2727 Kirby Reserves and Assessments: What to Request Before You Offer

Which document states the assessments and reserves at 2727 Kirby?

The resale certificate. Texas requires a selling owner other than a declarant to furnish the purchaser a current copy of the declaration, the bylaws, any association rules and a resale certificate before a contract is executed or the unit is conveyed. The certificate is issued by the association, it carries the association's current operating budget, and it must have been prepared not earlier than three months before the date it is delivered.

Six of its statements do the work on money: the periodic common expense assessment and any unpaid common expenses or special assessments currently due from the selling owner; other unpaid fees or amounts payable to the association; capital expenditures approved by the association for the next twelve months, if any; the amount of reserves for capital expenditures and the portion designated for a specified project; the current operating budget and balance sheet; and all fees payable on a transfer of ownership, with a description of each fee, who receives it and how much it is.

On the promulgated form, the Condominium Resale Certificate, TREC No. 32-5, those are lettered boxes with blanks in them. One box carries the periodic assessment per period, one the approved capital expenditures for the next twelve months, one the reserves for capital expenditures and the amount designated for a named purpose, and one a table of association fees resulting from the transfer. Three attachments come with it: the operating budget, the insurance summary and the balance sheet.

A median dues figure answers a different question. The fee medians this site publishes are the middle of the dues attached to the homes that closed in each year, as the market-statistics feed computed its snapshot on 28 Aug 2026, and they move with which homes sold rather than with the fee schedule. The budget, the assessment schedule and the reserve position come from the certificate and its attachments.

How do you request it, and how long does the association have?

The selling owner makes a written request to the association, and the association has ten days after receiving it to furnish a certificate signed and dated by an officer or authorized agent. The selling owner is not liable to the purchaser for erroneous information the association provides in it.

If the ten days pass without a certificate, or without information the certificate requires, the owner may provide the purchaser a sworn affidavit signed by the owner in its place. Buyer and seller may then agree in writing to waive the requirement to furnish the certificate, which is the third of three boxes in the paragraph of TREC's Residential Condominium Contract (Resale) that handles the certificate. The other two record that the buyer already has it, or that the seller will deliver it within a stated number of days, with a right to terminate within seven days after receiving it.

An association may charge a reasonable and necessary fee, not to exceed $375, to furnish the certificate. That cap took effect on 1 September 2025, and it prices the certificate alone. Fees payable on the transfer of ownership are a separate item, listed in their own box on the form and allocated by the paragraph that allocates the transfer charges.

Everything past the certificate runs on a different track. A unit owner, or a person designated in a writing signed by the owner as the owner's agent, attorney or certified public accountant, may examine the association's books and records, including financial records, and obtain copies. The request goes by certified mail, with sufficient detail describing the records wanted, to the mailing address of the association or its authorized representative as reflected on the most current recorded management certificate, and it must elect either inspection before copies or copies forwarded. The association answers on or before the tenth business day after it receives the request, either with notice of inspection dates during normal business hours or with the records. If it cannot produce them in that time, it must send written notice saying so and name a date no later than the fifteenth business day after that notice. A business day is a day other than Saturday, Sunday or a state or federal holiday.

That right belongs to an owner rather than to a prospective buyer, so a buyer reaches the budget, the audit and the board minutes through the seller, or through a writing the seller signs naming the buyer's representative.

Some records stay closed. Subject to an exception written into the same section, and to the extent the information is provided in the meeting minutes, an association is not required to release records that identify an individual owner's violation history, an owner's personal financial information including records of payment or nonpayment, an owner's contact information or address, or information about an association employee. The same material may be released in an aggregate or summary manner that would not identify an individual unit owner. On cost, the board must adopt a records production and copying policy, and it may not charge an owner for compilation, production or reproduction unless that policy has been recorded.

One narrow set of transfers needs no certificate prepared or delivered at all: a gratuitous disposition, a disposition pursuant to court order, a disposition by a government or governmental agency, a disposition by foreclosure or deed in lieu of foreclosure, and a disposition that may be canceled at any time, for any reason, without penalty.

What does Texas require a condominium association to hold in reserve?

The amount has to be disclosed, and the statute says nothing about what the amount should be. Its own wording on the certificate is "the amount of reserves, if any" for capital expenditures, plus the portion designated for a specified project. Both halves matter: the figure is disclosable, and it is allowed to be nothing.

A declaration may allow the accumulation of reserve funds for an unspecified period to provide for any anticipated expense of the condominium. That is permission, not a duty, and whether a declaration grants it is read off the recorded document.

