Living in Houston
Texas gets a batch of new laws every September 1, and this one is unusually small — which is exactly why it is worth reading carefully. The Legislature meets in regular session only in odd-numbered years, so the big wave already came and went: most of the 89th Legislature’s work took effect September 1, 2025, and a second tranche landed January 1, 2026. What starts on September 1 is the remainder, the bills and pieces of bills written with a deliberate one-year runway so the agencies and the courts could get ready first.
I’m Eddie Weir, a REALTOR® with REMAX Signature in Greater Houston. Fourteen laws or bill sections take effect September 1, 2026. I checked every one of them twice — against the Texas Legislative Reference Library’s effective-dates list, and then against the effective-date clause in the enrolled bill itself. The whole list is below, all fourteen, whether or not it touches real estate.
The one nobody is reporting: five new state district courts open September 1, and three of them are in Harris County. Brazoria and Montgomery each get one too. If you have ever waited on a civil case in Harris County, that is the most consequential thing on this list.
The complete list — verified bill by billWhat new Texas laws take effect on September 1, 2026?
Fourteen items from the 89th Legislature. Some are whole acts; most are individual sections of larger bills that the Legislature deliberately delayed by a year. They are ordered by how much they are likely to matter to someone who owns a home in Greater Houston, not by bill number.
HB 16 (2nd Called Session) — Five new district courts, three of them in Harris CountyGreater Houston
HB 16 is a sprawling judicial-branch act that mostly took effect December 4, 2025. Five of its sections were held back to September 1, 2026, and all five create new state district courts:
Harris County gets three: the 513th, 514th and 515th Judicial Districts, with the 515th directed to give preference to civil cases. Brazoria County gets the 490th. Montgomery County gets the 523rd, directed to give preference to criminal cases. Outside our metro, Comal County gets the 511th and Colorado and Lavaca counties share the new 492nd.
Two more Harris County courts — the 516th and 517th, the 517th also civil-preference — are created a month later, on October 1, 2026, under Section 1.18.
Why a real estate audience should care: district court is where civil property disputes actually land. Title and deed fights, partition suits when co-owners cannot agree, HOA enforcement actions, construction-defect claims, foreclosure-related litigation. Harris County’s civil docket is famously congested, and adding three benches on September 1 and two more in October is the first meaningful capacity increase in years. It will not show up in a headline. It will show up in how long a contested matter takes.
SB 785 — Zoned cities must allow new manufactured homes somewhere residentialYour house
SB 785 amends Occupations Code §1201.008, and the whole act takes effect September 1. A municipality that has zoning regulations or zoning district boundaries must permit the installation of a new HUD-code manufactured home by right, under at least one residential zoning classification — and it has to actually apply that classification to real land inside its boundaries, not park it on paper. If the city keeps a comprehensive zoning map, those areas must be shown on it.
Two more provisions ride along. A city cannot require a specific use permit for a new HUD-code home if it does not require one for other residential property in the same zoning classification. And an application to install one is deemed granted unless the city denies it in writing, with reasons, within 45 days.
Here is the Houston-specific part that statewide coverage keeps missing. Houston has no zoning ordinance, so the “by right in at least one residential classification” requirement is written for cities Houston is not. What governs a Houston lot is its deed restrictions — and the statute explicitly does not affect deed restrictions established before January 2, 2025. Historic districts and landmarks are carved out as well. The cities this actually binds are the zoned suburbs: Pearland, Sugar Land and Missouri City among them.
So if you own in a subdivision with deed restrictions recorded before January 2025 — which describes the large majority of master-planned and HOA neighborhoods across Harris, Fort Bend, Brazoria and Montgomery counties — nothing about your street changes on September 1. This is a supply-side law, and supply-side laws show up in the data years later, not in next month’s comps.
Worth saying plainly: that is my read of the statutory text, not legal advice. If you are planning to place a manufactured home on a specific lot, the city’s planning department and your title commitment are the two authorities that matter, in that order.
