Lease Acceleration Clause
in Your Lease
What it actually means, what Texas law says, what's specific to Austin - and exactly what to do. In plain English.
Quick Summary - What You Need to Know
- Texas Property Code Section 91.006 forces your landlord to mitigate damages when you abandon the unit in violation of the lease.
- Any lease term waiving that duty is void, so initialing the acceleration paragraph does not sign the protection away.
- Acceleration clauses are not banned in Texas, but they can't collect rent that reasonable re-renting would have brought in.
- The statute sets no deadline, so a Travis County judge decides case by case whether the landlord's re-rental effort was reasonable.
- Austin adds nothing of its own - no city rule touches acceleration, so Section 91.006 is the entire local story.
Understanding the Lease Acceleration Clause
A rent acceleration clause turns the rest of your lease into one bill. Move out in month four of a twelve-month term and your landlord's position is that every unpaid month is due right now, not month by month. Most Austin leases carry some version of it.
Texas never outlawed the clause, which is why it survives in leases from Riverside to Round Rock. What Texas did instead is quieter: Section 91.006 makes your landlord try to re-rent, and every month they fill is a month that clause can no longer collect.
What renters assume
Renters see every remaining month listed as immediately due, decide the number is fixed, and either panic or quietly start paying it. The clause reads like a done deal.
What is actually true
That paragraph is an opening demand, not a judgment. Section 91.006 requires your landlord to mitigate, and any lease language waiving that duty is void in Texas.
The clause you signed looks nearly identical in Miami, Atlanta, and Austin - the law behind it doesn't. Florida lets a landlord sit on an empty unit and bill you as rent comes due, Georgia courts rarely force re-renting, and Texas makes the mitigation duty non-waivable.
Plain English Version
Acceleration is like a gym billing you for the whole year the day you stop showing up. Texas makes the gym resell your spot first and charge you only for the gap.
Rent Acceleration Clause Example - What the Wording Looks Like in Austin, TX
The sample clause below is real lease language - a court quoted it word for word, and then ruled on it. What the judge decided is at the bottom of this block.
Find the equivalent paragraph in your own lease and read the two side by side. The wording will differ; the moving parts rarely do.
The paragraph as the Montana Supreme Court reproduced it. One further sentence follows in the original, dealing with when late fees and interest may start to run on an accelerated amount; it is not reproduced here:
If any monthly installment under this agreement is not paid when due and remains unpaid after a date specified by a notice to Tenant, the entire principal rent amount owed for the full lease term shall at once become due and payable at the option of the Landlord and judgment may be had for all said amounts due. The foregoing provision shall not relieve the Landlord of its obligation to mitigate damages. In the event the rental premises is re-rented to another for full value prior to expiration of the lease term, Landlord shall file Notice of Partial Satisfaction of any judgment entered to the extent of the third party rental agreement.
[…]
Quoted from the published opinion in Summers v. Crestview Apartments, 2010 MT 164, 357 Mont. 123, 236 P.3d 586 (No. DA 09-0489). Judicial opinions are not subject to copyright; the lease language is reproduced in limited part for commentary under 17 U.S.C. § 107.
“after a date specified by a notice to Tenant”
Acceleration does not fire on the missed payment here. It fires on a date the landlord chooses and writes into a notice, which is why that notice and the envelope it came in are worth keeping: the date on it is the hinge of every later argument about what was owed and when. Texas answers the other half of the timing question with silence. Tex. Prop. Code § 91.006 sets no deadline for the landlord's efforts, so whether those efforts were reasonable is decided case by case. The clause dates the landlord's demand precisely and leaves the landlord's own duty undated.
“The foregoing provision”
The provision being pointed back at is the acceleration sentence, and this is the drafter conceding that the first half does not stand alone. In Texas that concession was never the landlord's to give or withhold. Section 91.006 imposes the duty to mitigate whenever a tenant abandons the leased premises in violation of the lease, and it voids any lease provision that waives the right or exempts the landlord from the duty. A lease that deleted this sentence altogether would be in exactly the same position.
“shall not relieve the Landlord”
Relief from the duty is the precise thing Texas forbids, and it is worth being clear about what that does and does not do to a clause like this one. Acceleration is not banned outright in Texas. What shrinks is the recovery: whatever rent reasonable re-letting could have produced comes off the total, so the figure on a demand letter and the figure a court would allow are two different figures. The paragraph can still be the landlord's opening number. It is not the ending one.
“of its obligation to mitigate damages”
Mitigating means trying to re-let, not succeeding. Texas requires the effort and leaves the standard open - no deadline, no procedure, reasonableness judged on the facts of the tenancy. Compare Washington, which does not stop at requiring the effort: RCW 59.18.310 caps a fixed-term tenant's liability at the lesser of the entire remaining rent, or accrued rent plus the fair-rental shortfall and the actual costs of re-renting. Texas gives you a duty to argue about; Washington gives a ceiling to point at.
The Montana Supreme Court struck this paragraph down, and its conclusion is one sentence: “Thus, we conclude that the accelerated rent provision is unconscionable and therefore unenforceable.” The tenants had moved out of their apartment on October 13, 2006, and Crestview answered with a Statement of Deductions from the Security Deposit charging rent through the end of the lease in June - $6,505.75 billed against a $2,170 deposit. Two reasons carried the court. Acceleration undermines the landlord's duty to mitigate and reduces the incentive to re-rent promptly, because a landlord already holding a judgment for the whole term has little reason to fill the unit. And Crestview drafted the lease while these tenants had no meaningful choice and no opportunity to negotiate any of it. The case was reversed and remanded, and two justices wrote separately - their objection being that the majority had gone as far as treating acceleration clauses as unenforceable in themselves. So read the holding narrowly, as the majority wrote it: this provision, in this residential lease, unconscionable and unenforceable. It is a Montana decision and it binds no other state's courts. What travels is the reasoning, and the reasoning is about mitigation - which is exactly the question the statute in your own city's decode answers.
