Questions to Ask Before You Hire an Agent at The Huntingdon: The Documents Behind the Answers

Which of these questions has a document behind it?

Most of them do. At 2121 Kirby Drive the questions worth putting to an agent before anything is signed are the ones with a document behind them: the recorded declaration for this regime, the association's accounts and its annual audit, the recorded management certificate, the resale certificate issued for one specific home, and the promulgated contract forms a Texas sale and a Texas purchase run on. Ask whether the person opposite has read the document, then hold the answer against what the document says.

Which statute reaches this building comes first. Chapter 81 of the Texas Property Code applies only to a condominium regime created before 1 January 1994, and a regime to which that chapter applies is also governed by Chapter 82 as provided by Section 82.002. Section 82.002(a) carries two exceptions, and both are about recorded paper: a condominium whose declaration was recorded before that date may be governed exclusively under the modern chapter where the owners of units vote to amend the declaration, in accordance with the amendment process authorized by the declaration, to have that chapter apply and the amendment is filed for record in the condominium records in each county in which the condominium is located, or where a declaration or amendment recorded before 1 January 1994 states that the chapter will apply in its entirety on 1 January 1994.

Absent one of those, Section 82.002(c) lists the sections that apply anyway to a condominium whose declaration was recorded before that date. The insurance section, the association records section, the management certificate section and the resale certificate section are all on that list. The listed sections apply only with respect to events and circumstances occurring on or after 1 January 1994, and they do not invalidate existing provisions of the declaration, bylaws or plats and plans. Which way this regime's recorded instruments fall is read off those instruments in the county's real property records.

Several of these questions already have their building-level reading published, each on its own page. The rate and the formula behind the fee are on Maintenance Fees at The Huntingdon: The Rate, the Formula, and the Document Behind Both. The audit, the records and the insurance floor are on The Huntingdon: Reserves, Staffing, and What the Monthly Covers. Occupancy and the lender's project review are on Buying at The Huntingdon as a Full-Time Residence, Not an Investment. The disclosure rules after a death are on Selling a Huntingdon Unit After a Death in the Property. The two-closing forms are on Selling a House and Buying at The Huntingdon: Sequencing the Two Closings.

What should you ask about the maintenance fee, and which document settles it?

Ask whether they have read the declaration. For a regime of this vintage, Section 81.102(a)(6) of the Texas Property Code requires the declaration, master deed or master lease to contain each apartment's fractional or percentage interest in the entire condominium regime. So an agent who has read it can say what a particular home's fractional interest is and where it is written down. A monthly figure answers a different question, because the declaration states a share of the regime rather than a sum of money.

Section 81.204(a) sets out what an owner is responsible for: the owner's pro rata share of the expenses to administer the condominium regime and to maintain and repair the general common elements, in proper cases the expenses to administer the limited common elements of the buildings in the regime, and other expenses approved by the council of owners. Subsection (b) closes the obvious escape, because an owner is not exempted from that obligation by waiving the use of the common elements or abandoning the apartment.

Only one document states what a specific home currently owes. Section 82.157(a) applies except as provided by Subsection (c), and it binds a unit owner other than a declarant who intends to sell: before executing a contract or conveying the unit, that owner must furnish the purchaser a current copy of the declaration, the bylaws, any association rules and a resale certificate prepared not earlier than three months before the date it is delivered. The commission's certificate form carries an operating budget, an insurance summary and a balance sheet as required attachments, and its first lettered line records whether the declaration contains a right of first refusal or other restraint that restricts the right to transfer the unit.

The fee work already published for this building is a table of listed homes rather than a single rate, and it sits on Maintenance Fees at The Huntingdon: The Rate, the Formula, and the Document Behind Both. One other series circulates, and it is worth knowing what it measures: the median monthly fee reported on homes sold in a year is the middle of the fees attached to the homes that happened to sell, so it swings with the size mix, and it is a different measurement from the per-square-foot rate derived from listed homes.

What should you ask about the association's money, its records and its insurance?

Three questions rather than one: which documents show what the monthly buys, what an owner may examine outside a transaction, and where the association's policy stops.

On the accounts, Section 82.114 requires the association, as a common expense, to annually obtain an independent audit of the records, with copies made available to the unit owners, and that audit is performed by a certified public accountant where the bylaws or a vote of the board or a majority vote of the members voting at a meeting require it. Chapter 81 runs alongside it: the administrator or board of administration, or a person appointed by the bylaws, keeps a detailed written account of receipts and expenditures, the accounts and supporting vouchers are made available to apartment owners for examination on working days at convenient, established and publicly announced hours, and the books are audited at least once each year by an auditor who is not associated with the regime.

