Houston Property Management —
One Flat Fee, Five Counties

We charge a flat monthly fee — not a percentage of your rent. Our plans: Basic $139/mo (no tenant assurance, $500 renewal fee), Preferred $179/mo on annual billing (9-month tenant assurance + eviction coordination as bundle benefits when Tenant Placement + Property Management are purchased together, $450/yr renewal admin), Concierge $349/mo on annual billing (12-month tenant assurance + eviction coordination as bundle benefits, renewal included). Tenant placement is priced separately. Industry-typical percentage management runs 8–10% of monthly rent — on a $2,800/mo Houston single-family rental, that's $224–$280/mo. The flat fee never increases with rent. Tenant assurance is available with Preferred or Concierge (Basic does not include it).

Yes. Every Houston lease we draft complies with the Texas Property Code, the canonical Texas landlord-tenant statute. That includes the 30-day security-deposit return rule under §92.103 with itemized deductions; the mandatory bold or underlined lease language disclosing tenant repair-and-deduct + judicial remedies required by §92.056; the §92.008 prohibition on utility interruption except for bona fide repairs, construction, or emergency; the §92.0081 prohibition on lockouts except by judicial process; and the §92.331 6-month landlord-retaliation window. We track every legislative change in Austin and every Harris County, Fort Bend, Montgomery, Galveston, and Brazoria County regulatory update so you don't have to.

Texas Property Code §92.103 requires landlords to return the security deposit within 30 calendar days after the tenant surrenders the premises — not 30 business days, not 30 days after the tenant provides a forwarding address. Per §92.107, the landlord is not obligated to return the deposit or send a written description of damages until the tenant provides a written forwarding address, but the tenant does not forfeit the right to a refund by failing to provide one. Deductions allowed under §92.104 must be for damages or charges the tenant is legally liable for under the lease or as a result of breaching the lease; an itemized list is required if there is no rent controversy. Texas has no statutory cap on the size of the security deposit — that is a Texas-specific advantage for landlords. Penalty for non-compliance under §92.109 is severe: the tenant may sue for 3× the portion wrongfully withheld, plus $100, plus reasonable attorney's fees, with a bad-faith presumption if the itemized list and balance are not delivered within 30 days. On every lease we manage, we track the 30-day clock, document move-in and move-out condition with timestamped photos, and handle itemization.

Texas evictions live in Texas Property Code Chapter 24 (Forcible Entry and Detainer), not Chapter 92. Process: 3-day written notice to vacate (longer or shorter if the lease specifies); Petition for Eviction filed in the Justice of the Peace court for the precinct where the property sits (Harris County has 16 JP precincts); hearing set no sooner than 10 days and no later than 21 days after filing; judgment of possession if the tenant defaults or loses. After judgment, a writ of possession is issued 6 days after the final judgment, the constable must serve the writ within 5 days, and the tenant receives 24-hour notice to vacate before execution. The writ cannot be issued more than 60 days after judgment (90 days for good cause), and cannot be executed after the 90th day. Total clean non-payment case timeline: typically 30–45 days from initial notice to writ execution — among the shortest residential eviction timelines in the country. Eviction coordination is a bundle benefit on our Preferred and Concierge plans for tenants we placed — we coordinate every step (notice drafting, JP-court filing, hearing coordination, constable scheduling) while filing fees, court costs, and attorney fees pass through to the owner at cost. Basic does not include eviction coordination (it is available as a separate $750 engagement), and the bundle benefit applies only when Tenant Placement + Property Management are purchased together.

Texas Property Code §92.056 requires a Houston landlord to repair a condition that materially affects the physical health or safety of an ordinary tenant within a reasonable time — Texas case law treats 7 days as the presumptive baseline, adjustable for severity, material availability, and labor markets. The initial notice does not have to be in writing unless the lease says so; a second notice must be in writing if the first was not certified or registered. Under §92.0561, if the landlord does not make a diligent effort to repair, the tenant may have the work done and deduct the cost from rent — capped at the greater of one month's rent or $500. The big landlord-side compliance trap: §92.056 requires the lease itself to contain BOLD or UNDERLINED language disclosing the tenant's repair-and-deduct + judicial remedies. Leases that omit this disclosure forfeit landlord protections. Every lease we draft for Houston properties includes the §92.056 disclosure in compliant typographic form and a maintenance workflow that resolves health-and-safety items inside the 7-day presumptive window.

