How to sell a house in North Dallas
Selling a house in North Dallas takes about two to three months from the day you decide to the day you fund. The part most sellers are never told is that once you accept an offer, you are bound to the contract while the buyer still holds several ways out.
This explains how home selling works in Texas. It is not legal advice and it is not tax advice. Kyle is a Realtor. For advice about your own situation, talk to an attorney or a tax professional.
Nobody reads a guide like this front to back. You are here because something specific is on your mind. Start where you actually are.
- You are thinking about it and have not told anyone. Start with what selling actually looks like.
- You are getting the house ready. Go to what is worth fixing.
- You are interviewing agents. Go to what to ask before you sign.
- It is listed and nobody is coming. Go to what the first ten days tell you.
- You have an offer in hand. Go to reading an offer.
- You are under contract and something broke. Go to when it goes sideways.
- You just want the numbers. Go to what your house is actually worth.
What selling actually looks like, start to finish
It really comes down to three stretches of time, and only one of them is the part people picture.
The first stretch is everything before the sign goes in the yard. Deciding, getting the house ready, pricing it, and signing a listing agreement. That is usually two to four weeks, and how long it takes is mostly up to you.
The second stretch is the market’s answer. Your house goes live and buyers either come or they do not. In July 2026 the middle of that range across North Dallas was somewhere between 18 days and 54 days depending on which city you are in, which is a huge spread and I will get into why.
The third stretch is from the day you accept an offer to the day money hits your account. That is normally 30 to 45 days if the buyer is getting a loan. It is shorter with cash. This is the stretch where you have the least control, and it is the one this guide spends the most time on, because it is where sellers get surprised.
Add it up and two to three months is a fair expectation for most houses. Some go faster. Some sit. Anyone who tells you a number without asking about your house, your price and your city is guessing.
Before you list, the decisions that set your price
The price is mostly decided before any work gets done, by four things you do not control and one you do.
Your city. These suburbs do not move together. In July 2026, Plano homes sold in 18 days and Prosper homes took 49. Same metro, same month, completely different experience.
Your price band. A $400,000 house and a $900,000 house are shopping to different buyers with different financing and different patience. The high end is slower almost everywhere right now.
Your competition. Not how many houses are for sale in your city, how many are for sale that a buyer would consider instead of yours. In Celina that number is large and a lot of it is brand new, which matters a lot, and I will come back to it.
Your timing. Spring is busier. That is real. It also means more competition. Busier is not automatically better for you.
And the one you control: what you do about all four. You cannot move your house to Plano. You can price it honestly against what it is actually competing with. That is the whole job.
Before you talk to anyone, it helps to know two numbers. What you still owe, and roughly what the house would bring. The gap between those, minus the cost of selling, is what you walk away with. If that number does not work for what you are trying to do next, that is worth knowing now, not after you have packed half the house.
What is worth fixing, and what is not
I am going to give you the honest version rather than the one that gets more listings.
Most of the money people spend getting a house ready does not come back. New kitchens do not come back. Whole-house flooring usually does not come back. If you are doing a renovation because you want to enjoy it, do it. If you are doing it to make money on the sale, the math is usually against you.
What does tend to pay for itself is the stuff that removes a buyer’s excuse to knock you down.
Deferred maintenance is the big one. A buyer’s inspector is going to find things. If your water heater is 14 years old and there is a stain on the ceiling, a buyer does not read that as “a water heater and a stain.” They read it as “what else has been ignored.” One visible problem makes people wonder about the ones they cannot see, and that shows up in their offer.
Paint, in the right places. Cleaning, all the way, including the parts you stopped seeing years ago. Landscaping enough that the front of the house does not look tired. Decluttering, which costs nothing but your weekends and does more for photos than almost anything you could buy.
Here is the thing worth deciding on purpose. You can fix it, or you can price it, or you can disclose it and let the buyer deal with it. All three are legitimate. What does not work is ignoring it and hoping, because in Texas you have to disclose what you know anyway, and an inspector is going to find it in week three, when you have a lot less room to negotiate than you have right now.
If money is tight, spend it in this order. Anything actively leaking or broken. Anything a lender would balk at. Anything you can smell. Then cosmetics.
What your house is actually worth
Texas is a non-disclosure state, and that phrase gets thrown around loosely, so here is what it actually means. No government body, including your county appraisal district, can make anyone hand over what a house sold for. Sale prices are not filed into the public record here the way they are in most states.
