Two Texas laws changed how an owner removes someone who is living in their property without the right to be there. One took effect in late 2025 and the other applies to eviction suits filed from 1 January 2026. If your last information on this is from 2024, it is out of date.
Here is what Texas law actually says about squatters, what the two new laws changed, and where the process still costs an owner months.
Three different people get called a squatter, and the law treats them differently
Almost every argument about squatters' rights is really an argument about which of these three situations you are in.
A holdover tenant had a lease and stayed past the end of it. They entered lawfully, which means they are a tenant for procedural purposes and you are looking at an eviction suit.
A trespasser entered without any right at all and has no lease, no permission and no color of title. This is the person most owners mean by squatter.
An adverse possessor is someone building a legal claim to own the property outright. This is rare, it is slow, and the conditions are much harder to meet than internet folklore suggests.
Getting this wrong is expensive, because the remedy for one is not the remedy for another.
Adverse possession: the statutes, and why almost nobody qualifies
Texas sets out its adverse possession periods in the Civil Practice and Remedies Code, and there is more than one clock.
Section 16.024 gives a three-year period where the possessor holds under title or color of title, meaning they have some documentation supporting the claim.
Section 16.025 gives a five-year period, and its conditions are the important ones: the claimant must cultivate, use or enjoy the property, pay the applicable property taxes, and hold under a duly registered deed. It does not apply where the deed or power of attorney is forged.
Section 16.026 is the ten-year catch-all, for bare possession without a title instrument, and without one it is limited to 160 acres unless the claimant has physically enclosed more.
Read those conditions again and notice what they require. Continuous, open, exclusive occupation for years. Property taxes paid by the occupant. In the five-year case, a recorded deed. Somebody who moved into a vacant house last spring is not building a claim to own it. They are simply hard to remove quickly, which is a different problem and the one worth focusing on.
You still cannot change the locks yourself
This is where owners lose money and sometimes end up as defendants. Texas does not permit self-help removal. Changing the locks, cutting the power, removing doors or moving belongings out can expose an owner to civil liability and, depending on what happens, criminal exposure too.
The frustration is understandable and the instinct is wrong. Removal runs through a legal process, and both new laws are about making that process faster rather than replacing it.
What Senate Bill 1333 changed
SB 1333, effective in late 2025, creates a faster route aimed specifically at genuine squatters rather than tenants.
Under it, a property owner can submit a sworn complaint to the local sheriff or constable. Once ownership is verified and it is confirmed that the occupant has no legal right to remain, law enforcement can serve notice and proceed with removal, without the owner first grinding through the full civil process.
The law also adds criminal penalties for using forged deeds, fake leases or other fraudulent documents to justify occupancy. That provision matters more than it sounds, because producing a fake lease has been the standard delay tactic. Turning it into a criminal exposure changes the arithmetic for the person doing it.
What Senate Bill 38 changed
SB 38 was signed on 20 June 2025 and applies to eviction suits filed on or after 1 January 2026. It reworks the standard eviction process rather than creating a separate track.
The three-day notice to vacate period itself did not change. What changed is how you can deliver it: by mail, by posting conspicuously on the premises, in person to a tenant or occupant aged 16 or older, or electronically where the parties agreed to that in writing. Service was one of the most common places an eviction stalled, so widening the methods removes a real bottleneck.
Suits must now be filed in the justice precinct where the property sits. And on appeal, if a tenant fails to deposit rent into the court registry as ordered, a writ of possession can issue without a further hearing. That closes a gap that previously let an appeal run for months at no cost to the occupant.
The six-day rule, and the bond that shortens it
SB 38 sets a minimum six-day gap between the judgment date and execution of the writ of possession, unless the landlord files a possession bond. It also widens which law enforcement officers can execute the writ.
For an owner counting days, that is the practical detail. Winning the judgment is not the end. There is a mandatory pause afterwards, and the bond is the mechanism for shortening it. Whether posting one makes sense in your situation is a question for a lawyer who can see your file, not for an article.
What this actually costs, in the currency owners care about
Not the filing fee. The time.
Notice, filing, a hearing date set by the court's calendar, a possible appeal, then the mandatory gap before the writ executes. Through all of it, the mortgage, the property tax and the insurance keep billing, and the property produces nothing. On a Texas house carrying a typical tax and insurance load, a few months of that is a five-figure hole before a single repair.
Then there is the condition question. Nobody who is removed by a constable leaves a property in the state they found it. Owners who have been through this describe the repair bill as the second surprise.
Why some owners decide to sell instead
There is a point where the honest question stops being how to win and becomes whether the fight is worth what it costs.
An owner with time, a manageable mortgage and an appetite for the process should run it. The new laws genuinely help, and the property is worth more empty and repaired than occupied and damaged.
An owner who is out of state, carrying two housing costs, or simply finished with being a landlord is in a different position. Selling with the situation unresolved means a lower price, because the buyer is taking on the timeline and the uncertainty. That discount is the honest price of handing over a problem, and it is sometimes cheaper than another four months of carry. If that is the trade you are weighing, this explains how it works when a property still has people in it: sell a tenant-occupied house in Texas. The broader statewide picture is here: cash home buyers texas.
If the property is simply empty and deteriorating rather than occupied, the calculation is different again, and this walks through it: selling a house off market in Texas.
What to do this week if it is happening to you
Establish which of the three situations you are actually in, because the route depends on it. A holdover tenant is an eviction. A genuine squatter may now be a sworn complaint to the sheriff or constable under SB 1333.
Gather your proof of ownership before you contact anyone, since verification of ownership is the step that unlocks the faster route. Document the occupancy with dates and photographs. Keep every piece of paper the occupant produces, because a forged lease is now a criminal matter rather than merely an annoyance.
And speak to a Texas attorney before you act. Both of these laws are new, they interact with each other, and the version of them circulating on social media is already wrong in places. An hour of advice is cheaper than a wrongful eviction claim.
The short version
Adverse possession is a real doctrine with hard requirements and long clocks, and it is not what is happening in most of these cases. What is happening is that removal used to be slow, and Texas has just made it meaningfully faster through two separate mechanisms. Self-help is still illegal, the clock still runs on your mortgage while the process plays out, and the decision about whether to fight it through or sell is a financial one rather than a moral one.
Sources: adverse possession periods as set out in the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code sections 16.024, 16.025 and 16.026; Senate Bill 38 as signed on 20 June 2025 and applying to eviction suits filed on or after 1 January 2026; and Senate Bill 1333, effective in late 2025. This article is general information about Texas law, not legal advice, and it is not a substitute for an attorney. Statutes change, and how any of this applies turns on the specific facts and documents in your own case. Consult a licensed Texas attorney about your situation.
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