Eviction Cleanouts in Houston: The Timeline You Do Not Control
Published August 7, 2026 · By Daw's Junk Solutions
A turnover is a date you picked. An eviction is a date a court picked for you. That is the whole difference, and it changes everything about how you plan the cleanout.
Landlords call us the week of a set-out and ask the same two questions. When can I actually touch the stuff, and who carries it out. Both answers are in Chapter 24 of the Texas Property Code, and most of what is written about them online is either vague or a year out of date. Senate Bill 38 from the 2025 session rewrote real pieces of that chapter effective January 1, 2026, and a lot of pages have not caught up.
So here is the timeline, section by section, from the code itself. Then how we run the cleanout when the day comes. If you are dealing with a tenant who moved out on their own and just left a mess behind, that is a different job and we wrote it up separately in our rental turnover guide.
We haul. We do not practice law.
Every statute below is quoted or paraphrased from the Texas Property Code as it reads right now. It is still general information, not legal advice for your unit. Your attorney and the constable's office in your precinct are the ones who answer for your specific case.
The Three Day Notice Is Not Always Three Days
Nearly every page on this topic says a Texas landlord gives three days' notice to vacate. Sec. 24.005(a) does say at least three days' written notice. It also says unless the parties have contracted for a shorter or longer notice period in a written lease or agreement. Pull your lease before you count anything. Plenty of Texas residential leases set a different number, and the lease wins.
There is a second wrinkle in the same subsection that almost nobody mentions. If you are terminating possession based solely on nonpayment of rent, and the tenant was not late or delinquent before the month the notice is given, the notice "shall be given in the form of a notice to pay rent or vacate." Not a bare notice to vacate. If the tenant had been late before that month, you may use either form.
How the notice has to be delivered now
This is the part that has gone stale everywhere. The old delivery subsections of Sec. 24.005 were repealed by Acts 2025, 89th Leg., R.S., Ch. 960 (S.B. 38), Sec. 15(1), effective January 1, 2026. The rule that replaced them is Sec. 24.005(f-3), and it lists exactly four methods:
- Mail, including first class mail, registered mail, certified mail, or a delivery service
- Delivery to the inside of the premises, in a conspicuous place
- Hand delivery to any tenant of the premises who is 16 years of age or older
- If the parties have agreed in writing, electronic communication, including e-mail
Read that list again and notice what is missing. Taping the notice to the outside of the front door is not on it. Pages written before 2026 still walk you through the old outside door procedure with its affidavit and its extra day. If you are following one of those, you are following a repealed subsection. The one relief valve is Sec. 24.005(f-4): the delivery rule does not apply if the tenant actually receives the notice.
Texas Has a Rule for Counting the Days, and It Is New
Sec. 24.0042 was added by the same 2025 bill, effective January 1, 2026. It is four lines long and it settles arguments that used to run for weeks. A period of time prescribed by Chapter 24 does not include the day of the event that begins the period. It does include Saturdays, Sundays, and state or federal holidays. It includes the last day. And if the last day lands on a Saturday, Sunday, or state or federal holiday, the period extends to the next day that is none of those.
Weekends count. Holidays count. The day you served does not. That is the whole rule, and it is worth reading twice, because a miscount here sends you back to the start of the process with the rent still unpaid.
Know your set-out date yet?
Tell us the day and we will hold a crew and a trailer for that window.
After You Win, the Writ Has Its Own Clock
A judgment for possession is not possession. Sec. 24.0061(b) says a writ of possession may not be issued before the sixth day after the date on which the judgment for possession is rendered, unless a possession bond has been filed and approved under the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure. That six day gap is the tenant's appeal window, and no amount of calling the clerk shortens it.
Once the writ issues, the new Sec. 24.0061(b-1) puts a clock on the officer too. The issuance of a writ of possession is "a ministerial act not subject to review or delay," and a sheriff or constable shall serve it not later than the fifth business day after the date the writ is issued. That subsection also gives you a fallback that did not exist before 2026. If the writ is not served on or before that fifth business day, the landlord may, but is not obligated to, have it served by any other law enforcement officer, including an off duty officer with appropriate identification who has received the training described by Sec. 24.0051(f).
In Harris County that matters more than it sounds. Set-outs are scheduled by the constable precinct where the property sits, and precincts run at different speeds. The statute now gives you a defined outside limit and a documented option if it passes.
The Constable Brings the Authority. You Bring the Labor.
This is the single most misunderstood line in the chapter, and it is the reason we exist on a set-out day. Sec. 24.0061(d)(2)(C) orders the officer executing the writ to instruct the tenant to remove, or to allow the landlord, the landlord's representatives, or other persons acting under the officer's supervision to remove all personal property from the rental unit, other than property claimed to be owned by the landlord.