It does not mean the number is a secret. If your house is listed on the MLS, your broker has to report the sale price there under MLS rules, and appraisal districts pick up a good deal of that data anyway. People get this backwards all the time.
What it means for you is two things.
The first is that Zillow and the rest are working with less to go on here than they are in, say, Colorado. Their estimates lean on public records and whatever else they can pull. They cannot see that you redid the primary bath, and they cannot see that the house three streets over sold for less than it looks like because the seller paid $15,000 toward the buyer’s costs. Treat those estimates as a starting point and nothing more.
The second is that the appraiser on your buyer’s loan is building an opinion from MLS data and their own research, not from a public price history. That is also why an agent who actually knows the sold data in your neighborhood is worth something. It is a real part of what you are hiring.
Now the number that actually matters, and almost nobody talks about it.
Everyone watches days on market. The more useful number is percent of original list price, which is what a house finally sold for compared to what it first asked. It is harder to game. You can relist a house to reset its days on market. You cannot reset what it originally asked.
Here is what those two numbers looked like across North Dallas in July 2026.
Source: NTREIS Trends, single-family residential. Figures as of July 2026.
Source: NTREIS Trends, single-family residential. Figures as of July 2026.
Line up all eight cities I work in by days on market and the percent of original list price falls almost perfectly in step with it. Plano at 18 days got 97.7 percent. Allen and The Colony at 25 days got 97.5 and 97.6. McKinney at 34 days got 96.4. Frisco at 35 days got 95.5. Little Elm at 38 got 94.4. Prosper at 49 days got 92.3.
Now I want to be careful about what that does and does not prove, because this is where people overclaim.
That is a pattern across eight different markets. It is not a controlled test of one house priced two ways. Prosper is not slow because Prosper sellers overprice. Prosper is the most expensive market on that list, with a median around $851,000 and seven months of inventory, and expensive segments are slow almost everywhere right now. The causation runs in more than one direction.
What it does tell you is real enough. The longer a house sits, the further it lands from what it first asked. On a Prosper home at that median, 92.3 percent of the original price is roughly $65,000 under the first ask. In Plano, 97.7 percent is closer to $12,000 under. The house that sits does not just cost you time. It costs you the difference.
And Celina is the exception that proves the point about knowing your competition. Celina took the longest of anyone at 54 days, but it landed at 93.8 percent, better than Prosper. There is a reason. Celina had 1,057 homes for sale in July, in a city considerably smaller than McKinney, which had 1,161. A lot of that is builder inventory. If you are selling a resale house in Celina, you are competing with a builder who can buy down a buyer’s interest rate in a way you cannot match by dropping your price. That is a different problem than being overpriced, and it needs a different answer.
What to ask a listing agent before you sign
You are about to sign a contract that ties you to one person for months. Interview like it.
Two more that are not about skill. Who actually shows up, and how do you communicate? Some agents run teams and you will get a different person every time. That is not automatically bad, but you should know it going in rather than finding out on a Saturday. And ask how often you will hear from them when nothing is happening, because nothing happening is exactly when sellers get anxious and stop trusting people.
The listing agreement, and how commission works now
The listing agreement is between you and a brokerage. It sets the price, the term, and what you are paying. All three are negotiable. The form is not a TREC form, it comes from Texas REALTORS, and there is no law setting the number in it.
The bigger change is what happened to the buyer’s side.
This paragraph is new. It arrived with TREC form 20-19, which took effect on July 1, 2026 and replaced the form Texas used before it. If you are reading an article about selling a house in Texas that talks about “paragraph 23” or describes commission as one number split two ways, you are reading something written for a contract that is no longer in use.
So what do you actually do about it? Honestly, it depends on your price range and your competition, and I would rather talk it through than hand you a rule.
Contributing to the buyer’s agent widens your buyer pool. Some buyers, especially first-time buyers and VA buyers, are stretched on cash and cannot pay their agent out of pocket on top of everything else. If you will not help, some of those buyers cannot practically write on your house.
Not contributing keeps that money. In a fast segment with thin inventory, it may cost you nothing.
Look at your own market before deciding. In The Colony in July, there were 139 single-family homes for sale and homes were going in 25 days at 97.6 percent of ask. In Celina there were 1,057 for sale and it took 54 days. Those two sellers should not make the same decision.