One court, one lease, one state. That answer is not automatically yours, and your lease may be worded to land differently. Use this to know what to look for and what to ask - your state's tenant hotline or a local tenant attorney can answer it for your document.
Texas Law on Lease Acceleration Clause
- Section 91.006 imposes a duty to mitigate damages if a tenant abandons the leased premises in violation of the lease.
- Any lease provision that waives this right or exempts the landlord from this duty is void.
- The statute sets no deadline, so whether the landlord's efforts were reasonable is decided case by case.
- Acceleration clauses are not banned outright, but recovery shrinks by whatever rent re-renting could reasonably have produced.
Tex. Prop. Code § 91.006 - statutes change; verify the current text for your situation.
Section 91.006 does one thing and does it hard: if you abandon the leased premises in violation of the lease, your landlord has a duty to mitigate damages, and any lease provision waiving that duty or exempting them from it is void. So the acceleration clause and the mitigation duty sit in the same lease, and the statute wins.
What Texas doesn't hand you is a formula. There's no deadline and no statutory cap, so reasonableness gets argued case by case - unlike Washington, where a tenant's liability is capped at the lesser of the remaining rent or accrued rent plus actual re-renting costs. Next to Miami you're still far ahead: Florida law lets a landlord do nothing and hold you for rent as it comes due.
Texas Tenant Protections
Your landlord has a statutory duty to mitigate damages once you abandon the unit in breach, so an empty apartment is their problem to solve and not only your bill to pay. Any lease provision waiving that duty or exempting your landlord from it is void, whatever you initialed at signing. Because damages shrink by whatever reasonable re-renting could have produced, an acceleration demand is a number you can contest rather than a final total.
What's Specific to Austin
Figures are the state rule, or the stronger city ordinance where one exists. Verify the current law for your own situation before relying on it.
Austin adds nothing. There's no city ordinance on rent acceleration, no local mitigation rule, no Austin-only cap - Section 91.006 reads the same on Rainey Street as it does in Amarillo. Anyone promising you a special city protection here is thinking of a different clause.
The local market quietly helps you, though. After Austin's apartment construction wave, units around East Riverside, the Domain, and downtown lease up fast and with concessions, which makes it much harder for a property manager to claim that re-renting your place was slow or unreasonable. Screenshot their own listing page the week you leave.
It should say the new tenant's rent reduces your balance. Texas requires mitigation anyway, but a spelled-out credit saves you the argument later.
You want a fixed number you can plan around, not damages calculated after you've already handed back the keys.
Strike it. Under Section 91.006 that language is void in Texas, and a landlord still printing it is testing whether you know.
Red flag. Paying a release fee and every remaining month means being charged twice for the same empty unit.
Sources
The law this guide relies on, and where to read it. Statutes change, so confirm the current text before you act on it.
- Tex. Prop. Code § 91.006 on tcss.legis.texas.gov, Texas's own publication of its statutes.
Red Flags to Watch Out For
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Mitigation waiver in fine print
Any line saying the landlord has no obligation to re-rent, or that you waive Section 91.006, is void in Texas - it survives because it scares renters into paying.
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Entire balance due on demand
Wording that makes all remaining rent payable immediately is a starting number, not a court judgment. Every month they re-rent should come off it.
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Sole discretion to re-rent
Language saying the landlord may decide whether to market the unit is an opt-out of mitigation dressed as flexibility. Texas doesn't allow the opt-out.
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Reletting fee stacked on acceleration
Some Austin leases charge a percentage-of-rent reletting fee and the accelerated rent. Being billed twice for one vacancy is worth challenging in writing before you pay.
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No accounting of the re-lease
If the lease never promises an itemized statement, you may never learn how quickly the unit filled. Ask for the re-lease date and new rent in writing.
Your Rights as a Austin Tenant
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A duty you can't sign away
Section 91.006 attaches on its own once you abandon in breach. Nothing in the lease and nothing you initialed removes it.
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Credit for every re-rented month
Rent from the next tenant reduces what you owe. An acceleration demand that ignores those months is overstated on its face.
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Reasonableness judged case by case
With no deadline in the statute, a Travis County court weighs whether the marketing effort was genuine - listing dates and photos are the evidence.
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The right to contest the number
A demand letter isn't a judgment. You can dispute it, negotiate a gap-months settlement, or make your landlord prove the damages in court.
What To Do - Step by Step
Find the acceleration paragraph
Search your lease for 'accelerate', 'entire balance', or 'reletting charge'. That wording sets what they'll demand; Section 91.006 sets what they keep.
Put your move-out in writing
Email plus a certified letter with the date you're leaving. Mitigation matters from the moment they know the unit is empty, so build dated proof.
Return keys and document the unit
Hand keys over formally and photograph every room. A clean, rent-ready apartment strips away the best excuse for a slow re-lease.
Track the listing weekly
Screenshot the property's own site, Zillow, and Apartments.com. If your unit never gets listed, that's your mitigation defense already in evidence.
Demand an itemized accounting
Ask in writing for the re-lease date, the new rent, and each charge. Silence on those numbers tells a judge as much as an answer would.
Negotiate, then defend if sued
Most of these settle for the genuinely vacant months. In a Travis County suit, make them show what they did to re-rent, not just the balance.