Texas Property Code §92.056: The Bold-and-Underlined Lease Trap Most Houston Landlords Miss

The 60-Second Answer

Texas Property Code §92.056(g) requires every Texas residential lease to contain language in underlined or bold print that informs the tenant of the repair-related remedies available under §92.056 (landlord liability for failure to repair) and §92.0561 (the tenant repair-and-deduct remedy). The current Texas Apartment Association residential lease forms include this disclosure by default. DIY-drafted leases, older template leases, and many leases prepared by residential real-estate agents who are not real-estate attorneys frequently do not. The omission does not trigger an automatic penalty, but it makes the lease vulnerable in any later §92.0563 judicial-remedies action and exposes the owner to a finding that specific lease waivers of tenant remedies are unenforceable under §92.006.

What §92.056 Actually Says

Section 92.056 sits in Subchapter B of Chapter 92 of the Texas Property Code, the subchapter that governs the landlord's duty to repair or remedy conditions that materially affect the physical health or safety of an ordinary tenant. The statute defines six conjunctive conditions of landlord liability in subsection (b), establishes a rebuttable seven-day presumption of reasonable repair time in subsection (d), enumerates tenant remedies in subsection (e), and — in subsection (g) — imposes the lease-disclosure typography rule.

The exact language of subsection (g):

A lease must contain language in underlined or bold print that informs the tenant of the remedies available under this section and Section 92.0561 (Tenant's Repair and Deduct Remedies).

The statute uses the disjunctive "underlined or bold print" — either format satisfies the literal requirement. The statute requires the disclosure to reference TWO specific provisions: §92.056 itself (the broader landlord-liability and tenant-remedies framework) and §92.0561 (the specific self-help repair-and-deduct remedy capped at one month's rent or $500, whichever is greater). A disclosure that mentions only one of the two does not satisfy the requirement.

Subsection (g) was added in its current form during the 2007 legislative session — Acts 2007, 80th Leg., R.S., Ch. 917, House Bill 3101, Section 5 — effective January 1, 2008. Leases drafted before 2008 — particularly DIY and non-TAA template leases — predate the requirement entirely. Leases drafted after 2008 vary in their compliance posture depending on the source: standard form vendors generally track Property Code amendments through their annual updates, but DIY-drafted leases and older custom leases often have never been audited against the requirement. The 2023 Texas Supreme Court decision in American Campus Communities, Inc. v. Berry (discussed below) addressed the consequences of omission and meaningfully bounded the downside — but the drafting requirement itself remains on the books.

The Disclosures That Must Be Bold or Underlined

The §92.056(g) disclosure must inform the tenant of the remedies. The remedies the lease must surface are:

• §92.056(e)(1) — Right to terminate the lease. When the landlord is liable under §92.056(b), the tenant may terminate. Termination under this provision triggers a pro rata refund of unearned rent and either deduction of the security deposit from rent or refund per §92.056(f).
• §92.0561 — Right to repair and deduct. The tenant may have the repair performed and deduct the cost from rent. The deduction is capped at one month's rent or $500, whichever is greater. The tenant must first give the §92.056 notice, then a §92.0561 notice of intent to repair-and-deduct, and the work must be performed by a licensed person where licensure is required.
• §92.0563 — Right to judicial remedies. The tenant may sue for actual damages, one month's rent plus $500, civil penalty of one month's rent plus $500 (the latter on a separate finding), reasonable attorney's fees, and an order directing the landlord to take reasonable action to repair.

The statute does not prescribe verbatim language for the disclosure. A common drafting approach is to include a paragraph titled something like "TENANT'S REMEDIES FOR LANDLORD'S FAILURE TO REPAIR" with the entire paragraph in bold and the section references prominent. The statute itself uses only "underlined or bold print" and does not specify the disclosure must be near the front of the lease or set off from other terms. Defensive drafting practice nonetheless places the disclosure in bold, underlined, near the front of the lease, and titled clearly — this exceeds the literal statutory minimum but reduces ambiguity about compliance.

What Happens When the Disclosure Is Missing

The Texas Supreme Court directly addressed this question in American Campus Communities, Inc. v. Berry, No. 21-0874 (Tex. April 21, 2023). The plaintiffs in that case sought to certify a class of more than 65,000 former tenants on the theory that mere omission of the §92.056(g) lease term entitled each class member to a statutory civil penalty of one month's rent plus $500 under §92.0563(a)(3), plus an additional one month's rent plus $2,000 under §92.0563(b) if the omission was treated as a §92.006 waiver of repair duties. The Court rejected both theories.