SB 1036 — The solar salesperson at your door now needs a registration numberYour house
If you own a home in Greater Houston, you have been door-knocked by a solar company. SB 1036 is the Legislature’s answer, and September 1 is when it grows teeth.
Most of the consumer protections have been in force since September 1, 2025: the five-business-day right to cancel a purchase or lease without penalty, the requirement that any affiliated loan cancel along with it, the requirement that the agreement name the licensed electrical contractor doing the installation, and the retailer’s duty to supervise its salespeople. What was missing was a registry and a penalty. Both arrive September 1, 2026.
From September 1, both the solar retailer and the individual salesperson must be registered with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, retailers must carry insurance, and the enforcement subchapter switches on. The prohibited-acts list is specific and, if you have had the conversation on your porch, familiar: knowingly making false or misleading statements, falsely implying an affiliation with a utility or government agency, failing to hand over required disclosures, ignoring posted no-soliciting signage, and letting anyone who is not a licensed electrical contractor perform the installation.
Penalties run to $2,500 per violation and $50,000 in the aggregate — and double, to $10,000 and $100,000, if a court finds someone over 65 was harmed. TDLR can also order the agreement cancelled outright and the money refunded.
The practical move is one sentence: before you sign anything, ask for the retailer’s and the salesperson’s registration numbers and confirm them with TDLR. Starting September 1 those numbers are supposed to exist and to appear on the paperwork. A company that cannot produce one is telling you something.
Why I care professionally: a solar loan or lease attached to a house is one of the more common ways a clean transaction gets complicated. The financing has to be identified, assumed or paid off, and everyone has to agree on who owns the panels before funding. Fewer predatory contracts signed in 2027 means fewer difficult closings in 2032.
HB 3307 — Continuing education for property-tax arbitratorsYour house
Narrow, and the only property-tax item in the batch.
When an appraisal review board rules against you, binding arbitration is one of the routes available to appeal that order — a Comptroller-registered arbitrator hears it instead of a district court. HB 3307 amends Tax Code §41A.061(b) to change what those arbitrators must do to stay on the registry. From September 1, renewal requires at least eight hours of continuing education in arbitration and alternative dispute resolution over the preceding two years, from a university, college, real estate trade association or legal association, or approved for continuing legal education. Arbitrators must also retake the Comptroller’s property-tax training within 120 days whenever it is substantially revised.
Nothing about how you file changes. Your deadlines, your evidence and the deposit do not move. What changes is the quality floor for the person on the other side of the table — which, if you have ever taken a protest that far, you will recognize as a real if unglamorous improvement.
Protest season is behind us for 2026, but the mechanics are worth having fresh for next spring: Harris, Fort Bend and Brazoria, plus the broader property tax protest hub.
HB 2963 — Texas gets a right-to-repair lawYour house
HB 2963 adds Chapter 121 to the Business & Commerce Code and requires manufacturers of digital electronic equipment with a wholesale price above $50 to make the same parts, tools and repair documentation available to owners and independent repair shops that they already give their authorized servicers.
Documentation has to stay available for at least three years on products in the $50–$99.99 range and at least seven years on anything above $100, measured from when the model first reaches the market. Medical devices, motor vehicles, farm equipment, video game consoles and large commercial or industrial equipment are carved out, among other categories. Manufacturers do not have to disclose trade secrets or anything that defeats a security feature.
The real estate angle is modest but real: a modern Houston house comes with a stack of digital electronics that convey with it — smart thermostats, video doorbells, alarm panels, irrigation controllers. When those fail four years in, the question has always been whether anyone besides the manufacturer can fix them. For covered devices, that gets easier, and it sits alongside the ordinary items on a Houston home maintenance checklist.
HB 1056 — Gold and silver recognized as legal tender
Qualifying gold and silver specie — marked with its weight and purity, and not marked in any way suggesting a government minted it — is recognized as legal tender in Texas from September 1, to the extent the U.S. Constitution allows.
