many Days Do You Have to Give?

A notice to vacate is the written demand a Texas landlord must deliver, and let expire, before an eviction suit can legally be filed. Texas Property Code Section 24.005 sets the floor at at least three days unless the lease contracts for a different period. Read your lease before you count: if it says five days, or seven, the lease controls and filing on day four gets the case dismissed.

Two details trip up Houston owners specifically. First, for a nonpayment case where the tenant had not been late before the month in question, the statute requires a notice to pay rent or vacate — not a bare notice to vacate. Second, delivery method is not a formality. Section 24.005 permits mail, hand delivery to an occupant 16 or older, posting on the premises, and delivery by an electronic method the parties agreed to. Document whichever one you use, with a date stamp.

A defective notice does not merely weaken the case. It restarts the clock after you have already waited weeks. Our complete guide to the Texas notice to vacate walks the delivery methods and the day-counting rules that govern petitions filed on or after January 1, 2026.

Step 2 — Filing in the Right Court: Where Do You File in Houston?

You file in the justice of the peace court for the precinct where the property is physically located. Harris County has 8 justice of the peace precincts and 16 justice courts — two places per precinct. The Harris County Justice Courts state the rule plainly: an eviction petition must be filed in the precinct in which the premises are located. Get it wrong and the case is dismissed and refiled from zero.

What you file is a sworn petition under Section 24.00505, with proof you own or control the property, the lease if one exists, and your notice evidence. The single biggest time-saver under the new rules is filing the summary-disposition motion together with the petition, not after — and attaching the documents the motion relies on, because the statute requires them. When that motion is filed with the petition, the citation the tenant receives must carry a bold-print notice, in English and Spanish, on its first page, warning that judgment may be entered without a trial unless the tenant responds within four days.

You do not need a lawyer for this. Section 24.011 lets parties represent themselves or appear through an authorized agent who is not an attorney, and SB 38 widened that provision so it covers eviction suits generally rather than only nonpayment and holdover cases. In practice, this is a task a property manager runs end to end.

Step 3 — Service: How Fast Does the Constable Serve the Tenant?

A sheriff or constable must make a diligent effort to serve the citation and petition no later than the fifth business day after the petition is filed. If that deadline passes without service, the landlord may — but is not required to — have the papers served by any other law enforcement officer with appropriate training in service of process, eviction procedure and execution of writs, including a properly identified off-duty officer.

Service is the hinge of the whole schedule. The tenant’s four-day response window starts at service, not at filing, so a week lost to a bad address is a week added to the case. Before you file, confirm the occupant names and make sure the property address in the petition matches the address the constable will drive to. In a large precinct like Harris County Precinct 4 or Precinct 5, a vague address is the difference between a fast case and a re-service.

Step 4 — Judgment: With a Trial, or Without One

Summary disposition is the sworn motion that lets a justice court decide an eviction on the papers instead of at a hearing. Under Section 24.005106(a), the court may enter judgment for the landlord with no trial unless two things are both true: the tenant files a response setting out supporting facts and documents no later than the fourth day after being served, and the court determines that service was proper and that the pleadings show genuinely disputed facts. Subsection (b) adds that the court may rule for the landlord regardless of the response if the response does not show a genuine dispute, and may consider a late response if it does show one and arrives before judgment is entered.

A correction worth reading if you saw an earlier version of this page. We previously wrote that a summary-disposition judgment can come “as early as the 10th day after filing.” That misstates the statute. The 10th-day floor in Section 24.005106(c) and Section 24.0051(g) governs setting a trial date when facts are genuinely disputed. There is no statutory 10-day waiting period on a summary-disposition judgment itself; the gate is the tenant’s four-day response window after service. Because service is due within five business days of filing, a no-trial judgment often lands somewhere around days 9 to 14 in practice — but that is a practical estimate, not a deadline the statute sets.

If the court does find a genuine dispute, it sets trial not earlier than the 10th day and not later than the 21st day after the petition was filed, and never earlier than the fourth day after the tenant was served. Postponements beyond seven days require written agreement from both sides. The court may also set the case for trial immediately if the tenant asks for one in response to the motion. Justice court is informal: no jury unless one is demanded, no formal rules of evidence, and hearings that typically last minutes rather than hours. Bring the lease, the notice with proof of delivery, and a clean rent ledger.

