The 11 Steps of Buying a Home in Texas - Texas Home Buyer Guide

Most home buying roadmaps are written for the country as a whole. The sequence below is the familiar one — eleven steps from choosing an agent to walking through your own front door — but the substance underneath it is Texas, where promulgated contract forms, a termination option, and a 2026 change to agency law make several of these steps work differently than they do elsewhere.

Two notes before the steps. Timing overlaps: several of these run at the same time rather than in sequence. And the deadlines that matter most are contractual, not conventional — a date you agreed to in writing, not a customary practice.

Step 1 — Identify your agent

In Texas this is no longer just the sensible first move. It is a legal precondition.

Senate Bill 1968 took effect January 1, 2026 and amended the Texas Real Estate License Act. It repealed subagency — the old default under which an agent could work with a buyer while legally owing loyalty to the seller — and it requires a license holder to enter into a written agreement with a prospective buyer before showing residential property, or before making an offer on the buyer's behalf if no property will be shown.

The statute preserves one narrow path: a license holder may open a door without representing the person walking through it, but only where there is no agreement to represent and no advice or opinions are offered about the property or the transaction. The moment an opinion is given, that path closes.

What to look for is straightforward: someone who works your price band and your target areas routinely, who can explain the contract paragraphs rather than just fill them in, and whose written agreement states the services, the term, whether it is exclusive, and how compensation works — including that commissions are negotiable and not set by law.

Step 2 — Mortgage preapproval

Preapproval is not prequalification. Prequalification is a conversation. Preapproval means a lender has reviewed credit, income and assets and issued a conditional commitment. In a competitive situation the difference is visible to the other side.

Ask a prospective lender how they handle appraisal timing, what their average clear-to-close runs, and whether they underwrite locally. On new construction, ask specifically how they handle extended lock periods, because a build timeline and a standard lock rarely line up.

Do this before touring, not after finding a house. It also tells you what you are actually shopping for.

Step 3 — Shop for a home

The part everyone enjoys, and the part where the fewest irreversible mistakes get made — with one exception worth naming.

New construction: if you visit a builder's sales office and register without your agent, most builders will not recognize an agent added later. The representative in that sales office works for the builder. Register with your agent from the first visit, before you tour. Related: who represents you in a Texas builder's sales office.

While you shop, pay attention to what does not appear in a listing photograph: which taxing entities apply to the address, whether the property sits inside a MUD or a PID, what the association governs, and what the actual attendance zone is for the specific lot rather than the subdivision.

Step 4 — Make an offer

In Texas an offer is written on TREC promulgated forms, and it is far more than a price. The terms you agree to here determine what rights you hold for the rest of the transaction:

The termination option — how many days you have, and the option fee. This is your unrestricted right to walk.
Financing terms — the Third Party Financing Addendum, and whether any appraisal-related addendum is attached.
The survey — which of the three routes applies, and who bears the cost.
Title — which company, who pays for the owner's policy, and the objection deadline.
Closing and possession dates, and whether either party needs a temporary lease.

The effective date is the date of final execution, and nearly every deadline that follows counts forward from it. Earnest money and the option fee are both delivered to the escrow agent within three days of that date — the option fee no longer goes directly to the seller.

Step 5 — Finalize the mortgage and start the loan

Once you are under contract, the loan file moves from preapproval to underwriting. Deliver documents the day they are requested; underwriting is the longest pole in almost every closing schedule.

From this point until funding, do not change jobs, open new credit, make large unexplained deposits, or move money between accounts. Employment and credit are re-verified late in the process, and a new account opened three weeks after contract is a common cause of a delayed closing.

Step 6 — Inspect

Inspections happen inside the option period, and this is where the Texas sequence diverges most sharply from the national roadmap.

The option period gives you an unrestricted right to terminate for a negotiated number of days. It runs on calendar days and ends at 5:00 p.m. local time on the final day. It is not an inspection period — nothing in it obligates anyone to permit an inspection. It simply gives you the right to walk, for any reason or none, and that right is what makes the inspection useful.

Two provisions catch people. If no dollar amount is stated for the option fee, or if it is delivered late, the unrestricted right to terminate is lost. And the termination option is no longer in Paragraph 23 of the contract — it was folded into Paragraph 5, which a good deal of published material still has wrong. Full detail: the Texas option period and earnest money.

Order inspections the day you go under contract, not midway through the option period. A general inspection frequently produces recommendations for specialists — foundation, HVAC, sewer scope — and those take days you may not have.

Step 7 — Appraise

Your lender orders the appraisal to confirm the property supports the loan. Two Texas points that are widely misunderstood:

A low appraisal by itself does not give a buyer the right to terminate. That right arises under Paragraph 2B of the Third Party Financing Addendum only where the lender determines the property fails underwriting. A buyer with a substantial down payment may find the loan still works at the appraised value, in which case 2B is simply unavailable.

Terminating under 2B requires both a notice and a copy of the lender's written statement of reasons, delivered by the deadline. Silence means Property Approval is deemed obtained — the default operates as approval, not as objection. Full detail: low appraisals and the Third Party Financing Addendum.

Step 8 — Negotiate

Most national roadmaps place a single negotiation here, after inspection and appraisal. In Texas there are really two, and they operate under different rules.