Texas Property Code §92.331 creates a 6-month window after a tenant's protected action during which a landlord cannot retaliate. Protected actions include good-faith exercise of a lease or statutory right, a notice to repair, a complaint to a government agency or public utility, a complaint to a non-profit organization, or participation in a tenant organization. If a Houston landlord is found to have retaliated inside that 6-month window, the civil penalty under §92.331 is one month's rent plus $500, plus actual damages, plus reasonable moving costs if the tenant was displaced, plus attorney's fees. Texas Property Code §92.332 lists landlord defenses that survive the 6-month window — non-payment of rent, lease violation, post-notice property damage. The practical impact for landlords: every routine action taken inside 6 months of a tenant complaint needs documented non-retaliatory justification (lease end, sale, owner-occupancy, etc.). We thread that documentation through every renewal decision on managed Houston properties.

For long-term single-family rentals, no — Houston is one of the rare major-metro regulatory regimes that does not require a rental registration or certificate of occupancy for single-family residences, duplexes, or townhouses under 4 stories (except live-work units). Multi-family properties with 3 or more units do require registration under the City of Houston Multi-Family Habitability Registration program through the Houston Permitting Center. Short-term rentals under 30 days require a Certificate of Registration effective January 1, 2026 — that is a new requirement and STR landlords need to confirm registration status. The lighter regulatory burden on long-term single-family rentals is a real Houston landlord advantage — it shortens the time-to-rent and reduces per-unit overhead — but the statutory items that DO apply (the §92.056 lease-language mandate, the 30-day deposit return, the federal Title X lead-paint disclosure for pre-1978 properties) are non-negotiable. We audit registration status on every onboarding and keep multi-family clients current with their habitability registration.

Two regulatory shifts after Hurricane Harvey reshape Houston rental compliance. First, Harris County floodplain regulations effective January 1, 2018 require new structures and substantial improvements in the 500-year floodplain to be built 2 feet above the FEMA 500-year floodplain elevation, and the City of Houston Chapter 19 floodplain ordinance was modified in 2018 to mirror that rule — fill is no longer accepted as the elevation method in the 100-year floodplain; open foundations are required. Second, Texas House Bill 2858 (86R), effective September 1, 2019, expanded the Texas Seller's Disclosure Notice to require 500-year floodplain disclosure — relevant for any managed property that ever sells. For Houston rentals, we audit every onboarded property against current FEMA floodplain maps, coordinate flood-insurance documentation for landlord risk management, and include lease language addressing flood-related emergency communication and tenant evacuation responsibilities. Drainage and foundation inspection are part of every onboarding because Houston clay soil + extreme rainfall events compound damage risk if missed.

Harris Central Appraisal District (HCAD) is mailing 2026 Notice of Appraised Value forms April 17, 2026. The 2026 protest deadline is May 15, 2026, or 30 days after the date your notice is mailed, whichever is later. Homestead exemption protests have an earlier April 30 deadline. Filing methods: paper protest by mail (postmark counts), drop-off at HCAD's 13013 Northwest Freeway office, or HCAD's iFile online system. For Houston rental investors, the protest deadline is non-negotiable cash flow — a successful protest on a $400K rental can shave $400–$1,200 off annual property tax. HCAD protest filing is the property owner's responsibility — we don't file protests or assemble protest packages on your behalf. Owners typically file directly through HCAD iFile or engage a specialist firm (O'Connor, Tax Sense, etc.) on a contingency fee. If you ask, we'll surface the rent-roll information for your property from our system that you may want to reference in your own protest preparation.

