In our ongoing project examining the characteristics of top evictors in Bexar and Harris counties, we have found that eviction filings in these areas are highly concentrated – among a small number of properties, and an even smaller number of owners. Some of these properties even receive government support. Many properties appear on high-evictor lists year after year, suggesting that eviction is not a one-time response to tenant hardship, but part of a consistent and deliberate pattern.
In this post, we take a closer look at how eviction cases actually play out in court. What we find in Bexar and Harris counties aligns with a growing body of research: for some homeowners, eviction is a routine business practice. Local policies can help disincentivize and reduce serial evictions and begin to reframe eviction as what it should be: a last resort.
What court outcomes reveal about eviction practices
Looking at eviction case dispositions – outcomes as ruled by a judge – helps us better understand how eviction filings are being utilized by landlords, not just how often they occur.
Among the top 30 evicting properties in both Bexar and Harris counties, case outcomes differ somewhat from the county average, suggesting that in some cases high evictor landlords are using the eviction process differently than the average landlord. The top 30 properties have lower rates of default judgments and judgments for the landlord, but higher dismissal rates.
A default judgment occurs when a tenant does not appear in court, resulting in an automatic ruling for the landlord. A judgment for the landlord means the case proceeded to a hearing and the landlord met the legal requirements for eviction.
A dismissal, by contrast, means the case was closed without a formal eviction order – often because the landlord chose to close the case (for example, if the tenant paid the amount owed or moved out before the hearing), the landlord did not appear for the court hearing, or the eviction was improperly filed.
At first glance, a higher dismissal rate may sound like good news. But dismissal does not mean the filing had no impact. One study found that an eviction filing alone resulted in $180 in fines for the household and raised monthly housing costs by 20%. In addition, even if a case is dismissed, the filing itself remains on a tenant’s record and can be accessed by tenant screening companies. This makes it much harder to secure housing in the future and can limit tenants to properties willing to accept a rental history with an eviction filing. The act of filing carries consequences regardless of the outcome.
In some ways, Texas incentivizes eviction filings. The cost for filing is relatively low: $139 in Harris County and $171 in Bexar County. If the act of filing alone may result in the tenant paying the amount owed or the tenant self-evicting and leaving before the case can proceed, those low costs mean that landlords can rely on eviction filings as part of their enforcement and rent collection process.
The trend of serial eviction filings in particular further suggests the routine nature of evictions as enforcement at certain properties.
Serial filings in practice: eviction as rent collection
Serial eviction filing refers to the repeated use of eviction filings against the same tenant – often for nonpayment of rent – with cases dismissed once payment is made or the tenant self-evicts. In these situations, eviction filings function less as a legal remedy for a contractual dispute and more as a rent collection strategy that has the side effect of contributing to long term housing instability for the tenant, a harm that the landlord causes but does not have to bear the costs of.
Eviction filings at Forest Oaks in Northwest Bexar County illustrate this pattern clearly. In 2024:
- 128 eviction cases were filed.
- 19 tenants appeared repeatedly under different case numbers, accounting for 88 filings.
- One tenant had 12 separate eviction cases in a single year – one per month.
- Most of these cases were dismissed.
This pattern is not isolated. Across the top 30 evicting properties in Bexar County, 1,251 eviction filings – 37.5% of all filings – were serial filings, meaning they were filed against tenants who faced eviction multiple times in the same year at the same property. At the four top evicting properties in Bexar County with the most serial filings, roughly 60-70% of eviction filings were serial filings.
It must be stated clearly that serial filings should not be happening, and certainly should not make up a plurality of eviction filings at these top evicting properties. By definition, a serial filing indicates that the landlord is willing to let the tenant stay in the unit once the dispute is addressed. Mediation, not a formal court filing that stays on a tenant’s long term record, is the appropriate action in this situation.
When eviction filings are used this way, they do not just harm individual tenants. They also consume court staff time and administrative resources, crowding dockets with cases that function primarily as a rent collection strategy rather than legitimate legal disputes.
These patterns suggest that repeat filings are not occasional – they are a routine feature of how some properties operate. And while this dynamic is clear in Bexar County, the serial eviction filing problem is even more pronounced in Harris County.
Like Forest Oaks in Bexar County, Lenox Park Apartments in Harris County also evicted a single tenant once per month in 2024. Of the tenant’s 12 eviction cases, four resulted in default judgments and eight in dismissals. A tenant at the Neo at Ten received filings in nine different months in 2024 – every one of them resulted in a dismissal.
