A vehicle can be towed from private property when three things are true. Your community has the authority to order the tow, the notice the law requires is posted and has been up long enough, and the tow is authorized in the exact form your state names. All three are set by state law, and in many places by a city ordinance sitting on top of it.
Get one of the three wrong and you have created a wrongful tow, whatever your parking policy says.
There is no national rule here, and any source that hands you one is wrong. What follows is the shape of the process, four states as worked examples, and the list to take to your own counsel before your policy goes live.
Key takeaways
- Towing from private property is governed by state law, and in many cities by a local ordinance as well, so no single rule covers a portfolio that crosses a state line.
- The signage specifications carry the most detail and no two states agree on them. Texas requires a sign at least 18 inches wide and 24 inches tall. Colorado requires a sign be at least 2 square feet, printed in English and Spanish.
- Who may authorize a tow, and how sharply it differs by location. Colorado requires documented permission for each individual tow, given within the 24 hours before it. Texas accepts a standing written agreement with the tow company.
- Colorado prohibits a towing carrier from patrolling or monitoring a property to enforce parking restrictions on the owner’s behalf.
- ParkM does not tow. Your community keeps its own tow or boot company and sets enforcement terms with that company directly.
Is it legal to tow a car from private property?
Yes, in every state, on the conditions that state sets for itself.
The permission is never a general one. It is conditional, and the conditions are specific enough that a community can satisfy the spirit of the law and still fail it on a minor detail. A sign 2 inches too small. A sign that was posted 20 hours ago rather than 24. A tow authorized by somebody the statute does not allow to authorize it.
That is where the real risk sits. It is rarely a question of whether you were entitled to enforce your own parking rules at your own community. It is a question of whether the signage and the paperwork in front of the tow will hold up when a resident’s attorney asks to see them.
Who actually performs each step, from your on-site team to your enforcement partner to the tow operator, is a separate subject, and it is covered on parking enforcement services for apartment communities.
The three things a state checks before a vehicle moves
Authority over the ground
A road running through your community may be a public right of way rather than part of your lot, and if it is, nobody tows from it on your say-so. Check the recorded plat and your city’s official street map before your policy names a location.
Shared lots have the same problem in a different shape. Where a retail neighbor holds rights over part of the surface, your rules stop at a line that is invisible from a truck at 2am.
Notice, posted and aged
Almost every state requires a tow-away notice at the entrances, and two clocks run on it. The sign has to exist, and it has to have existed for long enough.
Florida requires the notice to be continuously maintained for no fewer than 24 hours before any tow. Texas requires the signs to have been on the facility at the time of towing and for the preceding 24 hours. A sign hung this afternoon does not cover a tow tonight.
Authorization, in the form the state names
This is the step that has changed most in the last few years, and it is the one most likely to be out of date in your files. Some states accept a standing written agreement with the tow company. Others require a named person to sign for each individual vehicle, within a fixed window, on a state form.
The tow-away sign is not the same in any two states
Four states, four different signs. Every requirement below comes from the statute itself.
| State | Statute | What the statute requires |
|---|---|---|
| Texas | Occupations Code 2308.301 and 2308.302 | At least 18 inches wide and 24 inches tall, weather-resistant, on the right or left of each driveway or curb-cut, permanently mounted with the bottom edge 5 to 8 feet above ground. Bright red international towing symbol at least 4 inches high. “Towing Enforced” in white letters at least 2 inches high on a bright red background. The rest, including the days and hours of enforcement, in bright red letters at least 1 inch high on white. The telephone number, answered 24 hours a day, in white on bright red |
| Florida | Statutes 715.07 | At each driveway access or curb cut within 10 feet from the road, or one sign per 25 feet of lot frontage where there are no curbs. “Tow-away zone” in letters at least 4 inches high, mounted 3 to 6 feet above ground. Everything else in light-reflective letters at least 2 inches high on a contrasting background, plus the towing firm’s name and current telephone number |
| California | Vehicle Code 22658 | In plain view at all entrances, at least 17 inches by 22 inches, lettering at least 1 inch high. Must carry the local traffic law enforcement agency’s telephone number and the name and telephone number of every towing company under a written general towing authorization agreement |
| Colorado | C.R.S. 40-10.1-405, as amended by House Bill 24-1051 | At least 2 square feet, lettering at least 1 inch high and sharply contrasting. Carries the restriction, then the days and hours (or “Authorized Parking Only” if it runs around the clock), then the towing carrier’s name and telephone number, in that order. Printed in English and Spanish. Mounted both at the entrance facing the street and inside facing the parking area, 3 to 10 feet from the surface |
Read down the right column and you are reading four unrelated specifications. The minimum sign area runs from 2 square feet in Colorado to 3 square feet in Texas. Texas dictates the color of the letters. Colorado dictates the language they are printed in. Florida counts feet of lot frontage.