A judgment entered on summary disposition has exactly the same effect as any other eviction judgment. Within 48 hours of entry, the court must mail a copy to the premises by first class mail.

Step 5 — The Writ of Possession: The Actual Move-Out

A writ of possession is the court order that authorizes a constable, not the landlord, to remove the occupants and hand the property back to you. It cannot issue before the sixth day after the judgment for possession is rendered, unless a possession bond was filed and approved — that six-day gap is the tenant’s appeal window. Once issued, the constable must serve the writ no later than the fifth business day, and the Harris County courts note that a writ may not be executed after the 90th day following judgment, so do not sit on one.

Execution follows a fixed script under Section 24.0061(d). The officer posts a written warning of at least 8.5 by 11 inches on the exterior of the front door, stating the date and time the writ will be executed — not sooner than 24 hours after the warning is posted. At execution, the officer delivers possession to the landlord, instructs the occupants to leave, removes them if they refuse, and has any remaining personal property placed outside the unit at a nearby location that does not block a public sidewalk, passageway or street. You will want movers, a locksmith and a plan for the contents standing by that morning.

The landlord never does any of this personally. Self-help eviction remains illegal at every stage — the lockout and utility-shutoff penalties are laid out in our guide to what a landlord cannot do in Texas.

If the Tenant Appeals: What SB 38 Changed

Appeal used to be the cheapest delay available to a tenant. It is not any more. A party has until the fifth day after the judgment is signed to perfect an appeal by filing a bond, a cash deposit, or a statement of inability to afford payment of court costs. A tenant who appeals must additionally affirm, under penalty of perjury, a good-faith belief in a meritorious defense and that the appeal is not for the purpose of delay.

Then the money clock starts. Under Section 24.0053, the justice court determines the rent owed per rental pay period during the appeal and must give the tenant written notice of the amount, the payment method, the deadline and the consequences of missing it. The tenant must pay one rental pay period into the justice court registry no later than the fifth day after filing the appeal. If that payment is missed, Section 24.0054 says the court shall immediately issue a writ of possession, without a hearing, on request. The appeal does not save the tenant from the lockout; only paying does.

The record moves fast too. The justice court forwards the transcript and papers to the county court no earlier than 4 p.m. on the sixth day and no later than 4 p.m. on the tenth day after the appeal is filed — or immediately if the registry payment is confirmed — and the county court must hold trial no later than the 21st day after the record is delivered. An appealed Houston eviction is now a matter of added weeks, not added months.

What Does an Eviction Cost in Harris County in 2026?

The court and constable costs are smaller than most owners expect. These are the published figures from the Harris County Justice Courts civil fee schedule and the Harris County constable fee schedule:

Item	Published amount
Local consolidated civil fee (eviction petition)	$33.00
State consolidated civil fee (eviction petition)	$21.00
Constable service of citation, per defendant	$85.00
Filed and served, one defendant	$139.00
Constable execution of the writ of possession	$155.00
Service by mail (added to the fees above)	$15.00
Jury fee, if a jury is demanded	$22.00
Typical single-defendant total, filing through writ	about $294

Two caveats. Every additional named defendant adds another service fee, and fee schedules are revised periodically — confirm the current figures with your precinct before you file. Fort Bend, Montgomery and Brazoria counties set their own constable fees, so a Sugar Land or Woodlands case will not match the Harris numbers exactly.

Now the honest part: $294 is not what an eviction costs you. It is what the courthouse costs you. On a $2,200-a-month Houston single-family rental, three to four weeks of non-payment before the lockout is roughly a month of rent gone, and that is before make-ready, re-keying, any damage the departing tenant leaves, and the vacancy it takes to re-lease. The all-in number is measured in thousands. An attorney is optional in justice court, which keeps the legal phase cheap when the file is clean — and the file being clean is the entire game.

How Long Does an Eviction Take in Houston? The Full Timeline

Here is a realistic uncontested case under the 2026 rules, assuming you file promptly and the constable gets service on the first attempt. Day 0 is the day the notice is delivered.

Day	What happens
Day 0	Written notice to vacate delivered and documented
Day 3	Notice period expires; sworn petition and summary-disposition motion filed together
Days 4–10	Constable serves the citation (diligent effort due within 5 business days of filing)
Day 12–14	Tenant response window closes 4 days after service
Day 13–16	Summary-disposition judgment on the papers, or a trial set for days 10–21 if facts are disputed
Day 19–22	Writ of possession issues (no earlier than the 6th day after judgment)
Day 21–29	Constable posts the 24-hour warning and executes the writ (within 5 business days of issuance)

Call it three to four weeks, notice to lockout. That is the clean case. A contested trial adds a week or two; an appeal adds a few more. Both are far shorter than the same case was before 2026 — and both are still a month of rent you are not collecting.