Going live, and what the first ten days tell you
Photography is not the place to save money. Most buyers decide whether your house is worth their Saturday from a phone screen. That is the whole job of the photos.
Once you are live, the first ten days are the most information you are going to get, and they are worth reading properly.
Here is the useful frame. Showings and offers are two different signals and they fail for two different reasons.
No showings is a price problem or a photo problem. Buyers are seeing your house in the search results and not clicking, or clicking and not booking. Either the number is wrong for what they can see, or what they can see is not doing the house justice.
Showings but no offers is usually a condition problem or an expectation problem. People are coming, and something in the house is talking them out of it. That is more fixable than it feels, but only if you find out what it is.
For that, one more number nobody publishes.
Source: NTREIS Trends, single-family residential. Figures as of July 2026.
That is how many people typically walked through before somebody wrote an offer. If you are in Frisco and you have had four showings and no offers, you are not behind. That is normal. If you are in Prosper you should expect around 13, and that number nearly doubled from a year earlier, so patience there is not optimism, it is just accurate.
If you have had 20 showings and nothing, the market has told you something clearly and it is worth listening the first time.
Reading an offer, where price is one line of many
The number on the front page is the part everyone looks at. It is genuinely not the most important part.
How they are paying. Cash removes the appraisal and the lender. A conventional loan with 20 percent down has more cushion than one with 3 percent down. FHA and VA have their own property standards. None of that makes an offer bad, it just changes what can go wrong later.
The option period. How many days, and how much are they paying for it. A shorter option period is worth real money to you. That is the window where they can leave for no reason.
The closing date. Does it work for wherever you are going next.
What they are asking you to pay. A contribution toward their costs, or toward their agent, comes straight off your bottom line. A $700,000 offer with $20,000 in contributions is a $680,000 offer.
Earnest money. How much are they putting up. It is not a perfect signal of seriousness, but a thin earnest money deposit next to a big price is worth noticing.
What they are asking for beyond the house. The fridge, the washer and dryer, the mounted TVs. Those go on a Non-Realty Items Addendum and they are negotiable like anything else.
One thing that is easy to miss. Under the current contract, the escrow agent can release the option fee to you at any time without asking the buyer, and it gets credited against the sales price at closing. It is your money once it is paid.
You accepted. Now you are married and they are still dating
This is the part I most want you to understand, because almost nobody explains it before it is happening.
The day you accept, your obligations lock in and theirs mostly do not.
You are off the market. Your house goes pending. Under the contract you can keep showing it and take back-up offers, but that is the whole extent of your freedom. And if you decide next week that you would rather not sell after all, the buyer can sue you to force the sale. Not just for their costs. To actually make you sell the house.
Because here is what they have that you do not.
That is the option period. But their exits do not stop when it ends. They also have a way out if the title work turns up something they object to and you will not fix it, if you never gave them the seller’s disclosure, if the new groundwater disclosure never showed up, if their lender demands repairs the two of you cannot agree on, and if the house is damaged before closing.
And this one, which runs almost all the way to the closing table.
Now, I said I would give you the honest version, so here is the other half.
You are not powerless. You have exits, they just all require the buyer to do something wrong first. If their earnest money never shows up in three days, you can terminate or go after them under the default paragraph, or both. If they never paid the option fee, they never had that unrestricted right to begin with. And if they simply fail to close, the default remedies are yours to use. TREC even publishes a Notice of Seller’s Termination of Contract, form 50-0, for exactly these situations.
That is the real shape of it. Your exits depend on them making a mistake. Their biggest exit depends on nothing at all. Understanding that before you accept is what lets you negotiate the option period like it matters, because it does.
The option period, and the deadline people miss
Two details cost people real money here.
The first is the clock. Notice of termination has to be given by 5:00 p.m. local time on the last day. Not midnight. And unlike the money deadline in Paragraph 5A, this one has no weekend rollover written into the contract. If the last day is a Sunday, it is still Sunday.
The second is the fee itself.
The whole paragraph also says that time is of the essence and strict compliance is required, which is contract language for “these dates are real.”
Buyer's clock
Earnest money and option fee due
3 days after the Effective Date
This one does roll forward past a weekend or a legal holiday. Only eleven days count as legal holidays here, and Christmas Eve is not one of them.
If you want to see all of your own dates laid out, I built a Texas contract deadline calculator that does it from your effective date and closing date.
