Houston, TX Business Licensing & Operations: Pawnbrokers (2026)

Chapter 7 covers antique dealers, common markets, scrap metal processors and secondhand resellers, and it defines who must get a city license, keep records, and report suspected stolen property to police. Sec. " That means a Houston pawnshop does not need the certificate-of-occupancy prerequisite in Sec. 7-5, the identification and web-based reporting duties tied to Sec. 7-1's definitions, or the stolen-property reporting duty in Sec. 7-6 that other covered dealers must follow. The chapter's penalty clause, Sec. 00 per day, likewise has no application to a state-licensed pawnbroker because the pawnbroker was never subject to the chapter's license requirement in the first place.

Where the chapter's retention periods do reach a covered secondhand business, Sec. 7-4 requires the longer of the city or state retention period to control, showing the ordinance is written to defer to, not duplicate, state regulation. For pawnbrokers, that state regulation is the Texas Finance Code's Pawnshop Act, Chapter 371, which requires a state pawnshop license from the Texas Office of Consumer Credit Commissioner before a person can engage in business as a pawnbroker anywhere in the state, Houston included.