The Texas seller's disclosure notice
Texas law requires most home sellers to give the buyer a written disclosure of what they know about the property's condition. The current TREC form is 55-1, effective May 28, 2026. If you never deliver it, the buyer can cancel any time before closing.
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.
This is the form sellers worry about most, and usually for the wrong reason. People think of it as a confession. It is closer to a statement of what you know, on the day you sign it, and the risk sits almost entirely in what you leave out on purpose.
What the law actually requires
Texas Property Code 5.008 says a seller of residential real property with no more than one dwelling unit has to give the buyer a written notice, either the one the statute prints or something substantially similar that covers at least the same items.
TREC publishes the version almost everyone uses. The current one is form 55-1, and it took effect May 28, 2026. It replaced form 55-0, which itself replaced the old OP-H that some people still call it. The form states on its face that it is for contracts entered into on or after September 1, 2023, which lines up with the last time the legislature amended the statute.
If you are looking at a blank disclosure your agent handed you and it does not say 55-1 at the bottom, ask for a current one.
When it has to be delivered
The statute itself is stricter than the contract about timing. Section 5.008(f) says the notice is delivered “on or before the effective date.” The contract gives you a negotiated number of days to catch up if it was not attached at signing. Either way, the cleanest version is to have it filled out and attached before your house ever goes live, so a buyer is writing an offer with it in hand.
That has a practical benefit too. A buyer who knew about the foundation work before they wrote the offer has a much harder time using it to renegotiate in week three.
The eleven exemptions
Section 5.008(e) says the requirement does not apply to a transfer:
- Under a court order or foreclosure sale
- By a trustee in bankruptcy
- To a mortgagee by a mortgagor, or to a beneficiary of a deed of trust by a trustor
- By a lender who took the property back at a foreclosure sale or by deed in lieu
- By a fiduciary in the course of administering a decedent’s estate, guardianship, conservatorship, or trust
- From one co-owner to one or more other co-owners
- To a spouse, or to someone in the direct line of family (parent, child, grandparent, grandchild)
- Between spouses under a divorce decree or a related property settlement
- To or from any governmental entity
- Of a new home that has never been occupied
- Where the value of any dwelling is not more than five percent of the property’s value
Two of those come up constantly around here.
Number five is the estate exemption. If you are an executor selling a house you inherited and never lived in, you are very likely exempt. That makes sense. You genuinely do not know whether the roof was patched in 2019.
Number ten is why a builder hands you nothing. A brand new house has no seller’s disclosure because nobody has lived in it. If you are buying new construction, that absence is normal, and it is a reason your own inspection matters more, not less.
Now the part I want to be straight about.
Being exempt from the form is not permission to hide something you know. The exemption gets you out of the statutory notice. It does not get you out of everything else, and the exposure for concealing a known material defect lives outside section 5.008 entirely. That is a conversation for a real estate attorney about your specific facts, not something I am going to characterize for you. I am a Realtor, not a lawyer.
What most executors actually do, and what I would suggest, is fill the form out anyway with a plain note at the top that they never occupied the property and are answering only from records and what they were told. You get the goodwill and the buyer gets something honest.
What the form asks
The current form runs four pages. Broadly it covers:
What is in the house and whether it works. The usual systems, plus a few people do not expect: emergency escape ladders, carbon monoxide alarms, and the type of fuel gas piping, broken out as black iron pipe, corrugated stainless steel tubing, or copper. It also asks how your water is supplied, with MUD listed as one of the choices alongside city, well, and co-op.
Smoke detectors, with a reference to Chapter 766 of the Health and Safety Code. Worth knowing: a buyer can ask you to install detectors for the hearing impaired, but they have to give you written evidence from a licensed physician and make the request in writing within ten days after the effective date.
Known defects, room by room and system by system. Walls, ceilings, floors, doors, windows, roof, foundation, slab, driveways, sidewalks, fences, plumbing, sewers and septic, and other structural components.
Specific conditions. Termites and wood rot, previous structural or roof repair, improper drainage, lead-based paint, asbestos, hazardous or toxic waste, and previous use of the property to manufacture methamphetamine.
Flooding, in real detail. Whether you carry flood insurance now, whether the property has flooded from a reservoir failure or a controlled release, whether water has ever gotten in from a natural flood event, and whether the house sits wholly or partly in a 100-year floodplain, a 500-year floodplain, a floodway, a flood pool, or a reservoir. The statutory definitions are printed right on the form. There is also a question about whether you have ever received FEMA or SBA assistance for flood damage. Most of this arrived in a 2019 amendment, and it is the section people fill out most carelessly.