The first happened at Step 4, when price and terms were agreed. The second is what happens now: repairs, credits, or an amended price in response to what the inspection found. This second negotiation has no automatic entitlement behind it. Your leverage is the option period — the seller knows you can terminate, and that is the whole of it. Once the option expires, the posture changes completely.

Appraisal is a separate track again, governed by the financing addendum rather than by negotiation, and any appraisal-gap arrangement had to be addressed back at Step 4 rather than here.

This step is the one where representation is doing the most work and where the least of it is visible from the outside. What gets asked for, what gets documented, what is worth pressing and what is worth

conceding to protect the closing date — those are judgment calls made against the specific property, the specific seller, and the specific market segment. If you want that conversation about a particular house, that is a call, not a checklist.

Step 9 — Insure

Two kinds of insurance, and they are decided at different moments.

Homeowner's insurance must be bound before the lender will fund. Start this during the option period, not at Step 9. Insurability can be a genuine problem — prior claims on the property's CLUE report, roof age, and hail history across much of North Texas all affect availability and pricing, and discovering a property is difficult to insure a week before closing is a poor time to discover it.

Title insurance is not really a Step 9 decision at all. Who pays for the owner's policy was negotiated back at Step 4, and the Title Commitment arrives well before this point. What belongs here is reading it — Schedule B lists the exceptions the policy will not cover, and Schedule C lists what must be cleared before a policy issues. Compare the survey against the commitment. Encroachments, easement conflicts and setback problems appear only when you look at both together.

If there is an association, the resale certificate should already be ordered. A Texas association has ten business days from a verified written request — two full weeks. Detail: the HOA resale certificate timeline and survey and T-47 requirements.

Step 10 — Close

You will receive the Closing Disclosure at least three business days before consummation; certain late changes restart that clock and move the date.

Then the Texas distinction that catches nearly every relocating buyer: signing is not funding. You sign, the lender reviews the executed package and authorizes funding, and the title company disburses. Only then does the transaction close. On a well-run file the gap is hours. It can be longer.

Bring government-issued photo identification. Send funds by wire only after verifying the instructions by phone, on a number you obtained independently — never from the email containing the instructions. Closings are among the most targeted transactions in the country for wire fraud, and wired funds sent to a fraudulent account are frequently unrecoverable.

What happens behind the scenes at the title company: the Texas closing process, step by step.

Step 11 — Move in

Keys and possession follow funding, not signing. If the seller needs to remain past funding, or you need to occupy before it, that requires a written temporary residential lease — the seller's form when a seller stays after closing, the buyer's form when a buyer occupies before. Both are capped at ninety days. Handing over keys without one creates a tenancy with none of the terms that make a tenancy workable. Detail: temporary residential leases in Texas.

In the first week: file for your homestead exemption for the following tax year, transfer utilities, change the locks, and keep the closing package somewhere you will find it. On new construction, calendar the builder's warranty walk dates rather than trusting you will remember them.

Frequently asked questions

Do I have to sign something before I can look at houses in Texas?

Yes, if you want representation or advice. Since January 1, 2026, a license holder must have a written agreement with you before showing residential property or making an offer on your behalf. An agent may open a door without representing you, but only where no advice or opinions are offered about the property or the transaction.

How long does it take to buy a home in Texas?

From executed contract to closing, financed purchases commonly run thirty to forty-five days, driven mainly by underwriting. The search itself varies enormously. New construction runs on the build schedule and is measured in months.

Can I back out after the option period ends?

Not freely. After the option expires, your remaining exits are the specific rights the contract gives you — chiefly the financing provisions — and each has its own notice requirement and deadline. Walking away outside those puts your earnest money at issue.

Is the option fee refundable?

No. The option fee is not refunded, though it is credited to you at closing. Earnest money is a separate deposit and is refunded on a timely termination under the option.

When should I get homeowner's insurance?

Start during the option period. It must be bound before your lender will fund, and insurability problems are far easier to solve while you still hold an unrestricted right to terminate.

Does the inspection give me the right to demand repairs?

No. It gives you information. Your leverage during the option period is the right to terminate, which is why what you do with the inspection report matters more than the report itself.

Where this usually goes wrong

Not at Step 10. It goes wrong at Step 1, when a buyer tours a model home unrepresented; at Step 4, when a term is agreed without understanding what it forecloses; and at Step 6, when the option period is treated as a formality rather than as the only unrestricted exit in the contract.

If you are early in this and want to walk through the sequence against your actual situation, that conversation is worth having before you tour anything.

Nitin Gupta, Broker Associate, Competitive Edge Realty LLC. TREC License #0668540. CRS, GRI, CLHMS, ALHS, PSA, ABR, SRS, SRES, e-PRO, MRP, TRLS, TRPM. More than 480 closed transactions and over $250 million in career volume across Dallas-Fort Worth, including more than 300 new construction closings. Named a D Magazine Best Real Estate Professional in 2020, 2023 and 2024.

Call or text 469-269-6541 · nitin@nitinguptadfw.com · Contact · DFW buyer representation · New construction representation · YouTube channel

Educational information only, current as of August 2026. Not legal, lending, tax or insurance advice. Contract paragraph references are to the current TREC promulgated forms and are subject to revision. Legal questions belong with a Texas attorney, loan questions with your lender, and title questions with your escrow officer.