Free Texas Sublease Agreement

In most states the sublease question starts with your lease. In Texas it starts with a statute, and the statute says no. Everything else on this page follows from getting the landlord’s prior consent — or from what happens when you did not.

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Watch: Texas Sublease Agreement explained

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Subletting in breach of § 91.005 is a breach of the lease, and the route that follows is the ordinary Texas eviction process rather than anything special to subletting. Under § 24.005(a) a landlord must give a tenant who defaults at least three days’ written notice to vacate before filing a forcible detainer suit — unless the parties have contracted for a shorter or longer notice period in a written lease. So the real period is whatever your lease says, with three days as the fallback. The subtenant is the one most exposed: their possession rests on a lease they never signed and a consent that may not exist.

• The property address including unit number, and the county.
• The names of the tenant (as sublessor) and the subtenant, and any other occupants.
• The sublease term, ending on or before your own lease ends.
• The rent, the due date, and how it is paid.
• The deposit, who holds it, and the 30-day refund timeline under § 92.103.
• Which utilities and services the subtenant pays.
• A reference to the landlord’s prior written consent under § 91.005, with the date it was given.
• The notice-to-vacate period your head lease actually specifies, if it differs from three days.
• An acknowledgment that the subtenant has received the head lease.
• Signatures and dates from both parties.

• Asking after the fact. § 91.005 requires prior consent. Retrospective permission is a favour, not compliance.
• Assuming the landlord must be reasonable. The section states no standard and no deadline. A Texas landlord may refuse without giving a reason.
• Assuming a long lease escapes it. Unlike Oklahoma’s and Missouri’s two-year ceiling, § 91.005 applies during the term of a lease — any lease.
• Counting on three days. § 24.005 applies unless the lease contracts for a shorter or longer period. Your lease may give you less.
• Holding a subtenant’s deposit loosely. § 92.103 requires refund on or before the 30th day after surrender, and § 92.006 says the deposit duties cannot be waived.
• Deducting for normal wear and tear. § 92.104(b) prohibits it outright.

Yes, and it is a statute rather than a lease clause that says so. Most states leave this to the contract. Texas answers it directly, in one sentence.

Three features are worth separating, because each one makes Texas stricter than the states it is usually lumped with.

It has no term ceiling. Oklahoma’s § 10 and Missouri’s 441.030 reach only tenancies of two years or less, at will, or at sufferance — so a three-year lease escapes them. § 91.005 applies “during the term of a lease”, full stop.

It sets no standard for consent. New York requires a landlord not to withhold consent unreasonably in buildings of four or more residential units. Texas requires nothing of the kind. A landlord may refuse, and need not explain.

It sets no deadline. Virginia gives a landlord ten business days to approve or disapprove and treats silence as evidence of approval. In Texas, silence is silence. An unanswered request is not consent, and waiting does not convert it into one.

The section does not merely require consent; it requires prior consent. That single adjective decides most of the arguments that actually happen.

A tenant who moves someone in and then asks has not complied with § 91.005 and cannot be put back into compliance by a later yes — the later yes is a landlord choosing not to act on a breach that already happened. A tenant who asks first and is refused has complied with the section and simply cannot sublet. And a subtenant who wants to know where they stand has exactly one useful question: may I see the landlord’s written consent, dated before I moved in?

There is no special remedy for an unauthorised sublet. It is a lease breach, and it runs into the ordinary Texas eviction machinery.

The conditional clause is the part that gets dropped, and dropping it misleads both sides. Three days is the statutory default. A written lease may contract for longer — and it may contract for shorter. A tenant who reads “three days” on a summary and plans around it may have less time than they think; a landlord who assumes three days when the lease says thirty has served the wrong notice.

Read your lease, then count. And note that a landlord suing on a holdover must also comply with the tenancy-termination requirements of § 91.001.

This matters to the sublease conversation because subletting is often what a tenant reaches for when they need to leave. If consent is refused and you go anyway, you have not simply signed up for the whole remaining rent: the landlord must make reasonable efforts to re-let, and subsection (b) makes any lease clause purporting to waive that duty void.

