78 Austin Rentals Are Registered as Repeat Offenders

The City of Austin lists 78 rental properties as active Repeat Offender registrations, covering 15,545 units. That is the city's own tally of rentals that drew repeated health-and-safety enforcement, and the list is public and searchable by anyone about to sign a lease.

It is also easy to misread. A property on the list is not a verdict on the people who live there, and a property missing from it is not a clean bill of health. Below is what the registry contains, how a building gets onto it, and how to check an address before you apply.

What the registry shows

The city publishes the list as an open dataset, "Repeat Offender Registrations." The version we pulled on November 7, 2026 had been updated by the city on November 6 and held 80 rows: 78 with status Active and 2 Suspended. Our analysis of those records:

The median registered property has 196 units. The smallest has 4 and the largest 792, so the list is not only large complexes: 19 of the 78 have fewer than 100 units. The city's own program page says the rule covers multifamily and single-family rentals that the owner does not occupy.

For scale, not as a share: Census Bureau American Community Survey estimates in our database put Travis County at about 583,700 households in 2024 (2020 to 2024 five-year estimates), of which roughly 52% own their home. That leaves about 279,600 renter households, so the 15,545 listed units equal roughly 5.6% of that figure. The two numbers do not match in geography or definition, since the registry covers the City of Austin and counts units, and the ACS covers the county and counts households. Read it as order of magnitude.

Registrations are still arriving

The city's issue dates for the 78 active registrations run from April 2015 to September 17, 2026. Counted by the year of the issue date:

• 2015 through 2019: 18 registrations
• 2020 through 2024: 41 registrations
• 2025: 11 registrations
• 2026 so far: 8 registrations

Eleven of the 78 carry an issue date within the last 12 months, covering 1,509 units. We do not know from the dataset whether a given date is a first registration or a renewal, so this is a measure of recent paperwork, not of new problem properties.

Two more properties, 617 units between them, show a Suspended status. Under the city's rules, a registered property whose registration is suspended or revoked cannot lease its vacant units until it comes into compliance. If you are touring a suspended property, that restriction is a question to put to the landlord in writing.

How a rental gets on the list

According to the city's Repeat Offender Program page, a rental must register if, within a 24-month period, it meets any one of three tests:

• two notices of violation for dangerous or habitability-impairing conditions, such as hot water, electrical, heating or infestation problems, that were not corrected in the required time;
• five notices of violation for dangerous or habitability conditions, issued on separate days, whether or not they were corrected;
• two or more citations for the same property.

The owner has 14 days from notification to register. The fee to register or renew is $1,157, a registered property stays on the list for at least two years, and it is inspected annually. Owners must post the registration certificate and bilingual signs in English and Spanish with an emergency phone number and how to report code violations. The dataset labels registrations "2 Year" (67 of the 78 active) and "5 Year" (11); the city page does not describe those labels, so we report them as published and do not interpret them.

Why the list is imperfect

In September 2020 the City Auditor concluded that the program "does not ensure renters are living in properties that meet minimum health and safety standards," according to Austin Monitor's report on the audit. The auditors also recommended renaming the program, because "repeat offender" might discourage renters from reporting problems. The same report said the yearly fee then was $372, which is a reminder that the rules have changed since; use the city's current page, not older coverage. We did not find a published review of how the program has performed since.

Two practical limits follow. The list only contains properties that have crossed the thresholds above, so a building with a fresh problem may not be on it yet. And the list is about code enforcement on the property, not about any single unit, so a listed building can have a well-kept unit and an unlisted one can have a bad one.

How to check an address in about ten minutes

1. Search the Repeat Offender Registrations dataset on the city's open data portal for the property name or address. The city also publishes a map of registrations.
2. Look up code complaints by address, case number or region in the city's Citizen Connect tool, which shows complaint pins and case details and can alert you about an address.
3. Ask the property in writing about any open notices of violation and, if the listing says so, a suspended registration.

What this means if you're renting here

Treat the registry as one input next to the lease. If an address appears, read the complaint history for the kinds of problems that triggered it, and ask what has been fixed. If you already live in a listed property and have a repair problem, you can report it by calling 311 or through the city's code compliance pages, which the city says also cover protection against retaliation; read that guidance before you decide anything. Our earlier pieces cover the itemized fee list Austin landlords must give you before you apply, the ways Texas law lets you end a lease early and how rent and income have moved in Travis County.

What this means if you're buying or selling

If you are buying a small multifamily property or a rental house, ask whether it is registered. The city says registration is not transferable: a new owner has 30 days to submit a new registration form and pay a new fee if applicable, and if the property is brought into compliance within 90 days after the sale it is removed from the list. If you are selling a rental, a current registration is a fact that will come up in due diligence. This is general education; questions about a specific property belong with a licensed attorney.

If you are weighing renting against buying, our Austin housing research pulls parcel, flood and tax records for a street, and a local agent can talk through the timing.

Sources

• Austin Local Team analysis of City of Austin Repeat Offender Registrations records (dataset 86z9-i27i), dataset updated November 6, 2026, pulled November 7, 2026. Counts, unit totals, size bands, medians and issue-date years are our arithmetic on the 80 rows; the city feed was used for every published figure.
• Austin Local Team analysis of U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey 5-year records, Travis County tracts, 2024 vintage (2020 to 2024), pulled September 30, 2026; renter households are our arithmetic from household counts and owner-occupancy rates.
• City of Austin Development Services, Repeat Offender Program, read November 7, 2026.
• City of Austin, Search Code Complaints (Citizen Connect), read November 7, 2026.
• Austin Monitor, audit coverage, September 24, 2020.