Then your city gets a say. Florida writes that into the statute: a local government may require permitting and inspection of these signs before any towing is authorized. So the state rule is the floor, and a municipal ordinance can sit above it.
One thing to keep straight while you price this out. ParkM includes 10 signs carrying your community’s own QR code, so a resident or a guest can buy a permit standing in the lot. Those are permit signage. The tow-away notice your state requires is a separate item on a separate specification, and it stays the property’s responsibility.
Who is allowed to authorize a tow, and how
| State | What has to happen before a specific vehicle is towed |
|---|---|
| Texas | Either the parking facility owner requests that the towing company tow the specific vehicle, or the owner holds a standing written agreement with that company to enforce parking restrictions at the facility. Occupations Code 2308.255(d) |
| Colorado | Documented permission for each individual tow, given within the 24 hours immediately preceding it, signed on a form created by the Public Utilities Commission. It may not be automated and it may not be preapproved. C.R.S. 40-10.1-405(3)(a)(IV) |
| California | Written authorization from the property owner or lessee, or an employee or agent, who must be present at the time of removal and verify the alleged violation. The authorization names the vehicle, the person signing, the grounds, the time the vehicle was first observed, and the time authorization was given. Vehicle Code 22658(l)(1) |
| Florida | The owner or lessee of the property, or a person authorized by them. Statutes 715.07(2) |
Colorado also limits who at your community may sign. An employee with a financial interest in or relationship with the towing carrier, or with a parking lot management company that earns income from managing or controlling parking or from nonconsensual tows, may not grant that permission. If you operate in Colorado, that sentence decides who on your org chart is allowed to hold the pen, and it is a question for your counsel rather than for your vendor.
Colorado bars the tow company from patrolling your lot
C.R.S. 40-10.1-405(3)(e) is one line long: “A towing carrier shall not patrol or monitor property to enforce parking restrictions on behalf of the property owner.”
Plenty of communities run exactly that arrangement, because in most states it is ordinary. This is the rule that catches a regional manager whose portfolio crosses a state line, and nothing in a tow company’s pitch is going to tell you which side of it you are standing on.
An apartment lot is its own case in Texas and Colorado
Texas wrote a section specifically for multifamily. Occupations Code 2308.253 applies only to a parking facility serving or adjacent to an apartment complex. It bars a property from towing a vehicle merely because it does not display an unexpired license plate or registration insignia. A lease provision allowing that tow is valid only if it requires at least 10 days’ written notice first. A conflicting lease provision entered into or renewed on or after January 1, 2004 is void.
Colorado normally requires 24 hours’ written notice on the windshield before a nonconsensual tow from a parking space or common parking area. Two of the exceptions are written for communities like yours. One covers a vehicle occupying or obstructing a resident’s individually designated, rented, or purchased space. The other covers a vehicle parked without authorization in a lot marked for the exclusive use of residents or invited guests. Marking the lot is what buys the exception.
And then the city again. Denver’s Department of Excise and Licenses states in its own guidelines that an apartment building allowing paid parking only for its residents needs no Denver parking lot license, and neither does a lot that is free of charge. Both may still tow, subject to state and local law. The same guidelines note that Denver licenses parking lots while the state Public Utilities Commission licenses towing companies. Two regulators, two sets of paperwork, one city.
Most wrongful tows are administrative, not legal
The statutes are the part that gets written about. The tows that actually blow up at an apartment community usually clear every legal test and fail on the paperwork underneath them.
A resident moves in on the 18th, the office is buried, and the parking paperwork slips. A hangtag ends up on the passenger seat instead of the mirror. A guest buys a permit at 11pm and the office list was printed on Tuesday. A plate is read one character off, at the back of the lot, in the rain.
None of those is a tow company behaving badly. Every one is a gap between what the community knows and what the person standing at the vehicle can see. The causes of unauthorized parking mostly live in that gap too.
Closing it is a records job, and it is the half a property manager actually controls:
- The authorized list has to be current at the moment of the check, not at the moment it was printed. With ParkM a permit is live the second it is bought, so there is no window in which a resident has paid and is not yet safe.
- The plate is not the only identifier. ParkM captures the license plate and the last six digits of the VIN, and the enforcement partner checks those six digits against the vehicle before it moves. That second look is what catches a misread plate.
- Staff and vendor exemptions belong on a list. A no-tow list covers your team, your contractors, and anybody else you name, and plate blocking handles a vehicle that should no longer be on the property at all.
- Warnings first. Compliance flags surface a resident who has collected 3 or more warnings, so escalation arrives with a record behind it.
