Texas Condo and HOA Law Changes: SB 711, HB 614, and What They Mean for Buyers

Texas has no equivalent of Florida's post-Surfside legislative overhaul. There are no mandatory reserve studies, no structural inspection requirements, and no state-imposed reserve funding floors for condominium associations. What Texas has done, across the 88th Legislature (2023) and the 89th Legislature (2025), is tighten the procedural framework governing how associations impose fines, file liens, and communicate with owners. For buyers, these reforms change the governance baseline against which Texas associations must be evaluated.

Four bills are the center of the story: HB 614, HB 886, and HB 1193 from 2023, and SB 711 from 2025.

HB 614 (2023): Fining Procedures

The official caption of HB 614 is "Relating to property owners' association fines." The bill tightened the procedural requirements an association must follow before imposing a fine on an owner, including the content and timing of required notices and the right to a hearing before a fine is levied.

Prior to HB 614, associations sometimes issued fines through processes that gave owners limited notice and limited opportunity to respond. The bill established clearer procedural steps: written notice of the alleged violation, a specified opportunity to cure, and a formal hearing process before the fine could be assessed. Associations that skip any step now face an increased risk that a fined owner can successfully challenge the penalty, forcing the association to absorb legal costs and potentially reverse the fine.

For buyers, the practical implication is forward-looking. Texas associations operating with pre-2023 enforcement processes that have not been updated to reflect HB 614 requirements may be generating legally defective fines. The evidence of that tends to appear in the meeting minutes as legal-expense line items or settlement discussions. When reviewing a resale document package, check whether the association's enforcement records show the notice-and-hearing pattern the statute requires.

HB 886 (2023): Assessment Lien Procedure

HB 886 — "Relating to requirements to file a property owners' association assessment lien" — addressed the procedural prerequisites for placing a lien on an owner's property due to delinquent assessments.

Before an association can file an assessment lien in Texas, it must satisfy a sequence of notice requirements. HB 886 standardized these requirements, specifying what the notices must contain, in what sequence they must be sent, and what opportunity for cure must be provided before the lien can be recorded. Liens filed without following the required procedure are potentially challengeable.

The reform matters to buyers because it provides a framework for evaluating an association's collection history. An association with a documented, procedurally compliant collection process — notices issued in sequence, liens recorded after required cure windows — is managing its cash flow in a legally defensible way. An association whose collection history shows liens filed without supporting documentation, or collection actions that ended in settlements without clear procedural records, may be operating outside the post-2023 framework.

HB 1193 (2023): Non-Discrimination in Rental Policies

HB 1193 — "Relating to prohibiting housing discrimination by a property owners' association against a residential tenant based on the tenant's method of payment" — addressed a narrower governance issue. It prohibited associations from discriminating against tenants based on their payment method, which in practice targeted policies that excluded tenants using housing vouchers or other non-cash payment instruments.

For buyers evaluating rental-restriction policies in a Texas association, HB 1193 is relevant context. Associations cannot enforce rental policies that discriminate on this basis, and any existing rules that do are no longer legally supportable. Buyers who intend to rent their units should review the rental policies in the governing documents against HB 1193's framework, and confirm that the association's management is not applying informal restrictions that conflict with the statute.

SB 711 (2025): Website Publication, Fee Caps, and Management Certificates

SB 711 — "Relating to property owners' associations, including condominium unit owners' associations" — is the most operationally significant of the four bills. It applies to the 89th Legislature's session and took effect in September 2025.

Website publication requirement. Associations with 60 or more units are now required to maintain a website that publishes the declaration, bylaws, current budget, most recent audit or financial review, and minutes. This is a direct transparency obligation that did not exist before SB 711. For buyers, it means that the document package for a covered association should be accessible online, not just on request. An association of 60 or more units that cannot point to a website with current documents as of late 2025 is not in compliance.

Resale certificate fee cap. SB 711 capped the fee an association or management company can charge for preparing a resale certificate at $375. Update certificates — ordered when a previously issued certificate needs refreshing — are capped at $75. Before SB 711, resale certificate fees were unregulated and varied widely; some management companies charged $400 to $600 or more. The cap applies to condominium unit owners' associations as well as single-family property owners' associations.

The resale certificate itself is a critical document in any Texas condo transaction. It discloses the unit's current assessment balance, any delinquent amounts, pending or approved special assessments, and outstanding violations. The $375 cap makes this document more accessible, but the cap is on the fee — not on what the certificate can reveal. A properly issued resale certificate remains the most direct disclosure of the unit's financial standing within the association at the time of closing.

Management certificate and attorney-fee recovery. SB 711 tightened the rules around management certificates — the documents associations file with the county clerk to confirm organizational status and identify their managing entity. The bill tied attorney-fee recovery in collection actions to whether the association's management certificate is current. An association that has not filed a timely management certificate loses the ability to recover attorney fees in a collection proceeding against a delinquent owner. Because attorney-fee recovery is often essential to making collection actions financially viable for the association, this rule creates a direct financial incentive to maintain the certificate.

For buyers, an association's management certificate filing history is publicly available at the county clerk's office. A gap in that filing history may signal administrative disorganization that extends to other governance functions.

The Reserves Gap: What Texas Law Doesn't Require

The reforms above address governance procedures. They do not address reserve funding, which Texas law does not regulate. There is no statutory requirement for Texas condo associations to maintain a reserve study, fund reserves at any particular level, or disclose reserve adequacy in any standardized format beyond the balance disclosure in a resale certificate.

This is a significant contrast with Florida, where the Structural Integrity Reserve Study requirement has fundamentally changed what reserve-fund disclosure means in a transaction. In Texas, the reserve balance on a resale certificate reflects whatever the board has chosen to save. Without a study establishing what the building actually needs, there is no baseline against which to evaluate adequacy. Buyers in Texas must perform that analysis themselves — reviewing the building's age and condition against the disclosed reserve balance, and asking management directly about any capital needs not reflected in the current budget.

A separate article covers the reserve fund rules across Florida, Texas, and Arizona in detail.

Reading a Texas Association Against the Post-2025 Framework

The practical evaluation question for any Texas condo association is whether its governance has been updated to reflect the 2023 and 2025 reforms. The markers are: notice-and-hearing documentation for fines (HB 614 compliance), documented lien-filing procedures with cure windows (HB 886 compliance), accessible website with required documents for associations of 60 or more units (SB 711 compliance), and a current management certificate on file with the county clerk.

None of these require the association to be financially strong. An association can be procedurally compliant and chronically underfunded. But procedural compliance is a necessary condition for governance health, and the 2023–2025 Texas legislation established a clearer standard for what that looks like.

This article describes the Texas legislative framework as of the 89th Legislature (2025). It is not legal advice. Association governance requirements depend on both state statute and the association's governing documents. Buyers with specific concerns about an association's compliance should consult a real estate or community association attorney licensed in Texas.

Sources

• Texas HB 614 (88th Legislature, 2023) — Property owners' association fines
• Texas HB 886 (88th Legislature, 2023) — Property owners' association assessment lien
• Texas HB 1193 (88th Legislature, 2023) — Housing discrimination by property owners' association
• Texas SB 711 (89th Legislature, 2025) — Property owners' associations
• Texas Property Code Chapter 82 — Uniform Condominium Act