Guide
Condo Resale Certificate Review
In Texas, a resale certificate is the statutory document that gives a prospective condo or HOA unit buyer a snapshot of the association's financial and legal standing at the moment of sale. Property Code Chapter 82 governs certificates issued by condominium owners associations; Chapter 209 covers property owners associations.
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Senate Bill 711 — enacted in 2025 and effective September 2025 — imposed new timing rules on COAs with 60 or more units, required website publication of governing documents, and codified the $375 fee cap on certificate preparation. Understanding what the certificate must contain, what it frequently omits, and how to read it against the documents it references is the foundation of a sound Texas condo purchase.
What Texas law requires the certificate to contain
Under Texas Property Code Chapter 82, a condominium association's resale certificate must disclose the current amount of assessments levied against the unit, any amounts past due, the monthly or periodic assessment schedule going forward, any special assessments that have been approved but not yet collected, the association's current operating budget, a statement of the association's current reserve balance and whether a reserve study has been completed, a description of any current or pending litigation involving the association, any known violations associated with the unit, restrictions on the unit's use or rental, and the total amount the association may charge for the certificate preparation. Chapter 209, which governs general property owners associations in Texas, imposes a materially similar disclosure set for HOA transactions. SB 711 (2025) added that COAs with 60 or more units must maintain a website where the declaration, bylaws, current budget, and most recent audit or financial review are published and accessible to owners. A resale certificate that does not reflect information consistent with what is on that required website should be treated as a discrepancy worth resolving before closing.
The $375 fee cap and SB 711 timing rules
Before statutory caps existed, Texas associations and their management companies charged widely varying fees for resale certificates — sometimes several hundred dollars with no ceiling. The $375 cap codified by SB 711 (2025) is the maximum an association may charge for a standard resale certificate preparation under current Texas law. An update to a previously issued resale certificate — requested when material information has changed during the transaction period — is separately capped at $75 under current statute. SB 711 also imposed timeliness requirements on management certificates: when an association fails to file or update its management certificate on time, it may be barred from recovering attorney fees in subsequent collection or enforcement actions. This enforcement mechanism creates an indirect incentive for associations to keep their administrative records current — which in turn affects the reliability of the data in the resale certificate. For a buyer, the practical test is whether the association's management certificate is current and whether the resale certificate's financial figures reconcile with the published budget and reserve balance the website is now required to display.
What the Texas resale certificate does not address: the reserve gap
Unlike Florida, which mandates reserve studies under Chapter 718 and requires associations to budget adequately for identified capital needs, Texas imposes no statutory requirement for reserve studies or minimum reserve funding levels. There is no Texas equivalent to Florida's structural integrity reserve study requirement, no mandated study frequency, and no minimum funded percentage enforced by statute. This gap means that a Texas resale certificate can be fully compliant — disclosing the reserve balance honestly and accurately — while describing a reserve fund that is materially inadequate to cover the association's actual long-term capital needs. A certificate that shows a $40,000 reserve balance is not hiding anything if that is what the fund contains; the question is whether $40,000 is appropriate for a 15-year-old building with a $2 million replacement cost for its common elements. Because Texas law does not require a reserve study, many associations do not have one, and the resale certificate will simply disclose the balance without context. Buyers in Texas must supply that context themselves — or find a review process that does it for them — because the statutory document will not.
HB 614, HB 886, and HB 1193 — the 2023 disclosure reforms and what carried forward
Three Texas bills passed in the 2023 session addressed property owners association practices in ways that affect the resale certificate landscape. HB 614 (effective January 2024) tightened the procedures an association must follow when imposing fines on owners, including notice and hearing requirements before a fine can be levied — relevant to buyers reviewing fine and violation disclosures on a resale certificate. HB 886 added procedural requirements that an association must satisfy before it can file an assessment lien against an owner, creating additional protections for delinquent owners and producing lien-procedure information that may appear in a resale certificate's encumbrance disclosure. HB 1193 prohibited property owners associations from discriminating against residential tenants based on the tenant's method of payment — relevant to buyers who intend to rent the unit, because rental and tenant restrictions documented in the resale certificate must now reflect the updated statutory framework. These 2023 reforms were primarily HOA-focused under Chapter 209; their direct application to Chapter 82 condo associations is narrower but not zero. A resale certificate that predates the effective dates of these bills, or that was generated by a management company that has not updated its disclosure templates, may not reflect the current statutory framework.
What is frequently incomplete in Texas resale certificates
Field experience with Texas condo and HOA resale certificates — and the statutory framework itself — points to several categories of information that are commonly missing, vague, or difficult to interpret without supplementary documents. Reserve balance disclosures frequently lack context: the certificate may show a dollar amount without a corresponding capital needs assessment or reserve study to benchmark it against. Pending litigation disclosures are often framed narrowly, disclosing only formal filed suits rather than association-level disputes in negotiation or demand-letter stage. Pending special assessments that have been discussed at board meetings but not yet formally voted on will not appear in a certificate that is technically current as of the certification date. Rental restriction language in the certificate may not reflect recent board-adopted rules or amendments that have not been incorporated into the recorded governing documents. And association websites, while now required for COAs with 60 or more units under SB 711, may not yet fully reflect the published-document requirements in cases where associations are in the early compliance period.
How to read the Texas resale certificate as part of a complete document review
The resale certificate is the entry point into a Texas condo document review, not the endpoint. The certificate discloses what exists and what is currently owed; the budget and financials explain whether the current fee level is adequate; the meeting minutes from the past two to three years surface repair discussions, assessment votes, and vendor disputes that a snapshot document cannot capture. For Texas transactions, the absence of a statutory reserve study mandate makes the budget-to-reserve-balance ratio and the age and condition of the building's common elements especially important to evaluate independently. Ask whether the association has voluntarily commissioned a reserve study, and if so, request it as part of the document package. Compare the reserve balance disclosed in the certificate against the replacement-cost estimates in any available study. Cross-check the litigation disclosure against publicly available county court records for the association's name. And confirm the SB 711 website, if applicable, is live and that its published documents are consistent with what the management company has provided.
Reviewer's checklist
- Confirm the resale certificate was prepared by or on behalf of the association and bears the current certification date
- Verify the fee charged does not exceed the $375 statutory cap under current Texas law
- If an update certificate was requested, verify that fee does not exceed $75
- Identify any past-due assessments disclosed and confirm the seller's obligation to cure them at closing
- Check whether any special assessments have been approved by the board and confirm whether they appear in the certificate
- Review the reserve balance disclosed and ask whether the association has a reserve study to contextualize it
- If no reserve study exists, ask the board or management company when the building's major systems were last replaced
- Confirm whether the association is a COA with 60 or more units subject to SB 711 website requirements, and verify the website is live
- Cross-reference the litigation disclosure against county court records using the association's legal name
- Review meeting minutes from the past 24 months for repair discussions, assessment votes, and pending vendor disputes
- Confirm rental restriction language in the certificate reflects any amendments adopted after the original declaration was recorded
- Ask whether the association's management certificate is current and on file with the county, as required for attorney-fee recovery under SB 711
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The framework on this page applies nationally. For state-specific statutes, disclosures, and the documents associations are required to provide, see your state hub.
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