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MCA debt in Houston: what the exit costs, what the funder takes, and how fast it closes

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The advance was affordable when the quarter was good. That is how nearly every Houston file starts. Then crude slid, or a storm closed the Gulf, or a general contractor went 90 days on an invoice, and the fixed daily debit stayed exactly where it was. The balance is not the emergency. The debit is. It lands before payroll, before the fuel card clears, before the vendor who keeps the crew working gets paid.

MCA debt is the most negotiable commercial paper there is. Houston files land near 55 cents on the dollar, and the average advance in this market is $17,000. What decides where inside that range you land is not how politely you ask. It is the funding date on your contract, what the reconciliation paragraph says, and whether the funder wants a Texas court reading its own documents out loud.

What a Houston file actually closes at

A Houston trucking company came in owing $65,000 on a single advance. It closed at $27,300. The funder took 42 cents on the dollar and released the file. The reduction was $37,700, and the debits stopped while the number was being argued.

That is a data point, not a promise. It sits below the Houston average of 55 cents because the paperwork gave counsel something to work with. Two advances of identical size can finish 13 cents apart on contract language alone.

Run the arithmetic on your own number. At the Houston average advance of $17,000, a 55-cent settlement means you pay $9,350 and $7,650 goes away. At 42 cents you pay $7,140 and $9,860 goes away. On a stack of four advances, the gap between those two outcomes is roughly the cost of a driver for a year.

What settlement costs, and why the fee basis beats the fee rate

Fees across this category run 15 to 25 percent. The rate is the smaller question. The basis is the bigger one.

A fee on enrolled debt is figured against what you bring in the door. A fee on the settled amount is figured against what you actually pay. Take $60,000 of Houston advances settled at 55 cents. You pay $33,000. Twenty percent of enrolled debt is $12,000. Twenty percent of the settlement is $6,600. Same percentage, same result, $5,400 apart.

Delancey Street charges a percentage of enrolled debt and collects nothing until a settlement closes. Freedom Debt Relief charges 15 to 25 percent of enrolled debt plus $9.95 a month, on a $7,500 minimum. Pacific Debt Relief charges 15 to 25 percent of the settled amount, on a $10,000 minimum that excludes the average Houston advance outright.

Three questions tell you whether a fee agreement is honest. Is anything due before a settlement closes. Is there a monthly charge stacked on top. Will the firm put the basis in writing before you sign. A firm that will not answer the third one has answered it.

Why the funding date on your contract changes everything

Texas split its own law on September 1, 2025. Before you argue anything, find the funding date.

On advances funded before that date, Finance Code § 306.103(b) made the parties’ own label conclusive. Written as a purchase of receivables, the deal was not a transaction for the use or forbearance of money, and the usury question never opened at all. On advances funded on or after that date, § 398.004 says a sales-based financing transaction is not an account purchase transaction, regardless of the size of the advance. The label stops deciding. A court does.

H.B. 700 carries no savings clause. Whether §§ 398.004 and 398.055 reach a contract signed before September 1, 2025 is unresolved, and no opened decision answers it. That is an open question, not a settled one. Any firm that tells you otherwise is selling you certainty it does not have.

Sort your advances into two piles by that date. The sort takes ten minutes and it changes which arguments exist on your file.

The reconciliation clause is the lever most Houston owners never pull

Texas now defines this product by its reconciliation. Finance Code § 398.001(1) describes sales-based financing as a transaction repaid as a percentage of sales or revenue, or repaid on a fixed schedule with a reconciliation process that adjusts the payment back to a percentage of sales or revenue.

Now read your own agreement against that. An oilfield services company on a fixed $840 daily debit, holding a reconciliation paragraph the funder has never once honored, is carrying a contract that does not do what the funder says it does. The requests go unanswered. Bank statements get demanded, then ignored. The debit stays at $840 while receipts fall by half.

Ignoring a reconciliation request is a breach of the funder’s own contract. It is also the single fact that most reliably moves a settlement number, because no funder wants a judge examining how that mechanism worked in practice on a Houston file.

Put every reconciliation request in writing and date it. Keep the replies. Keep the silences too. The silences are the record.

Can the funder legally keep debiting your account?

Finance Code § 398.056 puts a condition on the debit itself. A provider or broker may not establish a mechanism for automatically debiting your deposit account unless it holds a validly perfected first priority security interest in that account under Chapter 9 of the Business and Commerce Code.

First priority. In that account. On a stacked Houston file most funders do not hold that, because the first funder took the position and the second, third and fourth took whatever was left.

Chapter 398 gives you no private right of action, so read this correctly. Section 398.102 sets a $10,000 civil penalty per violation, enforced by the Office of Consumer Credit Commissioner, and you do not collect a dollar of it. What you get is a question the funder has to answer for a regulator rather than for you. Funders close files at numbers they would not otherwise write when that question is on the table.

Do not simply close the account the debits hit. That can be read as a breach of the agreement. Get the contract read first.

What to pull this week

Four things. Every advance agreement with its funding date visible. Ninety days of bank statements showing the debits. Every default or demand letter. And your UCC filings, which sit with the Texas Secretary of State under Bus. & Com. Code § 9.501(a)(2). The Secretary of State stopped taking paper filings on August 29, 2025, so that record is online and searchable.

Then check two dates. Whether any advance was funded on or after September 1, 2025. And whether a judgment has already been signed against you, because Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 329b(a) gives you 30 days from signing to move for new trial. After the trial court’s plenary power runs out you are down to a bill of review.

Do not take a fifth advance to cover the fourth. That is the move that turns a $17,000 problem into a $70,000 one.

Then have the contracts read by someone who does this every day. The review costs nothing and comes back in a day or two, and it tells you which of the arguments above your paperwork actually contains.