Read subsection (d) before you get excited: no person may be required to offer or accept it, for a debt, for deposit, or for any other purpose. It is optional on both sides. The rest of the act — the comptroller’s electronic payment system backed by bullion held in the Texas Bullion Depository — does not arrive until May 1, 2027.
For a home purchase, nothing changes: your earnest money and closing funds still move through the title company under its own funding requirements.
HB 912 — Solar buyback protections, but only outside ERCOT
HB 912 requires the Public Utility Commission to make a utility produce a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis, using established best practices, before it can approve an alternative method of compensating owners of distributed renewable generation — in plain terms, before it can move someone off net metering or add fees that apply only to solar customers.
It is a genuinely useful protection, and it is not ours. HB 912 amends Utilities Code §39.554, which applies to areas outside ERCOT. Greater Houston is inside ERCOT. If you own property in El Paso or parts of East Texas, it applies there.
HB 2 — Teacher Incentive Allotment increases phase in
HB 2 was the 2025 school-finance package, and its provisions were staggered across four years. The tranche landing September 1 includes the amended Teacher Incentive Allotment in Education Code §48.112.
Under the amended subsections, a district is entitled to an allotment of $12,000 for each master teacher (rising to as much as $36,000 with the high-needs and rural factor, up from a $32,000 ceiling) and $9,000 for each exemplary teacher, up from $6,000, with its own ceiling rising from $18,000 to $25,000. Several other sections from Articles 2, 4 and 5 phase in the same day, and further pieces of HB 2 are still queued for September 2027 and September 2028.
If school quality drives your home search, funding formulas are a slower-moving input than district and campus ratings — but they are the input underneath them.
SB 568 — The special-education funding formula changes
This is more substantive than its caption suggests. Section 55 of SB 568 rewrites Education Code §48.102 — the special education allotment itself — moving the formula off the old mainstream and instructional-arrangement basis. Sections 53, 54, 56, 57 and 62 land the same day, covering PEIMS reporting requirements, the basic allotment provision, and the distribution of certain withheld federal funds.
For a family choosing a district on the strength of its special-education program, this is the machinery underneath that program’s budget. It is not something you will feel on September 1; it is something districts will be building next year’s staffing around.
HB 8 (2nd Called Session) — A school accountability provision tied to third-grade reading
HB 8 is the school accountability and assessment act from the second called session; it took effect December 4, 2025. One section was delayed to September 1, 2026.
Section 4.020 amends Education Code §48.317(c) — a provision added by HB 2 that itself takes effect the same day. It concerns the tutoring grants parents can use for students who need reading intervention, and provides that beginning with the 2030–2031 school year, the agency will reduce a district’s entitlement by the grant amounts received for students who used a grant, were enrolled in the district from kindergarten through third grade, and did not perform satisfactorily on the third-grade reading assessment.
HB 140 — The Family and Protective Services Council is abolished
Most of HB 140 took effect September 1, 2025 — including the creation of a new child protective investigations advisory committee, which reviews closed investigations and reports annually to the Legislature.
Six sections were held to September 1, and together they do one thing: they formally abolish the Family and Protective Services Council. Section 7 repeals Human Resources Code §§40.021 through 40.026 outright, and Sections 1 through 4 and 6 strike the council’s remaining references out of the Government Code, Health and Safety Code and Human Resources Code. From September 1, the Department of Family and Protective Services is composed of the commissioner, administrative staff and employees — no council.
SB 2155 — Veterinary facilities must register with the state
SB 2155 overhauled veterinary regulation and mostly took effect September 1, 2025. Section 37 was delayed a year, and it adds an entire new subchapter: Subchapter M, Chapter 801, Occupations Code — Veterinary Medical Facilities.