Nearly half of all eviction filings at the top 30 properties in Harris County were serial eviction filings (44% or around 2,600 filings). Over 1,000 households living in the top 30 evicting properties were subject to serial eviction filings in 2024 (around 6% of all households) and 18 households were subject to filings in at least six different months in 2024. Six of those 18 households lived at Chateau Dijon and Lenox Park Apartments alone.
The property with the most eviction filings in Harris County, Del Mar Apartments, also had the largest number of tenants subject to serial evictions (71) accounting for 13% of the property’s units. More than half of the evictions filed at Del Mar Apartments in 2024 were serial eviction filings (57%). Lenox Park Apartments and Neo at Ten also filed serial evictions against 13% of their residents in 2024 and over 75% of filings at those properties were serial eviction filings. The owners of these properties are not using eviction filing as a last resort. Instead, eviction amounts to an almost literal daily practice.
As we already discussed, when tenants leave a property due to an eviction filing, they may end up at another property with a high eviction filing rate that is willing to overlook a history of eviction. The data in Harris County supports this – over 50 tenant names appear in eviction filings for separate top 30 evicting properties in the same year. Although it is difficult to confirm if tenants with the same names are the same people, there are at least a dozen examples of unique names facing eviction across multiple properties in 2024.
Harris and Bexar county data suggest that eviction filings are being used as a routine mechanism for enforcing rent payment rather than as a last resort. When filing becomes predictable – when tenants can expect a court case as a regular part of falling behind on rent – eviction shifts from an emergency response into a standardized operating procedure, to the detriment of tenants.
Large owners have an advantage in eviction court
Taken together, these patterns point to something larger than individual disputes. They suggest that eviction filing behaviors are predictable and therefore preventable.
National research has found similar patterns. Large, professionalized landlords, like those found in the top 30 evictor lists, engage with eviction courts in systematically different ways than small landlords. They are more likely to file more eviction cases, use repeat or serial eviction filings, and rely on dedicated legal representation. Tenants by contrast, do not have experience in how to navigate this legal process and often lack legal representation. Of the 3,652 eviction filings at the top 30 Harris County properties that did not result in a default judgment, 7% of plaintiffs had representation compared to just 1% of defendants.
Legal scholars describe this imbalance as the “repeat player” advantage: parties that appear in court frequently develop expertise and structural advantages over those who do not. When repeat players also control large portfolios, their practices can shape eviction patterns across entire neighborhoods and persist over time.
To reduce the harm of eviction filings, particularly serial filings, large owners’ “repeat player” advantage must be addressed through policy.
Policy responses to the use of eviction as a business practice
The patterns we see in Bexar and Harris counties are consistent with national research: eviction is not only a legal process to resolve contractual disputes, but in some cases a routine business strategy. Research shows that the best way to lower the number of eviction filings and address this behavior is to add friction to the eviction process.
If eviction filings are being used systematically – across properties and portfolios – then solutions must operate at that level. The following policies have been shown to reduce unnecessary eviction filings. Some of these can be enacted at the local level in cities, counties, and courts, while others would require state-level intervention:
- Increasing local court filing and county service fees for eviction petitions to increase the overall cost of filing an eviction;
- Extending notice periods at the state and/or local level (Texas’ is just 1-3 days, but in other states notice periods can be two weeks or longer);
- Just cause eviction standards at the state and/or local level;
- Local requirements that landlords offer tenants an opportunity to meet and enter into payment plans before filing eviction;
- State or local policies and programs that increase tenant access to legal aid; and
- State laws or local ordinances prohibiting landlords with housing conditions violations from filing evictions (“clean hands” requirements) or allowing tenants to bring a countersuit.
As we saw in our previous blog about the role of public subsidy in funding high evictors, stronger tenant protections can materially reduce eviction filings. Ultimately, eviction is shaped by the rules and laws that govern housing – and the guardrails, or lack thereof, that those rules and incentives create. Routine eviction filings in Harris and Bexar counties are not inevitable. They are the result of state and local policy choices – or lack thereof – and court practices, which means that Texas state and local governments and the courts can resolve to fix this issue.
Note: Due to court data misspellings and formatting inaccuracies, the full scope of serial evictions at the top 30 properties in Harris and Bexar counties is likely even more extensive than what we have included in our analysis.