The officer does not empty the unit. The officer supervises while your people empty the unit. If you show up alone with a hand truck and a two bedroom apartment full of furniture, the day gets long and expensive fast. A crew that arrives with a trailer already hooked up is the difference between a two hour set-out and a five hour one.
One more line to plan around. Sec. 24.0061(d-1) says a municipality may provide, without charge, a portable closed container for the removed property. May. Not shall. Do not build your day around a container that might not come, and do not assume the city that provides one for a property inside its limits does the same in unincorporated Harris County. Ask your precinct what actually happens at your address, then book accordingly.
The mechanics of where property gets placed and the written warning that goes on the door before execution are covered in our turnover cleanout guide, so we are not repeating them here.
A crew standing by for the writ date
See what an eviction cleanout covers, or get a price now.
What You Cannot Do, No Matter What the Lease Says
Search this topic and you will find pages that imply a landlord can change the locks, pile the tenant's things at the curb, and be done with it. Sec. 92.0081 of the Texas Property Code is where that idea goes to die.
Subsection (a) says a landlord may not remove a door, window, or attic hatchway cover, or a lock, latch, hinge, hinge pin, doorknob or other mechanism connected to one, and may not remove furniture, fixtures, or appliances furnished by the landlord, unless it is for a bona fide repair or replacement that is promptly performed. Subsection (b) is the big one: a landlord may not intentionally prevent a tenant from entering the leased premises except by judicial process, unless the exclusion results from bona fide repairs, construction or an emergency, from removing the contents of premises abandoned by a tenant, or from changing the door locks of a tenant delinquent in rent under the notice rules spelled out in the rest of that section.
- Sec. 92.0081(h): a violation exposes you to a civil penalty of one month's rent plus $1,000, actual damages, court costs, and reasonable attorney's fees
- Sec. 92.0081(e-1): a landlord who locks a tenant out of their unit may not also lock them out of common areas
- Sec. 92.0081(j): a lease provision that purports to waive a right or exempt a party from a duty under this section is void
Subsection (j) is the one that ends most arguments. If somebody sold you a lease template with a clause that says the tenant agrees you may remove their property or exclude them without a court order, that clause is void by statute. It is not a gray area and it is not a matter of who has the better lawyer.
The abandonment number nobody can cite
Look at that (b)(2) exception again. Removing the contents of premises abandoned by a tenant. Fair enough. Now go looking in Sec. 92.0081 for a definition of abandoned, or a number of days after which a unit counts as abandoned. It is not there. The section defines no day count at all.
So when a page tells you that after some number of days the property is yours to haul off, ask where that number comes from, because it is not coming from this section. We will not repeat a number we cannot point at in the code. Photograph the unit before anything moves, keep the photos, and let your attorney make the abandonment call.
If the Property Goes Into Storage, the Lien Is Not Yours
Sec. 24.0062 governs what happens when property removed under a writ ends up in storage, and it is written almost entirely around somebody who is not you. The lien belongs to the bonded or insured public warehouseman, for reasonable storage and moving charges, and it "does not attach to any property until the property has been stored by the warehouseman." You do not get a lien. You do not get to sell anything.
The redemption rules are strict, and they are the part landlords are most often surprised by. Under Sec. 24.0062(b) the officer executing the writ delivers a written redemption notice to the tenant in person at execution, or by first class mail to the last known address within 72 hours if the tenant is not there. That notice has to tell the tenant they may redeem any of the property without payment of moving or storage charges while the warehouseman is still removing it and before the warehouseman permanently leaves the premises. Subsection (c) requires that particular statement to be underlined or in boldfaced print.
After that, subsection (e) gives the tenant 30 days to redeem a specific list on payment of only the charges reasonably attributable to those items. The list covers wearing apparel, tools and books of a trade, school books, a family library, family portraits and pictures, one couch, two living room chairs, a dining table and chairs, beds and bedding, kitchen furniture and utensils, food, medicine and medical supplies, one automobile and one truck, agricultural implements, children's toys, goods known to belong to someone else, goods under a recorded chattel mortgage, and cash. Subsection (f) bars the warehouseman from demanding charges on other items as a condition of releasing those. Sale is only on the far side of the 30 days.
None of that money flows to you. Storage is a cost center for the tenant and a business for the warehouseman. If your plan for recovering unpaid rent involves the tenant's furniture, the statute is not on your side.
Book the day the warning goes up
You get advance notice of the execution date. That is your cue to call us, not the morning of. Set-out slots fill first.