From September 1, veterinary medicine — including telemedicine practiced remotely by electronic means — may be practiced only in or from a facility registered with the State Board of Veterinary Medical Examiners, unless exempted by rule. Every individual facility must register. The board has until 2027 to adopt implementing rules, and facilities have until September 1, 2027 to complete registration, so September 1 starts the clock rather than the enforcement.
HB 1240 — One definition of the Texas–Mexico border region
Five different Texas codes carried five different definitions of “border region” — some listing counties, some drawing a 100-kilometer line from the international boundary, some pointing at a repealed statute. HB 1240 replaces all of them with a single 53-county list in Government Code §2056.002, and amends the Education Code, Health and Safety Code, Transportation Code and Water Code to point at it.
The consolidated list is also broader than the old ones, adding counties such as Bee, Karnes, Loving, Mason, McCulloch, Menard, Reagan, Upton, Ward and Wilson. That matters because border-region status carries eligibility for certain higher-education, health and transportation programs. No Greater Houston county is on the list.
HB 5424 — A higher pay ceiling for volunteer firefighters
HB 5424 amends Government Code §419.0322(c). A fire department may not, in a calendar year, compensate or provide benefits to someone designated as a volunteer or auxiliary firefighter in excess of 20 percent of the highest total compensation paid to full-time fire protection personnel by a local government in the county — or, if no local government in that county pays full-time fire personnel, in an adjacent county.
The old provision was a vaguer test tied to whether the person would be considered fully paid fire protection personnel. The new one is a number. This matters across a lot of unincorporated Greater Houston, where volunteer departments carry the load.
Wondering what any of this does to your number?
Housing policy moves slowly; your neighborhood’s comps move weekly. If you are within a year of selling, it is worth knowing where you actually stand before you are deciding under time pressure. Free, and specific to your address.
Get your home’s valueWhat people think starts September 1 but doesn’t
Every September the headlines produce a round of confusion, usually because a date buried inside an older law gets reported as a new law. Four that are circulating right now:
| What you may have seen | What is actually true |
|---|---|
| “The school bus seat belt law starts September 1” | SB 546 took effect September 1, 2025. Districts claiming a budget exemption must report their fleet and costs to TEA by the end of the 2025–26 school year, TEA reports to the Legislature by January 1, 2027, and no district must actually comply until September 1, 2029. |
| “Harris County is getting new courts” | True, but split. The 513th, 514th and 515th open September 1, 2026. The 516th and 517th open October 1, 2026 — a month later. |
| “Texas is launching gold-backed payments” | Only the legal-tender recognition starts September 1. The comptroller’s bullion-backed electronic payment system is May 1, 2027. |
| “Veterinary clinics have to be registered now” | The requirement takes effect September 1, but facilities have until September 1, 2027 to register, and the board’s rules are not adopted yet. |
The seat belt one is worth dwelling on because it is the most-shared. It is a real law, it is a good law, and it is a year old. What is new is a reporting deadline, not a requirement to put belts on buses.
What did not change on September 1
This is the part I would actually put on a refrigerator.
- Your homestead exemption. The school-district homestead exemption went to $140,000 on January 1, 2026, after voters approved it. Nothing about it changes on September 1. If you bought this year and have not filed, that is still the single highest-value piece of paperwork you own — here is how the $140,000 exemption works.
- Your tax bill or appraisal. No rate, cap or appraisal-methodology change takes effect September 1, 2026. If you own rentals, the investor property-tax guide is unchanged too.
- The seller’s disclosure. The Texas seller’s disclosure notice requirements are unchanged in this batch, flood-history questions included.
- Closing, title and escrow. Nothing here touches how a Texas residential closing runs.
- Insurance. No change — and for why premiums are what they are here, that is a separate and longer conversation.
- Flood disclosure and floodplain rules. Unchanged. The flood-zone facts that governed your purchase in August govern it in September, and the MUD districts by ZIP are where they were.