The Court held that subsection (g) is a stand-alone lease-drafting requirement at the end of §92.056 that "plays no role in the cause of action described by subsections (a) through (f)." The §92.0563 judicial remedies attach to a tenant's claim that the landlord failed to repair after notice under §92.056(b) — not to the bare fact that the lease omitted the disclosure. The Court also held that mere omission of the §92.056(g) language is not a §92.006 waiver of repair duties, because "the landlord's duty to repair under this subchapter is a creature of statute, not of contract. This statutory duty binds landlords whether or not it also appears in a lease. A lease's failure to mention the statutory duty is in no sense a waiver of the statutory duty."

The plain reading: under current Texas Supreme Court interpretation, there is no private right of action and no statutory penalty for mere omission of the §92.056(g) disclosure. A tenant cannot sue the landlord, recover damages, or recover attorney's fees on the theory that the lease was missing the bold-or-underlined paragraph alone.

That does not mean the requirement is meaningless or that compliance is optional. The §92.056(g) requirement remains a statutory drafting obligation. The Texas Legislature added it in 2007, and the Supreme Court did not strike it down — the Court simply held that omission does not by itself trigger §92.0563 monetary recovery. Compliance still matters in three real ways.

First, §92.006 still voids lease waivers of repair duties. A lease that contains an explicit clause purporting to waive or limit the tenant's §92.056 or §92.0561 remedies is in conflict with §92.006, and that offending clause is unenforceable regardless of typography. American Campus dealt with mere omission of the disclosure; it did not legalize explicit lease waivers. If your lease contains language that purports to limit the tenant's repair-and-deduct rights, remove it.

Second, the underlying §92.056(b) failure-to-repair claim is still very much actionable. If a tenant gives §92.056(b)(1) notice of a habitability condition, the landlord fails to repair within reasonable time, and the §92.056 conditions are otherwise met, the tenant retains every remedy in §92.056(e) and every judicial remedy in §92.0563 — including the civil penalty of one month's rent plus $500. Whether the lease disclosed those remedies in bold or not has no effect on the tenant's ability to invoke them when an actual repair failure occurs. The lease language disclosure is informational; the statutory remedies exist regardless.

Third, compliance is a credibility and professionalism signal. A landlord whose lease form does not meet the basic statutory drafting requirements is a landlord that is signaling either careless administration or willingness to depart from statutory baselines. In any contested matter — eviction defense, repair-failure claim, security-deposit dispute — opposing counsel will surface the lease-compliance posture. Tenant-side counsel, JP-court judges, and District-court judges read these signals. A compliant lease form is the floor, not the ceiling, of defensive practice.

The practical implication for Houston landlords: include the §92.056(g) bold-or-underlined disclosure in every lease. The cost is zero. The benefit is that the credibility signal is right, the lease meets the statutory baseline, and any subsequent §92.056(b) action runs on its actual merits rather than against a backdrop of non-compliant drafting. The Texas Supreme Court's holding in American Campus means the worst-case downside of non-compliance is smaller than the pre-2023 commentary suggested — but compliance still costs nothing and the upside of professionalism is real.

The Six-Item Lease Audit Checklist

Pull your most-recent lease form. Six items to confirm before the next tenant signs.

1. Is there a section that explicitly references §92.056 and §92.0561 by section number? A disclosure that talks generally about "your rights under Texas law" without citing the section numbers does not satisfy the statute. The section numbers are the cite.
2. Is that section in bold OR underlined print? Either format is sufficient. Both is defensive but not required. A disclosure in regular body text — even if the substantive language is accurate — fails the typography requirement.
3. Does the disclosure mention both §92.056 remedies (termination, repair-and-deduct, judicial) AND §92.0561 specifically? §92.0561 is the self-help repair-and-deduct provision. The disclosure must reference both.
4. Is the disclosure prominent — near the front of the lease, titled clearly, not buried in fine print? The statute itself only requires "underlined or bold print" — it does not require placement near the front of the lease. Defensive drafting practice nonetheless places the disclosure in a prominent location. A disclosure on the last page in 6-point font is technically bold/underlined but reads as evasive and invites avoidable interpretive disputes.
5. Does the lease contain any clause that purports to waive or limit §92.056 or §92.0561 remedies? If yes, the clause is likely void under §92.006 regardless of disclosure. Remove the offending clause.
6. What year was your lease template last updated? §92.056(g) was added in 2007. Leases drafted before 2008 — and many DIY or older template leases drafted after — often pre-date the requirement. The TAA updates its forms annually and reflects statutory changes; non-TAA template leases vary widely.

A lease that fails any of items 1, 2, 3, or 5 should be updated before the next signing. A lease that fails items 4 or 6 deserves attention but is not as exposed. Owners using a current-year TAA residential lease form typically pass items 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6 by default — TAA does the statutory tracking. Owners using a non-TAA template, a DIY lease, or a lease drafted by a residential real-estate agent who is not a real-estate attorney should not assume compliance.