- Every action carries a timestamp. When the resident arrives at the leasing office, whether that plate held a live permit at that moment is already documented.
Reading the plates is the mechanical half of it, and license plate recognition (LPR) now runs on the enforcement partner’s own phone rather than on equipment bolted to your lot. What LPR changes for enforcement covers that in full. The rest sits in the property manager portal, including the ability to request a tow for one specific vehicle, and the wider capability list is on ParkM’s parking management features.
If you are switching an existing community onto permits, the switch itself is the risky window. That is what grandfathering is for: existing residents enroll free and only new move-ins are charged. The rules do not change mid-lease, and the lot does not fill up with unregistered resident cars during the changeover.
ParkM also covers the cost if a vehicle is wrongly towed. What that covers, and how a claim works, is set out on the no bad tow guarantee.
What to verify before your parking policy goes live
Take this list to your own counsel and your tow partner. Both work in your jurisdiction every day and this page does not.
- Read your own state’s statute, not a summary of it, and read the version in force this year. Colorado’s rules were rewritten in 2024.
- Check your city and county on top of the state. Ask specifically whether your tow-away signs need a permit or an inspection before they count.
- Measure the signs you already have. Size, letter height, colors, wording, height above ground, and distance from each entrance. Photograph them with a tape measure in the frame and date the photo.
- Check the clock on the signs, not just their existence. Several states require them to have been up for at least 24 hours before any tow.
- Confirm who at your community is allowed to authorize a tow, whether that authority can be delegated, and whether it has to be exercised per vehicle or can sit in a standing agreement.
- Ask your tow partner to show you the authorization they file, and what they are required to keep. In Colorado the carrier retains the signed form for 3 years and must provide it to the vehicle owner on request.
- Ask whether your state allows your tow company to patrol. In Colorado it does not.
- Walk the boundary. Confirm which surfaces are yours, which are a public right of way, and where a shared-lot agreement changes the answer.
- Read your own lease against the statute. A clause that conflicts with a state towing rule can simply be void, which is what Texas does to lease provisions written after January 1, 2004 that conflict with its apartment section.
- Make sure the permit list matches the building. Permit limits can be set by unit or by leaseholder, and a periodic reconciliation against the rent roll and the unit directory is what stops the list drifting away from who actually lives there.
Most of the parking policy mistakes apartment communities make are visible in that list before they are visible in a complaint.
What property managers ask about towing from private property
Can an apartment community tow a car from its own lot?
Yes, on the conditions your state sets. In practice that means three things. Tow-away signage that meets the state’s specification and has been posted long enough, a vehicle that is actually in violation of a rule you can point to, and authorization given in the form the statute names. Several states add a written notice on the windshield before the tow.
Do we need a sign before we tow?
Almost always, and the sign has to be the right size, in the right place, and up long enough. Florida requires the notice to be continuously maintained for not fewer than 24 hours before any tow. Texas requires the signs to be on the facility at the time of the tow and for the preceding 24 hours. Check the specification and the clock.
Who has to authorize the tow, us or the tow company?
It depends on the state, and the difference is large. Texas lets a parking facility owner either request a specific vehicle be towed or hold a standing written agreement with the tow company. Colorado requires documented permission for each individual tow, within the 24 hours before it, signed on a state form, and it may not be automated or preapproved.
Can we tow a resident’s car for an expired registration?
In Texas, not merely for that. Occupations Code 2308.253 bars towing a vehicle from an apartment complex parking facility simply because it does not display an unexpired license plate or registration insignia. A lease provision can allow it only if it requires at least 10 days’ written notice first. Other states answer this differently, so check yours.
Does ParkM tow vehicles?
No. ParkM is the permit and visibility layer. Your community keeps its own tow or boot company and sets enforcement terms with that company directly. ParkM tells that partner which plates hold a live permit, records every enforcement action with a timestamp, and covers the cost if a vehicle is wrongly towed.
Where this leaves you
Towing is the part of a parking program that nobody wants to think about and everybody is judged on. The statutes are knowable, they are public, and most of the work of getting them right happens months before the first truck arrives.
What the law will not do for you is keep the authorized list current, and that is where the tows that go wrong actually come from.
If you want to see what your enforcement partner would be reading before they touch a vehicle at your community, book a demo and ask to see the check itself. If you would rather start with what changes day to day for an on-site team, apartment parking management for property managers covers that instead.
This page describes how towing from private property is regulated in general terms and names four states as examples. It is not legal advice. Requirements vary by state and by municipality and they change. Confirm your own with your counsel and your tow partner before your parking policy goes live.
Statutes read September 2026. Last reviewed September 2026.