An owner can also start the association's own clock, because the resale certificate is produced on a written request rather than on a conversation. Not later than the 10th day after receiving a written request by a unit owner, the association must furnish the certificate to the selling owner or that owner's agent.

The management certificate is the one association document anybody can pull without being in a transaction. Section 82.116 requires the association to record it in each county in which any portion of the condominium is located, and the county clerk records it in the real property records and indexes it as a Condominium Association Management Certificate. It states the recording data for the declaration and any amendments to it, the mailing address of the association, the contact details of any management company, and the amount and description of a fee charged to a unit seller or buyer relating to a transfer. Not later than the seventh day after filing it for recording, the association files it electronically with the Texas Real Estate Commission, which collects it so the data is accessible to the public through an internet website.

On insurance, ask where the association's policy stops. Where a building contains units having horizontal boundaries described in the declaration, the property insurance the association maintains must include the units, to the extent reasonably available, but it need not include improvements and betterments installed by unit owners. An insurance policy issued to the association does not prevent a unit owner from obtaining insurance for the owner's own benefit. What the monthly covers here, read against those sections, is set out on The Huntingdon: Reserves, Staffing, and What the Monthly Covers.

Staffing is a budget decision rather than a feature of the building. Unless otherwise provided by the declaration, the association acting through its board may adopt and amend budgets for revenues, expenditures and reserves, and may hire and terminate managing agents and other employees, agents and independent contractors. Section 82.002(c) extends those subdivisions to a condominium whose declaration was recorded before 1 January 1994.

What should you ask before you sign a listing agreement here?

Ask what kind of agreement it is, when it ends, and what it says about compensation.

A consumer guide published by the National Association of REALTORS sets out four common arrangements. Under an exclusive agency agreement the owner works with one agent and keeps the option to sell the home themselves without compensating that agent for the sale. Under an exclusive right-to-sell agreement the owner is responsible for the agent's compensation no matter who sells the property. A limited-service agreement provides a limited set of services and, in the guide's own examples, may leave out arranging showings, providing input on purchase offers or supporting the negotiation process. Under a non-exclusive agreement the owner compensates whichever agent ultimately sells the home. The guide adds that the options available may vary based on where the home is being sold or who the owner is working with, and that practices may vary based on state and local law.

The Texas rule reaches into the paper itself. While a license holder is engaged in real estate brokerage, the commission may suspend or revoke a license or take other disciplinary action where the license holder fails to specify a definite termination date that is not subject to prior notice in a contract in which the license holder agrees to perform services for which a license is required, other than a contract to perform property management services. So the question of when this agreement ends has a statute behind it.

Two more grounds from the same subsection belong in that conversation. One is failing to make clear to all parties to a real estate transaction the party for whom the license holder is acting. The other is failing or refusing to provide, on request, a copy of a document relating to a real estate transaction to a person who signed the document, which makes asking for copies of everything you sign a request the statute already contemplates.

On what the agent is paid, the guide states that agent compensation is fully negotiable and not set by law, and Texas requires a written agreement with a prospective buyer of residential real property to disclose in conspicuous language that broker compensation is not set by law and is fully negotiable. The guide also says an owner who has concerns about the agreement, or does not understand it, should consult an attorney.

Where something has already gone wrong, a complaint goes to the Texas Real Estate Commission in writing and under a name, within four years of the alleged incident, and the commission cannot investigate an incident that occurred four or more years ago.

When does the written notice about who an agent represents have to reach you?

At the time of a license holder's first substantive communication with a party relating to a proposed transaction regarding specific real property. Section 1101.558 of the Texas Occupations Code requires that notice in at least a 10-point font, describing the ways in which a broker can represent a party to a real estate transaction, including as an intermediary, the basic duties and obligations a broker has to a party it represents, and the basic obligations it has to a party it does not represent. It must also provide the name, license number and contact information for the license holder and the license holder's supervisor and broker, if applicable, and the commission by rule prescribes the text of the first two items.

The subsection that follows takes the notice out in three situations, and all three belong with the rule: where the proposed transaction is for a residential lease for less than one year and a sale is not being considered; where the license holder meets with a party who the license holder knows is represented by another license holder; and where the communication occurs at a property that is held open for any prospective buyer or tenant and the communication concerns that property.

A separate disclosure runs alongside the notice. A license holder who represents a party in a proposed real estate transaction discloses that representation, orally or in writing, at the time of first contact with another party to the transaction or with another license holder who represents another party.

