Evictions remain a defining feature of the affordable housing problem in Texas. Every year, Texas Housers tracks tens of thousands of households in Bexar and Harris counties who are pulled into an eviction process that is fast, destabilizing, and deeply harmful. Now we are taking this research one step further and looking into what we can learn about the characteristics of the highest evicting properties in these counties.
Even with limited public data, clear patterns emerge among the highest evicting properties in Texas. By examining the top evictors in Bexar and Harris Counties, we find common ownership characteristics and practices that raise questions about how eviction is being used – and underscore the need for greater transparency around eviction activity and housing providers.
Evictions are associated with increased risks of mental illness, chronic disease, job loss, homelessness, and even mortality. An eviction filing – even when dismissed – can leave a permanent mark on a tenant’s record, making it harder to secure housing in the future.
Understanding where, how often, and by whom evictions are filed is critical to designing policies that actually prevent displacement rather than simply responding to it after the fact.
We reviewed the top 30 properties with the highest eviction rates in Bexar and Harris counties to take a closer look at the systems shaping eviction patterns in two of Texas’ largest metro areas. Our findings show that publicly administered systems that track and disclose eviction filings and patterns are essential to addressing harmful eviction practices and protecting housing stability in Texas.
What the Bexar and Harris County eviction dashboards show
Texas Housers maintains public eviction tracking tools for Bexar County and Harris County to better understand where evictions are happening, who is driving them, and what patterns emerge over time. These dashboards allow policymakers, advocates, and community members to add data to anecdote and examine activity at the level of neighborhoods, properties, and owners.
Across both Bexar and Harris counties, the numbers tell a consistent story: evictions are not evenly distributed. They cluster in specific neighborhoods – and at a small number of properties with an even smaller number of owners.
The top 30 properties accounted for 12% of all 2024 eviction filings in Bexar County and 8% in Harris County. Many Bexar County census tracts with the highest eviction filing rates (the count of eviction filings divided by the number of units) appear that way primarily because of a single high-evicting property within their boundaries, and 25 of the Harris County top 30 properties account for more than half of the evictions in their respective census tracts.
This concentration shows that eviction is not simply a diffuse market outcome – it is being driven by identifiable actors and practices.
A small number of properties, an outsized impact
When we look at the 30 highest evicting properties in each county, several patterns emerge.
Property size and eviction rates: Harris County top evictor properties are larger and have higher eviction rates than those in Bexar County.
- The top evicting properties in Harris County are generally larger than those in Bexar County. Harris County’s top properties range from about 250 to 1,000 units compared to 150 to 700 units in Bexar County. Over half of Harris County’s top 30 evicting properties have more than 500 units compared to just 4 properties in Bexar County.
- Despite this difference in scale, Harris County’s top evictors post a higher average eviction filing rate – about 40%, compared to 35% among Bexar County’s top 30. In other words, not only do the high evictor properties in Harris County have more units, but they also tend to file evictions against a larger share of their tenants.
Ownership characteristics: Both counties reflect broader trends of more eviction filings at recently-purchased, aging multifamily properties owned by an increasingly consolidated pool of corporate, absentee landlords.
- Harris County has more out-of-state owners among its top evictors (13) than Bexar County (8). These owners tend to have larger, multi-state portfolios.
- Ownership of high evicting properties is more concentrated among fewer owners in Bexar County than in Harris County. There are 18 unique owners in Bexar County’s top evicting list compared to 24 in Harris County.
- The majority of properties on both top evictor lists were originally built before 1990 and were purchased after 2019.
Subsidies and public funding: The majority of top evictors in both counties are private, market-rate properties, but there are publicly subsidized properties for low-income renters on the top evictor lists in both counties – particularly Bexar County, where one-third of top evicting properties are owned by local Housing Finance Corporations (HFCs), Public Facility Corporations (PFCs), or Public Housing Authorities (PHAs).
- Over one-third of Bexar County’s top evicting properties are publicly subsidized. There are nine HTC properties in Bexar County’s top 30, eight of which also get tax exemptions through HFC, PFC, or PHA ownership, plus two additional PFC properties.
- One Harris County top 30 evicting property received funding for development through the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Program (HTC) and two properties have full property tax exemptions due to being owned by a HFC.
Transparency supports stable housing
In Texas, meaningful analysis of eviction practices is constrained by fragmented, incomplete, and often inaccessible data. Much of the information needed to understand eviction behavior – such as case-level court data, property ownership, and subsidy status – is not collected in one place, not publicly available, or not updated in real time. Our analysis relies on stitching together what data is available, often through public information requests, manual data collection, and extensive data cleaning, but still falls short of what is needed to fully understand eviction practices across owners and regions.
Tools like rental registries and public eviction data allow researchers and the public to look beyond individual properties and cases. They can help connect different data sources to look at patterns across eviction filings and eviction courts, property ownership, outcomes for state and local housing programs, and property conditions. Transparent eviction processes and case data are essential for identifying where resources are needed, helping people remain stably housed, and supporting larger-scale organizing work across a landlord’s entire portfolio.
Reviews of local eviction and property ownership data even with the limited data that we currently have access to are still helpful for identifying key questions that could be answered with better transparency:
- Who owns the county-level portfolio with the most evictions? State-level?
- Do eviction rates differ across properties with the same owner? Are high-evicting owners problems across their entire portfolios?
- Do more professionalized, larger owners use automated eviction processes?
- How much public subsidy do the properties that file the most evictions receive? What types of subsidy (e.g. for development, property tax breaks, rental assistance)?
- What tenant protections do public subsidies guarantee for tenants? What should they guarantee?
- How do eviction patterns intersect with property conditions and code enforcement? Are high-evicting properties also properties that deal with persistent property condition deficiencies?
- For policy purposes, how do we define a “bad actor” high evictor owner, and what policies would meaningfully hold repeat bad actors accountable?
Evictions are not inevitable. They are shaped by law, policy, and business decisions. By making eviction behavior visible, we can begin to articulate the need for solutions – from landlords, from public agencies, and from policymakers charged with protecting housing stability for Texas families.
Note: Property owner data reflects the current owner per the appraisal district. Some owners listed purchased the property after 2024 and may not be responsible for the evictions included here. Ownership information reflects land ownership and may not take into account complex ownership such as ground leases.