What We Actually Do on Set-Out Day
We show up in the window you give us with the trailer already hooked up. We work under the same rules as everybody else on site that day, and we do not touch a thing before the officer says go.
Once it is clear, we clear. Furniture, mattresses, appliances, bagged trash, broken electronics, the bed frame in four pieces, the closet nobody emptied. It goes on the trailer and off the property in one visit where the volume allows it. You get photos of the unit before we start and after we finish, and an invoice you can put straight into the file for that door.
Refrigerators and freezers with refrigerant go to certified disposal instead of straight to a landfill. The short list of what we cannot take is hazardous material: liquid paint, solvents, chemicals, and anything bio-hazardous. If a tenant left a garage of paint cans, tell us on the phone and we will tell you what rides with us and what needs a household hazardous waste site.
We run this work across Pearland, South Houston, Pasadena, Friendswood, Alvin, Manvel, League City, Missouri City, and the rest of the south suburbs. Seven days a week, because writs do not wait for Monday.
What a Set-Out Load Costs
Same ladder as every other job we run, priced on volume. Minimum pickup starts at $125. A small load starts at $175, a medium load at $225, a large load at $325, and a full trailer load of 9 cubic yards starts at $449.
That $449 is the price of one full trailer load. It is not a cap on the job. An apartment packed to the ceiling can be two loads or three, and we tell you that before we start loading rather than after. If you want to see the whole ladder with what fits in each tier, it is on our pricing page. If this turns out to be a whole property rather than one unit, that is a real estate cleanout and it gets quoted differently.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does an eviction take in Texas before the unit can be cleared?
There is no single number, because the chapter builds the timeline out of several separate clocks. Before you can file, Sec. 24.005 requires at least three days' written notice to vacate, unless your written lease contracted for a shorter or longer period. After you win, Sec. 24.0061(b) says a writ of possession may not be issued before the sixth day after the date the judgment for possession is rendered, unless a possession bond has been filed and approved. Once the writ is issued, Sec. 24.0061(b-1) requires the sheriff or constable to serve it not later than the fifth business day after issuance. Add the court's own docket to that and you get a range, not a date. What you can plan around is the set-out itself, because you get advance notice of the day it happens.
Can a landlord in Texas throw out a tenant's belongings without going to court?
Sec. 92.0081(b) of the Texas Property Code says a landlord may not intentionally prevent a tenant from entering the leased premises except by judicial process, with three narrow exceptions: bona fide repairs, construction or an emergency; removing the contents of premises abandoned by a tenant; or changing the door locks on a delinquent tenant's unit under the key-notice rules in that same section. Sec. 92.0081(h) puts a civil penalty of one month's rent plus $1,000, actual damages, court costs and reasonable attorney's fees on a violation. And Sec. 92.0081(j) says a lease provision that purports to waive a right or exempt a party from a duty under that section is void. So a clause in your lease does not buy you the shortcut. We are haulers, not lawyers, and this is not legal advice. Talk to your attorney about your specific unit.
How many days before a tenant's property counts as abandoned in Texas?
Sec. 92.0081(b)(2) lists removing the contents of premises abandoned by a tenant as an exception to the ban on self-help exclusion. It does not define abandonment and it does not give a day count. Neither does the rest of the section. So the number you keep seeing quoted on landlord blogs is not coming from that statute, and we will not repeat a number we cannot point at in the code. Photograph the unit before anything moves, and get the call on abandonment from your attorney rather than from a blog post.
Does the constable clear the unit out, or do I have to?
You do. Sec. 24.0061(d)(2)(C) says the writ orders the officer to instruct the tenant to remove, or to allow the landlord, the landlord's representatives, or other persons acting under the officer's supervision to remove all personal property from the rental unit. The officer brings the authority. The labor is on your side of the line, and that is the part we get called for. Book the crew for the same window as the set-out and the unit goes from full to empty in one visit.
What does an eviction cleanout cost in Houston?
It depends on volume, same as any other job. Our minimum pickup starts at $125, a small load starts at $175, a medium load starts at $225, a large load starts at $325, and a full trailer load of 9 cubic yards starts at $449. That $449 is the price of one full trailer load, not a cap on the whole job. A unit packed wall to wall can run two loads or more, and you get the number before we start loading, not after.
Can you come the same day the constable executes the writ?
Usually yes, if you tell us the date as soon as you have it. Set-out days are not spread evenly across the week, so the slots go fast. Call or text us the moment you know the window and we will hold a crew. If the date slides, tell us and we move it. There is no charge for moving a booking.
Give Us the Date and We Will Be There
Call or text 281-202-9668 with the address and the set-out window, or fill out the form below. You get a price before we load, a crew that carries everything out, and photos when the unit is empty. Better Call Daw.