What you owe once you are under contract
Your side of the deal is mostly about access, disclosure and not letting things fall apart.
Keep the utilities on. At your expense, for as long as the contract is alive. Inspectors cannot inspect a house with the power off, and a delay here is a delay you caused.
Give them access at reasonable times. One exception worth knowing: hydrostatic testing, where a plumber pressurizes your sewer lines, requires your separate written permission. You do not have to agree to it.
The seller’s disclosure. Texas Property Code 5.008 requires it for most homes, and TREC’s current version is form 55-1, which took effect May 28, 2026. Fill it out honestly and completely. If you never deliver it, the buyer can walk any time before closing. If you deliver it late, they get seven days from receiving it to walk for any reason.
There are eleven exemptions in the statute, including a sale by a fiduciary administering a decedent’s estate and a brand new home nobody has ever lived in. If you are selling a house you inherited, you are likely exempt from the form. Being exempt from the form is not permission to conceal a defect you know about. That exposure lives outside 5.008 entirely, and it is a conversation for an attorney, not for me.
The district notices. If your house is in a MUD, a PID, or another special district, there are separate statutory notices, and the MUD one has to be signed before the contract is finally executed. The current contract collects all of this in Paragraph 22 with a plain warning attached.
The HOA paperwork. If you are in an HOA, the buyer is entitled to the resale certificate and governing documents. The association has ten business days from a written request, and there are caps on what they can charge: no more than $375 to assemble and deliver, and no more than $75 for an update. If they miss it, you send a second request by certified mail, and if they miss that by five business days you can go after them for a judgment of up to $5,000 plus costs and fees, and deduct it from future assessments. Start this early. HOA management companies are a common reason closings slip.
And a new one. If you have smart devices, the current contract now makes their handover your obligation.
The deadlines that actually matter
Most sellers are told about the option period and nothing else. There are seven others.
Title company's clock
Title commitment due to the buyer
20 days after the title company receives the contract
If it never shows up, the buyer can terminate and take the earnest money.
Seller's clock
Seller's cure period
15 days after you receive the buyer's title objections
You are not obligated to spend a dollar curing anything. If it is not cured, the buyer has 5 days after this to terminate or waive. If they do nothing, they have waived.
Buyer's clock
Buyer's financing exit
3 days before the Closing Date
Appraisal, insurability and lender required repairs. This is the one nobody warns sellers about.
Run your own contract through the deadline calculator and you will see all eight on one page with whose clock each one is on.
Closing, and what actually comes out of your check
Your sale price is not your money. Here is what comes out of it, and Paragraph 12 of the contract sets most of it.
Your mortgage payoff, including any prepayment penalty and the recording fees to release the lien. The compensation you owe your own broker under your listing agreement. Half the escrow fee. Preparing the deed. Tax statements. Anything you agreed to contribute toward the buyer’s costs, and separately, anything you agreed to contribute toward the buyer’s agent. Any repairs you agreed to make. And a private transfer fee, if your neighborhood has one, is yours unless you negotiated otherwise.
Property taxes get prorated through the closing date, and this is where people get surprised.
That last part is worth reading twice. The adjustment after the fact is a real obligation, not a formality, and it can go either direction.
For an estimate on your own numbers, the seller net proceeds calculator will get you close. It is an estimate. Your title company’s settlement statement is the real thing, and you should ask to see a draft of it before closing day rather than reading it for the first time at the table.
One more. At closing you deliver a general warranty deed and tax statements showing nothing delinquent. If you have unpaid property taxes, deal with that early. It does not go away quietly.
When it goes sideways
If this happens: the appraisal comes in below the sales price
What is actually true
Nothing happens automatically. A low appraisal does not cancel the contract and it does not change your price. It changes what the buyer's lender will lend against the house, which means the buyer is short somewhere.
Your options
What I would do
Ask to see the appraisal before you concede anything. Look at which comparable sales were used. Appraisers here are working without public sale prices, and they sometimes miss a recent sale on your street. If they did, a reconsideration request through the lender is worth trying before you give up a dollar. Also worth knowing: TREC has a promulgated addendum, form 49-1, that settles this in advance, though it cannot be used on FHA or VA loans.
If this happens: the inspection report comes back long
What is actually true
Every inspection report is long. That is the job. A 40-page report on a 15-year-old house is normal and does not mean anything is wrong. What matters is whether the buyer asks for anything, and what.