NASA Johnson Space Center in Clear Lake employs roughly 3,200 civil servants plus 11,000+ contractors — mission control, astronaut training, the post-Artemis program ramp. Federal civil servants come with stable W-2 income on the published GS pay scale, but every continuing-resolution fight in Washington is a renter cash-flow risk. During the 2018–19 35-day federal shutdown, Clear Lake landlords without shutdown-prepared federal tenants saw rent slippage. Our Perfect 10ant System™ screening for federal employees goes beyond base salary: we verify liquid-reserve documentation appropriate to the tenant's GS level, build ACH auto-pay provisions into federal-tenant leases, and include lease language coordinating late-fee timing during declared government funding lapses. The same screening discipline applies to federal contractor tenants whose paycheck depends on agency appropriation — they get the most exposure when funding stalls and they need the same shutdown-prepared lease structure.

Houston is a multi-anchor employment economy and our tenant pipeline reflects that. The Texas Medical Center campus hosts 50+ member institutions employing over 100,000 healthcare workers — Houston Methodist (~32,000 employees), Memorial Hermann (~34,000 employees), MD Anderson Cancer Center (~24,500 employees), Baylor College of Medicine (3,000+ faculty plus thousands more clinical staff). NASA Johnson Space Center adds ~14,000+ civilian and contractor employees in the Clear Lake catchment. The ExxonMobil Spring campus on 385 acres in Springwoods Village opened in 2014, was built to accommodate 10,000+ employees, and effectively created Houston's second Energy Corridor — driving Spring, The Woodlands, and Tomball rental demand. UTHealth, the Port of Houston, BP America, Halliburton, Chevron, and SLB (Schlumberger) round out the anchor pool. We match property location to the right employer catchment when we list, which compresses placement timelines.

We cover the greater Houston region across five counties: Harris County (Houston, Cypress, Spring, Tomball, Humble, Atascocita, Bellaire, West University Place), Fort Bend County (Sugar Land, Missouri City, Katy on the Fort Bend side), Montgomery County (The Woodlands, Conroe), Galveston County (League City, Friendswood), and Brazoria County (Pearland). Our Houston office is at 1201 Fannin St Suite 262, Houston TX 77002 — downtown next to the Texas Medical Center catchment. We manage single-family homes, townhouses, condos, and small multi-unit buildings across the inner-loop (Heights, Montrose, EaDo, Bellaire, West U), the western suburbs (Katy, Cypress, Energy Corridor), the northern suburbs (Spring, The Woodlands, Tomball, Conroe), the southeast (Pearland, Friendswood, League City, Clear Lake), and the southwestern Fort Bend corridor (Sugar Land, Missouri City).

Perfect 10ant System™ is Flat Fee Landlord's 10-point tenant screening process — the operational moat behind our under-1% eviction rate across 2,000+ placements. Every applicant on every Flat Fee Landlord listing is verified across ten dimensions: credit, criminal background, eviction history, income, employment, prior rental history, ID verification, sex-offender registry, address history, and fraud check. We pull each data source independently, look at the patterns across them rather than scoring each in isolation, and reject any application that fails our minimum threshold — even when the property has been on market longer than we'd like. The fee model removes the perverse incentive: because we charge a flat monthly fee not a percentage of rent, we have nothing to gain from rushing a marginal placement. The 10ant System is the difference between "they pass the credit check" and "they're going to take care of the property and pay the rent on time for the full lease term."

Flat Fee Landlord charges a flat monthly management fee, not a percentage of rent. Three plans on annual billing: Basic at $139/mo (the core essentials — rent collection, owner and tenant portals, maintenance coordination, lease enforcement, 24/7 emergency line), Preferred at $179/mo (the most popular choice — adds annual tax filing, home warranty admin, mid-lease inspection with photos, annual strategy review with rent and sales comps, 24-hour callback response time, plus the 9-month Tenant Assurance and eviction coordination as bundle benefits when Tenant Placement is purchased together), and Concierge at $349/mo (everything in Preferred plus renewals included, two inspections per year, twice-yearly strategy review, multi-year lease coordination included, plus the 12-month Tenant Assurance). Tenant placement is priced separately at one month's rent plus a $350 listing & activation fee — billed once per placement. Industry-typical percentage management runs 8–12% of monthly rent: on a $2,800/mo single-family rental that's $224–$336/mo, scaling up automatically every time the rent goes up. Our flat fee never increases with rent. Use our quote builder at flatfeelandlord.com/get-a-quote for exact pricing on your property.