The one budget the condominium chapter prescribes in detail belongs to the start of a condominium's life. A condominium information statement must contain a projected or pro forma budget for the association's first fiscal year after the first conveyance to a purchaser, prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles, considering the physical condition of the condominium, on assumptions the declarant believes reasonable, and stating the projected monthly common expense assessment for each type of unit. It must include a statement of the amount included as a reserve, or a statement that no amount is included as a reserve. That document belongs to a sale by the declarant, and a resale buyer here receives the resale certificate and its attachments instead.

Two things the chapter does require. After an association's initial assessment, assessments must be made at least annually and must be based on a budget adopted at least annually by the association, so the monthly figure is a yearly decision resting on a document; and if common expense liabilities are reallocated, the assessments and any installment not yet due are recomputed on the reallocated liabilities. The association must also keep detailed financial records that comply with generally accepted accounting principles and are sufficiently detailed to let it prepare a resale certificate, keep minutes of meetings of the association and the board, and obtain an independent audit of the records every year as a common expense, with copies made available to the unit owners.

What does a mortgage lender look for instead?

The quantified standard comes from a lender's guide. Under the Full Review process in that guide, dated 5 August 2026, the lender reviews the association's projected budget to see that it is adequate for the type of project and that it provides funding of replacement reserves for capital expenditures and deferred maintenance of at least 10 percent of the budget. The test is arithmetic: dividing the annual budgeted replacement reserve allocation by the annual budgeted assessment income, which includes regular common expense fees.

Some income may be excluded from that denominator: incidental income the project does not rely on for ongoing operations, maintenance or capital improvements; income collected for utilities that an individual owner would typically pay, such as cable television or internet access; income allocated to reserve accounts; and special assessment income.

A reserve study can stand in for the 10 percent calculation on stated conditions. The lender has to obtain an acceptable study and retain it with its own analysis in the project approval file, the study has to demonstrate funded reserves giving financial protection equivalent to the standard requirement, and the project's funded reserves have to meet or exceed the study's own recommendations. The study, or an update of it, has to have been completed within three years of the date the lender approves the project, and it has to meet or exceed requirements set by relevant state statutes.

Two delinquency ceilings sit beside the reserve test. No more than 15 percent of the total units may be 60 days or more past due on common expense assessments, and no more than 15 percent may be 60 days or more past due in the payment of each special assessment.

The document list a lender may pull doubles as a request list: the recorded legal documents, project budgets, financial statements and reserve studies, architects' or engineers' reports, completion reports, evidence of insurance policies, and a Condominium Project Questionnaire, which is optional and collects the same answers in one place. A lender applies these tests to the documents in front of it on the day of its review, so the outcome for any project is that lender's finding rather than a published fact.

What should you ask about a building that has had facade work?

Start from what is already published about this building. The guardrail and podium cladding were replaced with an engineer of record, the project record gives a completion date of 2013, and issues are recorded as rectified in 2014. The buyer's guide to the building sets that history out with its source, so the question at offer stage is what paper the association would have generated around it.

Texas puts a procedure in front of a construction or design claim for an association of eight or more units. In addition to any preconditions the declaration itself sets, the association must, before filing suit or initiating arbitration, obtain an inspection and a written independent third-party report from a licensed professional engineer that identifies the units or common elements subject to the claim, describes their present physical condition, and describes any modifications, maintenance or repairs performed by the owners or the association. Both of the next two steps come before the notice of the meeting: on completion the report goes to each unit owner and to each party subject to a claim, and each party subject to a claim gets at least 90 days after the report is completed to inspect and correct any condition identified in it.

Then the vote. Not later than the 30th day before the meeting, each owner must receive written notice of its date, time and location, together with the nature of the claim, the relief sought, the anticipated duration and likelihood of success, a copy of the engineer's report, the attorney contract, a description of attorney, consultant, expert witness and court costs, a summary of the steps already taken, a description of how the association proposes to fund the case, and a statement that initiating a lawsuit or arbitration may affect the market value, marketability or refinancing of a unit while the claim is prosecuted. The claim proceeds only with approval from owners holding more than half the total votes allocated under the declaration.

That procedure leaves records behind. Under the retention policy an association of eight or more units must adopt, minutes of meetings of the unit owners and the board are retained for seven years, and financial books and records for seven years as well. Ask for the years around the facade work, and read the certificate's pending-suits box for the current position.