On the buyer side, since 1 January 2026 a license holder who performs any act of real estate brokerage for a prospective buyer of residential real property must enter into a written agreement with that buyer before showing any residential real property, and the statute's definition of residential real property includes a unit in a multiunit residential structure in which title to an individual unit is transferred to the owner of the unit under a condominium or cooperative system.

What should you ask an agent who is sequencing a sale and a purchase?

Ask them to work the promulgated forms from the forms rather than from memory.

The Addendum for Sale of Other Property by Buyer makes the contract contingent upon the buyer's receipt of the proceeds from the sale of the buyer's property at an address the parties write in, on or before a date they write in as well. Where the contingency is not satisfied or waived by the buyer by that date, the contract terminates automatically and the earnest money is refunded to the buyer. Where the seller accepts a written offer to sell the property, the seller notifies the buyer of the acceptance and that the seller requires the contingency waived, and the buyer must waive on or before the day written into the blank, counted from the seller's notice, and otherwise the contract terminates automatically and the earnest money goes back to the buyer. The only route to a waiver is notifying the seller and depositing additional earnest money with the escrow agent, and all notices and waivers must be in writing and are effective when delivered in accordance with the contract.

The seller's temporary lease is the other half, and the notice at its head sets the ceiling: it is for use only when the seller occupies the property for no more than 90 days after the closing. The term commences on the date the sale covered by the contract is closed and funded, the full amount of rental for the term is paid at the time of funding, and the tenant is not entitled to a refund of rental where the lease terminates early due to the tenant's default or voluntary surrender of the property.

On the purchase side the residential condominium contract sets two clocks running from receipt. Where the buyer has not received the declaration, bylaws and any rules, the seller delivers them at the seller's expense within the days written in after the Effective Date of the contract, and the buyer may terminate within 7 days after receiving them. The certificate runs the same way, prepared at the seller's expense no more than 3 months before the date it is delivered, with a right to terminate within 7 days after the date the buyer receives it. And where the documents reveal that the property is subject to a right of refusal under which the association or a member of the association may purchase it, the Effective Date itself is amended to the date the buyer receives the association's certification that the seller has complied with the requirements under the right of refusal and that all persons who may exercise it have not exercised or have waived the right to buy, which moves every date counted from it.

Several of the day counts in these forms are blanks the parties fill, which is why each deadline above is given by what it counts from. What the two closings look like at this address, form by form, is set out on Selling a House and Buying at The Huntingdon: Sequencing the Two Closings.

What should you ask about disclosure when a sale follows a death?

Ask how a direct question from a buyer would be answered, and settle it before a showing rather than during one.

Three provisions decide the shape of that answer. Section 5.008(c) of the Texas Property Code gives a seller or seller's agent no duty to make a disclosure or release information related to whether a death by natural causes, suicide, or accident unrelated to the condition of the property occurred on the property, which is a list of what carries no duty rather than a permission covering every death. Section 1101.556 of the Texas Occupations Code says a license holder is not required to inquire about, disclose, or release the same information. And the commission's own rule gives a license holder a duty to convey accurate information to members of the public with whom the license holder deals.

Read together, nobody is required to raise the subject and nobody may answer a direct question falsely, so the question to put to an agent is what they would say if asked. This is general law rather than guidance on any one transaction, and a live question belongs with a Texas attorney. The notice itself, the exemptions and the seven-day termination right are on Selling a Huntingdon Unit After a Death in the Property.

Which of these answers sits in a document you have to go and get?

A license record sits with the Texas Real Estate Commission, whose license holder search takes a name or license number and a license type, with Broker or Sales Agent among the types. No search was run for this page, so what a particular record holds is something a reader goes and looks up.

This building's declaration, bylaws and rules are recorded instruments held in the county's real property records, and they were not read here, so what they provide, and whether this regime's recorded instruments bring it under the modern chapter in full, is answered out of those records. The management certificate gives the recording data for the declaration and any amendments to it, which is the chain to order.

A listing agreement or a written buyer agreement in front of you is a private contract whose terms are whatever the parties wrote, so what it requires is in its own paragraphs, and the consumer guide's advice where it is unclear is to consult an attorney.

This association's reserves, budget, insurance deductibles and account balances come out of a resale certificate package delivered during a transaction, which is why the written request that starts the ten days is worth making early.

What a home here is worth is not settled by any of these documents, and none of them is a valuation.

An owner at The Huntingdon getting ready to list, or somebody about to buy here, can put these questions to Paige Martin of Real Broker, LLC and ask which document each answer rests on.