Legal and neighborhood items. Unpermitted room additions or alterations, HOA dues and assessments, common areas held in undivided interest, notices of deed restriction or ordinance violations, lawsuits affecting the property, and any condition that materially affects the physical health or safety of someone living there.
Water and land items. A rainwater harvesting system over 500 gallons that also uses a public supply, whether the property sits in a groundwater conservation district or a subsidence district, and conservation easements.
And two questions about insurance that deserve more attention than they get. Whether the property is presently covered by insurance, and whether you have ever been unable to insure it for any reason. Insurability is a live problem in Texas right now, and it is also one of the things a buyer’s lender checks under the financing addendum. If there is a story there, it is better told on this form than discovered by an underwriter three days before closing.
One more item that will not apply to most people reading this but is on the form: military installation noise, tied to an Air Installation Compatible Use Zone study. Not a North Dallas issue for most of the suburbs I work in.
The new water disclosure, which is separate
Starting with the current contract there is a second seller disclosure you may owe, and a lot of people have not noticed it yet.
You can skip it only if all five of these are true: no water well on the property, in use or not, no pond, lake or water tank, no surface water permit or certified filing, no knowledge that groundwater rights were ever severed, sold or leased, and the property gets its water only from a named city, MUD, special district, water supply corporation, or private water company.
Notice that last one still requires you to name your supplier. If you are on a MUD in Celina or Prosper, that blank is yours to fill.
What actually gets sellers in trouble
Not honest mistakes. The pattern is almost always the same: someone knew about a real problem, decided it had been handled, and left the box unchecked.
The foundation was worked on in 2018 and there is a transferable warranty in a drawer. That is a yes on previous structural repair, and the warranty is a selling point.
The house took water in during a storm three years ago and the carpet was replaced. That is a yes on water penetration from a natural flood event.
The back bedroom was a patio. Nobody pulled a permit. That is a yes on unpermitted alterations.
None of those kill a deal on their own. All three, discovered by an inspector after you have been under contract for two weeks, will cost you more than they would have cost you in week zero.
If this happens: the inspector finds something you did not disclose
What is actually true
It depends entirely on whether you knew. The form is your knowledge as of the day you signed it. Something you genuinely did not know about is not a failure to disclose. Something you did know about is a different situation.
Your options
What I would do
Update the form the day you learn something new, without being asked. A corrected disclosure delivered voluntarily reads very differently than one produced after a lawyer asks for it. And if you think there is real exposure here, that is an attorney question, not an agent question. Say so out loud and go get one.
What the form does not do
Three things worth being clear about, because they protect you as much as the buyer.
It is not a warranty. The form says so directly, and it says it is not a substitute for any inspections or warranties the buyer may want to get.
It is your knowledge, not a guarantee about the property. You are not certifying the house is fine. You are reporting what you are aware of.
And Texas law specifically says you are not required to disclose a death on the property by natural causes, suicide, or an accident unrelated to the property’s condition.
Where this fits
The disclosure is one of several things you owe once you are under contract, and it is the one with the longest tail if you get it wrong. If you have not read it yet, the section on what you owe once you are under contract in the main guide covers the rest, including the district notices and the new smart device handover.
Fill it out yourself. Do not let anyone fill it out for you. Take an hour, walk the house, and write down what you actually know. It is the cheapest hour in the whole sale.
Frequently asked questions
Texas Property Code 5.008(e) lists eleven exemptions, including a sale by a fiduciary administering a decedent's estate, guardianship or trust, a foreclosure sale, a transfer between co-owners, a transfer to a spouse or a direct relative, a transfer to or from a governmental entity, and a brand new home nobody has occupied.
Under Texas Property Code 5.008(f), if the contract was entered without you providing it, the buyer may terminate for any reason within seven days after they receive it. Under Paragraph 7B of the TREC contract, if they never receive it at all, they can terminate any time before closing and get their earnest money back.
Texas Property Code 5.008 specifically states that a seller is not required to disclose a death by natural causes, suicide, or accident unrelated to the property's condition. The form asks about the condition of the property, not its history of occupants.
You can only answer honestly for what you actually know. Writing unknown on items you plainly do know about is the kind of thing that turns a disclosure form into evidence. The form is your knowledge as of the date you sign it, and it is not a substitute for the buyer's own inspection.
No, and the form says so on its face. It is not a warranty of any kind by you or by any agent, and it does not replace inspections or warranties the buyer may want to obtain. A buyer who relies on it instead of hiring an inspector is making their own choice.
Keep reading
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Sources
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