Where to check the official list yourself
The authoritative source is the Texas Legislative Reference Library’s effective-dates list for the 89th Legislature. Scroll to the September 1, 2026 heading and you will find the same fourteen items, with the effective-date clause quoted for each. Every bill number links through to its full text on Texas Legislature Online.
One caution if you go looking on your own. Texas Legislature Online publishes a report called “Bills Effective on September 1” that stamps today’s date at the top and carries no year in its web address. It is the September 1, 2025 list — 834 bills — and it is easy to mistake for this year’s. It also only captures bills whose entire act took effect on a single date, so bills with staggered dates are missing from it altogether. That is exactly why the Library’s list is the one to use for a year like this one.
Three things no legislative list will show you, and all three are real:
- Agency rules. These are not statutes, so they never appear. The biggest one sharing the same date: the Texas Commission of Licensing and Regulation voted in July to adopt the 2026 National Electrical Code as the statewide electrical code effective September 1, 2026. If you are pulling an electrical permit for a remodel, a panel upgrade or a new build, permits applied for on or after September 1 are held to the 2026 code. Ask your electrician which code your permit is being pulled under before work starts.
- Deadlines inside laws already in effect — the seat belt category above.
- Local ordinances, which in Greater Houston is where a great deal of the action actually is, and federal law.
And one structural note that explains why this year’s list is so short: Texas’s Legislature meets in regular session only in odd-numbered years, and there was no 2026 regular session. Everything above is a delayed-effect piece of 2025 legislation. The next real wave is the 90th Legislature, gaveling in January 2027 — and given how much of the 2025 session went to property tax and school finance, that one is worth watching if you own here.
Frequently asked questions: new Texas laws in September 2026
How many new Texas laws take effect September 1, 2026?
Fourteen bills or bill sections from the 89th Legislature, per the Texas Legislative Reference Library’s effective-dates list. Several are individual sections of larger acts rather than whole bills. It is a far smaller batch than September 1, 2025, when 834 bills took effect, because Texas’s Legislature meets in regular session only in odd-numbered years and there was no 2026 regular session.
Which new Texas courts open on September 1, 2026?
Five state district courts, created by HB 16 of the 89th Legislature’s second called session: the 513th, 514th and 515th Judicial Districts in Harris County, the 490th in Brazoria County, the 523rd in Montgomery County, the 511th in Comal County, and the 492nd covering Colorado and Lavaca counties. Two more Harris County courts, the 516th and 517th, follow on October 1, 2026. The 515th and 517th are directed to give preference to civil cases; the 523rd to criminal cases.
Do any of the September 2026 Texas laws change my property taxes?
No. The only property-tax item is HB 3307, which adds a continuing-education requirement for the arbitrators who hear binding-arbitration appeals of appraisal review board orders. Rates, caps, exemptions and appraisal methodology are unchanged. The $140,000 school-district homestead exemption took effect January 1, 2026 and is unaffected.
Does SB 785 mean manufactured homes can be placed in my neighborhood now?
Almost certainly not, if your neighborhood has deed restrictions. SB 785 explicitly does not affect deed restrictions established before January 2, 2025, and it carves out historic districts. What it does is require cities that use zoning to allow new HUD-code manufactured homes by right in at least one residential zoning classification somewhere inside their boundaries. Houston itself has no zoning ordinance, so deed restrictions remain the operative control there.
What should I ask a solar salesperson after September 1?
Ask for the company’s and the individual’s TDLR registration numbers and verify them before you sign. As of September 1, 2026 both the retailer and the salesperson must be registered, and the enforcement provisions — civil penalties up to $2,500 per violation, or $10,000 if someone over 65 was harmed, plus the department’s power to cancel the contract and order a refund — are live.
Did the Texas school bus seat belt law start September 1, 2026?
No. SB 546 took effect September 1, 2025. Districts claiming a budget-based exemption must report their bus fleet and estimated costs to the Texas Education Agency by the end of the 2025–2026 school year, and TEA must summarize that for the Legislature by January 1, 2027. Full compliance with the three-point seat belt requirement is not required until September 1, 2029.
