Staying After Closing With TREC 15-6: The Seller's Temporary Residential Lease for Texas FSBO Sellers

If your Bexar County FSBO closes before your next home is move-in ready, you have two real options: pay for a short-term rental and put your stuff in storage, or stay in the house you just sold as a tenant of the new owner. The second option exists as a standard TREC form — the Seller's Temporary Residential Lease, form 15-6 — and used correctly it costs almost nothing and buys you up to 90 days. Used badly it turns you into a holdover tenant getting evicted from the house you owned last month.

This is one of the FSBO details that a listing agent would normally walk you through and that FSBO sellers routinely leave to the buyer's agent or title company to explain. Nobody's job is to protect you here. Read the form yourself, price it right, and know how it ends.

What TREC 15-6 actually is

Form 15-6 is a short residential lease promulgated by the Texas Real Estate Commission. It attaches to the TREC 20-17 One to Four Family Residential Contract as an addendum and takes effect at funding. Once the deed records, the buyer is the landlord and you — the former owner — are the tenant. The form caps the term at 90 days from the closing date. If you need more time than that, you cannot use TREC 15-6; you need a separately drafted lease, and at that point the buyer's lender may object because occupancy rules for owner-occupied financing typically require the buyer to move in within 60 days.

The mirror form for the opposite situation — buyer moves in before closing — is TREC 16-6, the Buyer's Temporary Residential Lease. Do not confuse the two. As an FSBO seller, 15-6 is the one you want on the table; 16-6 is almost always a bad idea for you because you're handing over possession before you have the money.

Setting the daily rental rate

The form asks for a daily rate, not a monthly one. The market convention in San Antonio is to price it at the buyer's daily cost of ownership — principal, interest, taxes, and insurance divided by 30. On a $350,000 house with a conventional loan, Bexar County property taxes running roughly 2.1–2.4% depending on the taxing units, and a normal homeowner's policy, that daily number often lands somewhere in the $70–$100 range. The buyer's lender will typically produce the PITI figure at closing; ask for it and use it.

A few things to negotiate before you sign:

• Prepaid vs. daily billing. Most title companies prefer the seller prepay the full lease term at closing as a debit on the seller's side of the settlement statement. If you leave early, you get the unused days back. If you overstay, the buyer bills you.
• Free days. Some buyers will agree to waive rent for the first 3–7 days as a closing incentive, especially if the deal was tight on price. Ask.
• A cap even if the daily rate is high. If the buyer's PITI produces an eye-watering daily number, negotiate a flat monthly figure instead.

The deposit and who holds it

Paragraph 4 of 15-6 requires a security deposit. The default is that the deposit goes to the buyer at closing, but most Bexar County FSBO transactions route it through the title company's escrow — Independence Title, Alamo Title, Texas National Title, and the other local offices will all hold it for a small fee. That is worth insisting on. If the buyer holds the deposit and there's a dispute over damage, you're chasing them for a refund under Texas Property Code § 92.103, which gives a landlord 30 days after surrender to return the deposit with an itemized deduction list. You do not want to be the party filing that demand letter after just selling them your house.

Size the deposit at one month of the daily rate multiplied by 30, or negotiate lower if the term is only two weeks.

Utilities, insurance, and risk of loss

This is where FSBO sellers get burned. At funding, three things flip simultaneously:

Utilities

CPS Energy (electric and gas) and SAWS (water and sewer) accounts should transfer on the closing date. Under 15-6 the seller-tenant remains responsible for utilities during the lease, so the practical move is to leave the accounts in your name through the lease end date and then close them out. Coordinate with the buyer — if they put the accounts in their name at closing, you're using their power for 30–90 days and owe them the bill.

Insurance

The buyer's HO-3 homeowner's policy binds at closing and covers the structure. It does not cover your personal property inside the house. You need an HO-4 renter's policy for the duration of the lease. It's $15–$25 a month. Buy it. If your moving pods get stolen off the driveway or a pipe bursts and soaks your furniture, the buyer's policy will not pay you.

Risk of loss

Paragraph 6 of the standard form assigns risk of loss for the property to the buyer as of closing, and risk of loss for your personal contents to you. If a hailstorm — the annual South Texas guarantee — damages the roof during your lease term, that's the buyer's claim on their policy. If it damages your car in the driveway, that's yours.

What happens if you overstay

At the end of the lease term, if you're still in the house, you are a holdover tenant. The buyer's remedies are landlord remedies under Chapter 24 of the Texas Property Code. They file a 3-day notice to vacate under § 24.005, then a forcible detainer petition in the Bexar County Justice of the Peace court for the precinct where the property sits — there are four JP precincts, and eviction filings go through eFileTexas. Hearing typically lands 10–21 days out. You will lose, because the lease is unambiguous. You will also owe holdover rent, which the form allows the buyer to set at a multiple of the daily rate (commonly 1.5x or 2x), plus the buyer's attorney's fees.

Do not test this. If your next closing slips, call the buyer the day you know, offer to extend at a higher daily rate, and get an amendment signed. Buyers who are already living somewhere else and paying their own housing are usually reasonable for a week or two. They stop being reasonable when they've given notice on their apartment.

What most people get wrong

• Treating 15-6 as a formality and not reading it. It is a real lease. Chapter 92 of the Texas Property Code applies to you as a tenant. Read the whole form before closing, not at the signing table.
• Skipping the renter's insurance. Your homeowner's policy terminated at closing. For the lease period you are uninsured for personal property unless you buy an HO-4.
• Assuming the homestead exemption stays put. The property was your homestead on January 1, so your exemption under Texas Tax Code § 11.13 applies for that tax year and the proration at closing already accounts for it. But the buyer will file their own homestead exemption with BCAD (Form 50-114) by April 30 of the following year. Your exemption does not transfer to your next house automatically — you file a new 50-114 with BCAD once you close on the replacement home and it becomes your principal residence.
• Letting the buyer hold the deposit directly. Escrow it with the title company. The $50 fee is cheap insurance.
• Not addressing the walk-through condition. The buyer already did a final walk-through before funding. You need a second one at the end of the lease to document condition. Do it with the buyer present, take date-stamped photos, and get a written sign-off that the deposit will be released.
• Trying to stretch past 90 days on the TREC form. You can't. Draft a separate month-to-month lease and expect the buyer's lender to want a copy if they haven't yet occupied. Owner-occupied conventional loans generally require occupancy within 60 days of closing; VA loans have similar rules that PCS'ing military buyers know well.

When not to use 15-6 at all

If you need more than 90 days, if the buyer is using an FHA or VA loan with strict occupancy requirements, or if you and the buyer genuinely don't trust each other, don't force it. Close on the sale, put your things in storage, and rent a short-term place. San Antonio has real inventory — RentInSA's active listings show around 4,665 rentals available as of September 2026 with a median asking rent of $1,725 a month, and roughly 2,468 of those hit the market in the last 30 days. A 60-day corporate rental or a furnished short-term lease is often less friction than being a holdover tenant in the wrong situation.

If you're weighing your options between staying put, renting for a stretch, or lining up your next place before closing, RentInSA is built for exactly this handoff. Browse active San Antonio rentals at /rentals, and if you're still finalizing your FSBO sale, our free FSBO listing tools at /list-your-home get your property in front of local buyers while you sort out the timing.