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Selling a House With Work That Was Never Inspected Converted garages, enclosed patios, added bathrooms, a second structure out back. Plenty of Texas houses carry work that was done without a permit, sometimes decades ago by an owner who has long since moved on. It becomes your problem at closing. The first issue is simple arithmetic. If a bedroom was added without permits, it likely does not appear in the county records or the tax roll. An appraiser measuring the house w

Selling a Vacant House in Texas An empty house is not a paused house. It is a house that is quietly deteriorating and costing money, and in the Texas climate it does both faster than owners expect. Start with the insurance problem, because it is the one that turns an inconvenience into a loss. Most standard homeowner's policies contain a vacancy clause that limits or voids coverage once a property has been unoccupied beyond a set period, commonly thirty or sixt

What Your Texas House Is Actually Worth Three numbers get called the value of your house and they are not the same thing. Confusing them is behind most of the frustration sellers feel when an offer arrives. The first is the county appraisal district's assessed value, which exists to calculate property tax. Texas is a non-disclosure state, meaning sale prices are not public record, so appraisal districts estimate from the data they can get. That figure is often wrong in b

Selling As Is Does Not Mean Saying Nothing The single most common misunderstanding in a Texas home sale is that selling a house as is removes the obligation to disclose. It does not. As is describes who pays for repairs. Disclosure describes what the buyer is told. They are separate things and confusing them creates liability that survives closing. Texas requires a seller of residential property to give the buyer a written Seller's Disclosure Notice covering the property

What an Empty House Costs You Every Month An empty house is not a paused house. It is a house that is quietly deteriorating and costing money, and in the Texas climate it does both faster than owners expect. Start with the insurance problem, because it is the one that turns an inconvenience into a loss. Most standard homeowner's policies contain a vacancy clause that limits or voids coverage once a property has been unoccupied beyond a set period, commonly thirty or sixt

Selling a House When You Relocate for Work A job relocation turns a house sale into a scheduling problem. The start date is fixed, the move is fixed, and the house is the one variable that refuses to cooperate. Most of the bad outcomes here come from treating it as a pricing question when it is really a timing question. Work out your actual deadline first. Not the start date — the date after which carrying two housing costs becomes painful. If the new city requires a dep

How the Payoff Actually Works at Closing Most people sell a house they still owe money on, and most have only a rough idea of the mechanics. The mortgage does not transfer and it does not simply vanish. It gets paid off out of the proceeds at closing, and the order in which that happens explains several things that otherwise look strange. At closing the title company requests a payoff statement from your lender. That figure is not your remaining principal. It is principa

Managing a Texas Property Sale From Another State Inheriting Texas property while living somewhere else combines two problems that are manageable separately and awkward together: establishing your authority to sell, and doing everything at a distance. Authority comes first. A title company will want proof that ownership passed properly. If there is a will going through probate, the executor generally has authority once the will is admitted and letters testamentary i