Your options
What I would do
Separate safety and structure from cosmetics before you respond, and answer those two piles differently. If you do agree to repairs, the contract requires permits where they are required and people who do this for a living, and any transferable warranty comes to the buyer at your expense. Do not hand this to a handyman friend and hope.
If this happens: the buyer's financing falls apart
What is actually true
It depends entirely on when and why. Before their buyer approval deadline, or before three days prior to closing on a property issue, they can terminate with the correct notice and a written statement from the lender, and the earnest money goes back to them. If they blow the deadline and then fail to close, that is a different conversation.
Your options
What I would do
Keep taking back-up offers the entire time you are under contract. The contract expressly allows it and it costs you nothing. And ask your agent to get status updates from the buyer's lender along the way, which the financing addendum authorizes. Finding out about a problem in week two beats finding out three days before closing.
If this happens: the deal dies and nobody agrees about the earnest money
What is actually true
The title company cannot just hand it to whoever asks. They need a release signed by both sides, or a court order. This is where people dig in over money that is often smaller than the legal fight.
Your options
What I would do
Read the demand paragraph before you dig in. If a written demand goes to the escrow agent and nobody objects in writing within 15 days, they can disburse. And a party who wrongfully refuses to sign a release within 7 days of the request can be liable for damages, the earnest money itself, attorney's fees and all costs of suit. That cuts both ways. Look at the number honestly and ask whether it is worth your next four months.
Every question worth asking, in one place
Take these to any agent you interview.
- What would you list my house for, and what would you expect it to actually sell for?
- What did the last five homes you listed sell for against their original asking price?
- How did you arrive at this price, and what would make you tell me to lower it?
- What am I agreeing to pay you, and what happens if I decide not to sell?
- Are you asking me to contribute toward the buyer’s agent, and what does that do for my buyer pool?
- Who actually shows up? You, or someone else on your team?
- How often will I hear from you when nothing is happening?
- What would you fix in this house, and what would you leave alone?
- Which districts is my house in, and what notices do I owe because of them?
- Walk me through what happens the day we accept an offer.
An agent who answers all ten straight, including the ones that are awkward, is telling you something about how the next three months will go.
Where this leaves you
Selling is mostly two decisions. What you list it for, and how you respond when the market answers. Everything else is process, and process can be handled.
The part I would not want you to walk into blind is the asymmetry after you accept. You are committed and they are not, not fully, not for a while. That is not a reason to be afraid of it. It is a reason to take the option period seriously when you negotiate, to keep taking back-up offers, and to keep an eye on the buyer’s lender instead of assuming.
Your house, your timeline, your call. If you want a straight read on your specific situation, that is what I am here for.
Frequently asked questions
In July 2026 the median single-family home took 18 days to sell in Plano, 25 in Allen and The Colony, 34 in McKinney, 35 in Frisco, 38 in Little Elm, 49 in Prosper, and 54 in Celina. Add roughly 30 to 45 days after that for the buyer's financing and closing.
Your costs come out of the sale proceeds at closing. Expect the payoff on your mortgage, the compensation you agreed to pay your own broker, title and escrow fees, and anything you agreed to contribute toward the buyer's costs. Paragraph 12 of the TREC contract lists who pays what.
Yes, and in more ways than most sellers expect. During the option period the buyer can terminate for any reason at all. After that they still have outs for financing, the appraisal, insurability, title objections and lender required repairs. The financing exit runs until three days before closing.
Almost always. Texas Property Code 5.008 requires it for a home with no more than one dwelling unit. There are eleven exemptions, including a sale by an executor administering an estate and a brand new home nobody has lived in. Being exempt from the form does not let you hide a defect you know about.
The buyer pays a negotiated option fee, and in exchange they can cancel for any reason at all during the option period. Under the current TREC contract that lives in Paragraph 5. The option fee is not refunded when they use it, but their earnest money is. If they never paid the fee, they never had that right.
Sources
- TREC One to Four Family Residential Contract (Resale), Form 20-19, effective 07/01/2026
- TREC Third Party Financing Addendum, Form 40-11
- TREC Seller's Disclosure Notice, Form 55-1
- Texas Property Code Chapter 5, Seller's Disclosures
- Texas Property Code Chapter 207, Subdivision Information and Resale Certificates
Questions about your own sale?
Every house is different. If you want this applied to yours, reach out and I will walk you through it.
Contact Kyle