It is not a licence to abandon — you are still in breach, and still liable for what mitigation does not recover. It is a limit on how large that liability can grow.

A sublessor holds a deposit, and Texas has firm rules about deposits that cannot be contracted away.

§ 92.103(a) requires the deposit to be refunded “on or before the 30th day after the date the tenant surrenders the premises”. Subsection (b) adds a drafting rule worth knowing: a requirement that the tenant give advance notice of surrender as a condition of refund is effective only if it is underlined or printed in conspicuous bold print in the lease. And subsection (c) gives the tenant’s claim to the deposit priority over any creditor of the landlord, including a trustee in bankruptcy.

§ 92.104 governs what may be kept. Deductions are limited to damages and charges for which the tenant is legally liable under the lease or as a result of breaching it; subsection (b) states flatly that the landlord may not retain any portion of a deposit to cover normal wear and tear; and subsection (c) requires the balance to be returned with a written description and itemised list of deductions, save in the narrow case where the tenant owes rent on surrender and there is no dispute about the amount.

§ 92.006(a) then makes the deposit duties in Subchapter C non-waivable. A sublease clause purporting to make a deposit non-refundable, or to waive the itemisation, is not saved by the subtenant signing it.

§ 92.103(a) opens with the words “Except as provided by Section 92.107”, and that cross-reference carries a condition most summaries drop.

Both halves matter and they pull in opposite directions. Without a written forwarding address the thirty-day obligation does not bite — so a subtenant counting down from the day they handed back the keys may be counting from nothing. But subsection (b) makes clear that failing to give one does not destroy the right; it defers the duty rather than extinguishing it.

The practical instruction is the same on both sides of a sublease. Give the address in writing when you hand back possession and keep proof that you did. And if you are the sublessor holding the deposit, ask for it in writing at the same moment, because the same provision protects you against a subtenant who disappears and then complains.

§ 24.005 says a landlord suing on a holdover must also comply with the tenancy-termination requirements of § 91.001, so it is worth knowing what those are. For a monthly or month-to-month tenancy, notice of termination ends the tenancy on the later of the day named in the notice or one month after the day the notice is given. Where the rent-paying period is shorter than a month, the equivalent period applies instead. And under subsection (d), if the tenancy ends on a day that does not line up with a rent period, the tenant is liable for rent only up to the date of termination.

Subsection (e) is the part to read before relying on any of it. Those rules do not apply where the landlord and tenant have agreed in an instrument signed by both parties on a different notice period, or that no notice is required — or where there is a breach of contract recognised by law. An unauthorised sublet is a breach, so a tenant in that position should not assume the month’s notice in § 91.001 is theirs.

A Texas subtenant is in an unusually exposed position, and it is fairer to say so than to imply otherwise. Their right to be there depends on a consent given by someone who is not party to their agreement. If that consent was never given, the sublease does not cure the breach, and the eviction route runs against the tenancy their occupancy hangs from.

What protects them is documentary and obtainable: a copy of the head lease, a copy of the landlord’s dated written consent, a written sublease, and receipted rent payments. A prospective subtenant who is told the consent “is being sorted out” is being asked to take the risk the statute allocates to the tenant.

Consent under § 91.005 permits the sublease; it does not transfer your obligations. You owe the rent whether or not your subtenant pays you, and you answer for the condition of the premises whoever caused the damage. Price the sublease at no less than your own rent, take payment before your own due date, and hold a deposit sized against what you would actually be paying for.

A sublease is for going away and coming back, and in Texas it needs prior consent. An assignment transfers your whole remaining interest — and only a release from the landlord ends your own liability, which is a separate agreement from the assignment itself. A roommate moving in while you stay is an occupancy question your lease will usually address separately; but note how broadly § 91.005 is phrased — “may not rent the leasehold to any other person” — and if money is changing hands for exclusive use of part of the premises, treat it as needing consent rather than assuming it does not.

A sublease rarely arrives on its own. Most people reach one because something else has changed — a job in another city, a relationship ending, a lease with months left on it — so it is worth knowing what the alternatives cost before you commit to this one. Our guide to breaking a lease in Texas sets out the early-exit route