Texas Homestead Legislative Archive
A permanent, plain-English record of Texas legislation that touched homestead rights, property taxes, land ownership, and rural life — organized by session, with every measure labeled by what actually happened to it. Enacted law is kept clearly separate from proposals that did not pass.
Legislative proposals are not the same as current law. A bill may be filed, referred to committee, amended, passed, vetoed, or allowed to expire without becoming law. Texas Homestead Law separates enacted legislation from proposals that did not pass.
What this archive tracks
Texas Homestead Law tracks legislation involving the property rights and property taxes of ordinary Texans — homeowners, heirs, rural landowners, farmers, veterans, elderly owners, surviving spouses, and families. The archive covers measures involving:
- Residence-homestead exemptions
- Property-tax appraisal limits
- Elderly and disabled homeowner protections
- Disabled-veteran exemptions
- Surviving-spouse protections
- Deed fraud and real-property theft
- Property recording and title issues
- Heirs and inherited property
- Agricultural-use and open-space appraisal
- Rollback or change-of-use taxes
- Rural land
- Groundwater and water infrastructure
- Flooding and drainage
- Eminent domain
- Disaster recovery
- Biosolids, PFAS, soil and water contamination
- Livestock and agricultural health
- County authority over unincorporated land
- Broader Texas property-tax reform
Every measure in the archive is labeled with its verified final status — for example Became Law, Vetoed, or Did Not Pass — based on the official Texas Legislature Online record, not on news coverage or advocacy summaries.
Session archives
89th Legislature, Second Called Session — 2025
The special session that produced Texas's real-property theft and deed-fraud law (SB 16), one vetoed dam-and-reservoir measure, and dozens of homestead, agricultural, water, and property-tax proposals that did not pass.
How this archive was builtArchive Source Notes
The complete reviewed-bill table, the bills excluded as outside scope, the items still pending verification, and the official sources used for every status label.
Looking aheadTexas Homestead Legislative Watch
The subjects we will monitor going into the next legislative session — and how future bills will be evaluated using official bill text, committee actions, and governor actions.
Live tracking toolBill Watchlist
The card-based watchlist of individual bills we are actively following, each with plain-English summaries, status, and official source links.
Why keep an archive of bills that failed?
Most bills do not pass — and in Texas, ideas that fail in one session are often refiled in the next. Preserving an accurate record of what was proposed, who it would have affected, and where each measure stopped makes it easier to recognize a proposal when it returns, and harder for anyone to mistake a dead bill for current law. The archive explains what each bill proposed and why it mattered; it does not describe bills as good or bad.
Last reviewed: July 13, 2026 · Statuses verified against Texas Legislature Online and the Texas Legislative Reference Library.