Why "All Caps" Is Not the Same as "Underlined or Bold"

The statute reads "underlined or bold print." Those are the two specific typographic forms the Legislature chose. Some Texas commercial-law contexts use a broader "conspicuous" standard — Texas Business and Commerce Code §1.201(b)(10) defines "conspicuous" to include language in capital letters, larger or contrasting type, contrasting color, or text set off by symbols or marks — but §92.056(g) does not use the "conspicuous" formulation. It names the two specific formats it requires.

The defensive position: do not substitute all-caps formatting for bold or underline. The statute names the two compliant formats. Use one of them. The formatting cost is zero; the risk of inviting an avoidable interpretive dispute is real, even after the American Campus decision narrowed the consequences of non-compliance. Compliance with the literal statutory text is always cheaper than litigating whether a substitute satisfies the literal statutory text.

How Flat Fee Landlord Handles This in Houston

Flat Fee Landlord uses a current Texas residential lease form that includes the §92.056(g) bold-or-underlined disclosure across our Houston portfolio. Owners who move their property under Flat Fee Landlord management sign their tenants on that form, so the §92.056(g) requirement is satisfied on every Flat Fee Landlord-managed Houston property.

When a Houston tenant gives a §92.056(b)(1) notice to repair, the property manager logs the notice with timestamp, dispatches a qualified vendor within the §92.056(d) seven-day reasonable presumption window where vendor availability allows, and documents the response in the owner portal. Where vendor availability or material availability requires more than seven days, the file documents the constraint to support a §92.056(d) rebuttal if the matter is later contested. The goal is to satisfy the statutory landlord duty — and to have the documentary record that proves satisfaction — long before the question of bold-and-underlined disclosures becomes relevant.

Owners are responsible for selecting and approving the lease form they sign tenants on. Owners who insist on a non-TAA template — a personal attorney's template, a national template service, or a DIY form — should specifically confirm §92.056(g) compliance with their counsel before signing. The Flat Fee Landlord operations team will not draft custom lease language and does not provide legal advice on lease form selection.

Management starts at $139/mo on annual billing (Basic) — the full tier breakdown is $139 (Basic) / $179 (Preferred) / $349 (Concierge), annual billing. Compliant lease form, §92.056 notice logging, and JP-court eviction coordination (on Preferred and Concierge plans, annual billing, for tenants we placed, with filing fees / court costs / attorney fees / vendor invoices passing through to the owner at cost) are core scope. See our flat-fee versus percentage comparison for how this stacks against Houston percentage managers, or the best Houston property management companies for 2026 listicle for the broader market context.

Sources and Last Reviewed

Last reviewed: May 2026.

Reviewed by: Mo Hashem, Designated Broker, Texas Real Estate License #686637.

Primary statutory sources:

• Texas Property Code §92.056 — Landlord Liability and Tenant Remedies; Notice and Time for Repair (subsection (g) is the typography requirement)
• Texas Property Code §92.0561 — Tenant's Repair and Deduct Remedies
• Texas Property Code §92.0562 — Landlord Affidavit for Delay
• Texas Property Code §92.0563 — Tenant's Judicial Remedies
• Texas Property Code §92.006 — Waiver or Expansion of Duties and Remedies (the lease-waiver-void provision)
• Texas Business and Commerce Code §1.201(b)(10) — definition of "conspicuous" (the analogy used in some conspicuous-fallback arguments)
• Acts 2007, 80th Leg., R.S., Ch. 917 (H.B. 3101), Sec. 5 — added §92.056(g) effective January 1, 2008
• American Campus Communities, Inc. v. Berry, No. 21-0874 (Tex. April 21, 2023, Blacklock, J.) — Texas Supreme Court holding that §92.056(g) is a stand-alone lease-drafting requirement and that mere omission does not create a private right of action, trigger §92.0563 civil penalties, or constitute a §92.006 waiver of the statutory repair duty. Opinion available at https://www.txcourts.gov/media/1456289/210874.pdf

Agency and template references: Texas State Law Library landlord-tenant guide; Texas Real Estate Commission residential lease addenda; Texas Property Code amendments tracked at the Texas Legislative Information System. Note: claims about specific lease form vendors (TAA, etc.) should be verified by reviewing the actual current form being used — form vendors update on their own schedules.

Related reading: our Texas §92.103 30-day security deposit return clock guide covers the move-out side of Chapter 92, our full Chapter 92 landlord guide covers the broader Subchapter B and C framework, and our Houston CAD May 15 protest guide covers the property-tax side of Houston-area rental ownership.

This guide is general information about Texas residential lease compliance, not legal advice. Texas Chapter 92 case law continues to evolve through Texas appellate courts — confirm with a Texas-licensed real estate attorney before relying on any specific procedural detail for a transaction or dispute. The Flat Fee Landlord Team uses a current Texas residential lease form that includes the §92.056(g) disclosure across our Houston portfolio; owners who select their own lease template should confirm §92.056(g) compliance with their own counsel.