Harris, Fort Bend, Montgomery, Brazoria: A Houston Address Is Not a County

This is the Houston-specific trap. Greater Houston sprawls across county lines, and the justice court that hears your case is determined by where the house physically stands, not by the mailing address on the lease. Filing in the wrong county’s justice court is the same dismissal as filing in the wrong Harris precinct.

City or area	County or counties it spans	What that means at filing
Houston (city limits)	Mostly Harris; portions extend into Fort Bend and Montgomery	Verify by parcel, not by the word “Houston”
Katy	Harris, Fort Bend and Waller	A Katy address tells you nothing about the county
Cypress, Bellaire, Pasadena, Humble	Harris	One of the 16 Harris justice courts, by precinct
Sugar Land, Missouri City, Richmond	Fort Bend	Fort Bend justice court for that precinct
The Woodlands, Conroe	Montgomery (a small part of The Woodlands is in Harris)	Montgomery justice court for that precinct
Spring	Harris and Montgomery	Check the parcel before drafting the petition
Pearland	Brazoria and Harris	Check the parcel before drafting the petition

If you own one rental in Katy and one in Pearland, you are dealing with two different county court systems, two constable offices and two fee schedules. Confirm the county and precinct from the appraisal district record for the parcel before anything is drafted.

Five Mistakes That Reset the Clock

Every one of these we have seen turn a three-week case into a two-month case:

1. Filing before the lease’s own notice period runs. Three days is the statutory floor, not a ceiling. If your lease says longer, the lease wins and an early filing is dismissed.
2. Sending a notice to vacate when the case needs a notice to pay rent or vacate. For a first-time-late nonpayment case, the wrong notice is a defective notice.
3. Filing in the wrong precinct or the wrong county. The single most common Houston-area error, and the most expensive, because you start over.
4. Filing the summary-disposition motion late, or without its documents. The statute requires the motion to set out all supporting facts with the documents it relies on attached. A bare motion invites a trial setting.
5. Taking matters into your own hands. Changing locks, cutting utilities or moving belongings to the curb converts your winnable case into the tenant’s claim for a month’s rent plus $1,000 plus attorney fees.

The Part Nobody Writes About: Evictions Are a Screening Failure

Here is the honest take: almost every eviction we see traces back to the application file. Income that was never verified, rental history nobody called, a gut-feel approval on a property that had sat vacant too long. The eviction process is the expensive way to fix a screening mistake, and even at 2026 speeds, nobody wins the month it takes.

So our answer to eviction is mostly that it should not happen. Disciplined screening and professional tenant placement in Houston keep our portfolio eviction rate under 1%, and our 9 to 12 month tenant assurance means that if a tenant we placed fails inside that window, we re-place them without charging you a second placement fee. If a case is ever needed, eviction coordination is included with our Preferred and Concierge plans on annual billing for tenants we placed — we handle the notices, the filing and the hearing scheduling, and the filing fees, court costs, attorney fees and constable invoices pass through to you at cost. See our Houston property management coverage for what else is included, and our Texas landlord-tenant law guide for the wider framework these rules sit inside.

Your management cost should not rise just because your rent did. If you own a rental anywhere in the Houston area and want this whole problem handled before it starts, request a free rental analysis.

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Last reviewed: September 20, 2026. Reviewed by Mo Hashem, Designated Broker, Texas Real Estate License #686637.

Sources (all fetched September 20, 2026): Senate Bill 38, 89th Texas Legislature, Regular Session (2025), enrolled text, Texas Legislature Online — capitol.texas.gov; Texas Property Code Chapter 24, Sections 24.005, 24.00505, 24.0051, 24.0053, 24.0054, 24.005106, 24.005107, 24.0061 and 24.011; Texas Property Code Section 24.0061(d) via texas.public.law; Harris County Justice of the Peace Courts — jp.hctx.net, including the eviction filing page and the Harris County Justice Courts Civil Filing Fees and Court Costs schedule; Harris County constable fee schedule — harriscountytx.gov.