Hill County, Texas Eviction Risk: Low

Hill County, Texas scores 3.8/10 (Low) on the EvictionRiskMap scale, averaged across 14 incorporated places with a total population of roughly 17,418. That headline figure puts the county at rank 66 of 254 Texas counties, meaning 65 counties carry higher eviction risk and 188 are more landlord-friendly, placing Hill County squarely in the higher-risk third of the state despite its Low label. Landlords operating here face a market where average rent runs $923 per month and 37.4% of households rent, giving the county a meaningful tenant pool but also one where a poverty rate of 17.9% can translate into rent-collection pressure during economic downturns.

Within the county, individual city scores span 1.4 to 2.6, a range wide enough to matter when you are picking a submarket. Operating conditions are genuinely different from one zip code to the next, and a single county average can mask meaningful variation in tenant-stability indicators across those 14 cities.

The cities inside Hill County

The highest-risk city in the county is Whitney, scoring 4/10 with a population of 2,050. Whitney's score sits at the top of the county range and is the one market here where landlords should underwrite tenant risk most conservatively. Milford follows at 4.1/10 (population 966), and Hubbard comes in at 3.8/10 (population 1,327). The county seat, Hillsboro, the largest city at 8,506 residents, scores 4/10, right at the county average. Itasca (population 2,073) also registers 3.2/10.

The lowest-risk city in the available data is Abbott at 3.1/10 (population 470), followed by Blum at 3.4/10. The spread from Abbott's 1.5 to Whitney's 2.6 underscores that eviction risk is hyper-local even within a small rural county: a landlord buying in Abbott is operating in a meaningfully different environment than one in Whitney, despite the two cities sitting in the same county.

State-level laws that apply here

All Hill County landlords operate under Texas state law, specifically Tex. Prop. Code § 91 and § 92 (Residential Tenancies). Texas requires only a 3-day notice to vacate for non-payment of rent (whether the tenant is a first-time or habitual delinquent), lease violations, holdovers, and end-of-term situations. For squatters or unauthorized occupants, the notice period drops to 0 days under Tex. Prop. Code § 24.011 as added by SB-38. Understanding the Texas eviction process in full detail is critical before serving any notice, because missteps reset the clock. Texas imposes no just-cause requirement and, through TX Local Gov Code § 214.902, the state preempts any local rent-control ordinance, so no city within Hill County can impose rent caps.

If a case proceeds to court, landlords should budget for court filing fees of $54 to $125, sheriff or constable lockout fees of $50 to $175, and attorney fees ranging from $500 to $3,500 depending on complexity. An uncontested eviction typically resolves in 21 to 30 days; a contested case can stretch to 45 to 90 days. Reviewing Texas eviction costs before starting any action helps landlords set realistic expectations and negotiate whether legal representation is worth the spend on a given case.

With a poverty rate of 17.9% and a renter share of 37.4%, Hill County's fundamentals lean toward tenants who are financially stretched, and local conditions vary enough across the 14 cities in the grid above that underwriting each submarket on its own merits is the more reliable approach than treating the county as uniform.