Insurance is part of the assessment question. Except as the insurance section itself provides, the cost of repair or replacement in excess of the insurance proceeds is a common expense, and the board may levy an assessment to pay it in accordance with each owner's common expense liability. Where the association's insurance provides coverage for the loss and the cost of repair exceeds the deductible, the dedicatory instruments determine payment of the deductible and of costs incurred before proceeds are available; where those instruments are silent, the board decides the deductible by recorded resolution, or the costs are a common expense. A repair the association's insurance covers, costing less than the deductible, falls on whoever would have been responsible for it without insurance.

A lender's critical-repair list is worth borrowing as a checklist. It counts unfunded repairs costing more than $10,000 per unit that should be undertaken within the next twelve months, which does not include repairs made by the unit owner or repairs funded through a special assessment; mold, water intrusion or potentially damaging leaks; advanced physical deterioration; and any failure to pass a mandatory jurisdictional inspection for structural safety, soundness and habitability, with waterproofing, balconies and parking structures among the items it names to consider. For each special assessment a lender asks four questions: its purpose, when it was approved and whether it is planned or already being executed, its original amount and the amount left to collect, and the date it is expected to be paid in full. If a structural or mechanical inspection was completed within three years of the review, the lender obtains and reviews that report.

Who pays for what at closing?

The certificate is prepared at the seller's expense. Under TREC's Residential Condominium Contract (Resale) it must be in a form promulgated by TREC or required by the parties, must have been prepared no more than three months before it is delivered to the buyer, and must contain at a minimum what the Property Code requires.

Association fees, deposits, reserves and other charges resulting from the transfer are the buyer's up to a figure the parties write into the paragraph that allocates the transfer charges, and the seller pays any excess. That allocation does not reach the regular periodic maintenance fees, assessments and dues, which are prorated through the closing date under the prorations paragraph. In the same paragraph, cash reserves from regular assessments are not credited to the seller, and any special condominium assessment due and unpaid at closing is the obligation of the seller.

Behind the prorations sits a lien. An assessment levied against a unit or a unit owner is a personal obligation of the owner and is secured by a continuing lien on the unit and on rents and insurance proceeds received by the owner and relating to the unit. The lien is created by recording the declaration, which is both record notice and perfection, and unless the declaration provides otherwise no other recordation of a lien or notice of lien is required. It also secures far more than a monthly fee: regular and special assessments, dues, fees, charges, interest, late fees, fines, collection costs, attorney's fees and any other amount due, all enforceable as assessments unless the declaration provides otherwise. By acquiring a unit an owner grants the association a power of sale in connection with that lien.

The certificate buys a buyer one protection worth knowing. A purchaser, lender or title insurer who relies on a resale certificate is not liable for any debt or claim the certificate does not disclose, and an association may not deny the validity of any statement in it; if a properly executed certificate understates the delinquent sums the selling owner owes, the buyer is not liable for the excess unpaid on the date it was prepared. It leaves untouched the association's right to recover debts or claims that arise or become due after that date, and its lien securing payment of future assessments.

What can this page not tell you?

Seven answers decide the reserve question at this address, and each one lives in a document somebody has to request: the association's reserve balance, its operating budget, its assessment history as a schedule rather than a snapshot, whether a special assessment is current or planned, whether a reserve study exists at all, whether the facade work was paid from reserves, from a special assessment or from litigation proceeds, and the association's own name, managing agent, address and transfer fees.

The first six come from the certificate and its three attachments, the budget, the assessment history and the minutes, requested through the seller. The last one has public routes. An association records a management certificate in each county where any portion of the condominium sits, stating the condominium's name, the association's name and mailing address, the recording data for the declaration and its amendments, the name, mailing address, telephone number and e-mail address of any management company, the website address where the dedicatory instruments are available, and the amount and description of each fee charged to a seller or buyer on a transfer of a unit. The county clerk records it in the real property records and indexes it as a "Condominium Association Management Certificate".

Not later than the seventh day after filing it for recording, the association must electronically file the same certificate with the Texas Real Estate Commission, which collects it to make the data accessible to the public through an internet website. That is a second free way to reach the association's mailing address, its management company and its transfer fees without knowing the association's name first.

Since 1 September 2025 there is a third route. An association of a condominium composed of at least 60 units, or any association that has contracted with a management company, must make the current version of its dedicatory instruments filed in the county deed records available on an internet website maintained by the association or a management company on its behalf and accessible to association members. Every published count for this building is above sixty, so ask the seller for that member website alongside the certificate.

Put the certificate request in writing early, name the budget, the balance sheet, the insurance summary, the assessment history and the minutes in the same breath, and ask which document each answer came from.