Can someone pay for a house in Texas with gold now?
Only if both sides agree. HB 1056 recognizes qualifying gold and silver specie as legal tender in Texas starting September 1, 2026, but the statute states directly that no person may be required to offer or accept it. Residential closings still fund through the title company under its normal requirements.
When is the next big batch of Texas laws?
The 90th Legislature convenes in January 2027, with most bills that pass taking effect September 1, 2027. A handful of 2025 bills also have dates still ahead of us — HB 1056’s bullion-backed payment system on May 1, 2027, veterinary facility registration by September 1, 2027, and further sections of HB 2 in September 2027 and September 2028.
The bottom line
September 1, 2026 is a quiet one on paper — fourteen items, most of them delayed sections of bills Texas already lived through a year ago. But the quiet list contains one genuinely significant thing for this metro: three new district courts in Harris County, one in Brazoria, one in Montgomery, with two more Harris benches a month behind them. That is capacity added to the civil docket where property disputes get resolved, and it is the item worth remembering.
After that: SB 785 requires zoned cities to make room for new manufactured homes somewhere residential, while leaving pre-2025 deed restrictions alone. SB 1036 means the person at your door selling solar needs a registration number you can check, and the state can now fine them and unwind the contract. HB 3307 raises the training floor for property-tax arbitrators. HB 2963 makes it easier to get a covered device repaired by someone other than the manufacturer.
Everything you actually budget around — your exemption, your appraisal, your insurance, your closing — is exactly where it was yesterday. What is moving is the market itself, and that has nothing to do with the Legislature: nearly half of Houston’s standing inventory has cut its price, which is a far more immediate input to your equity than anything on this list.
Thinking about a move in the next year?
Policy changes slowly. Your equity does not. I will pull the closed comps, the days on market and the price-cut share for your specific street and give it to you straight — whether you are listing this fall or just keeping an eye on it.
Talk to EddieAbout Eddie Weir
I’m Eddie Weir, a top 1% REALTOR® with REMAX Signature in Greater Houston. I hold the ABR (Accredited Buyer’s Representative) and LUXE designations and bring a corporate analytics and strategy background to residential real estate. I pull the Greater Houston market data every week — Harris, Brazoria, Fort Bend, and Montgomery counties — so my clients make decisions with the full numbers in front of them. More about how I work.
“Everything you actually budget around — your exemption, your appraisal, your insurance, your closing — is exactly where it was yesterday. The one thing that did change is three new courtrooms in Harris County, and nobody is talking about it.”
— Eddie Weir, REALTOR®, ABR, LUXE | REMAX Signature
Sources: Texas Legislative Reference Library — 89th Legislature effective dates, September 1, 2026 section, for the complete list. Every item was then independently verified against the effective-date clause in the enrolled bill on Texas Legislature Online: HB 16 (2nd C.S.), SB 785, SB 1036, HB 3307, HB 2963, HB 1056, HB 912, HB 2, SB 568, HB 8 (2nd C.S.), HB 140, SB 2155, HB 1240 and HB 5424. Seat belt timeline from SB 546 as enrolled. Right-to-repair price threshold and documentation windows per PIRG. 2026 National Electrical Code adoption per the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation and the Texas Commission of Licensing and Regulation’s July 2026 vote.
This article summarizes publicly available legislative information as of August 31, 2026 and is general information, not legal or tax advice. Statutes are subject to agency rulemaking, judicial interpretation and later amendment, and their application to any specific property depends on facts I do not have. Court creation dates reflect the statute; consult the Office of Court Administration or the county district clerk for when a given court is actually staffed and hearing cases. Consult an attorney, your city’s planning department, or the relevant state agency before acting. Informational only, no guarantee of outcomes. If your home is currently listed with a REALTOR®, please disregard.
