Questions to Ask Before You Hire an Agent at 2727 Kirby

How do you tell whether an agent has read the record or repeated a listing?

Ask which document the answer came out of, and ask that before anything else. Under section 82.055 of the Texas Property Code, the declaration for a condominium must describe the boundaries of each unit it creates, including that unit's identifying number, and must state the maximum number of units the declarant reserves the right to create. So a number about this building either traces to that recorded instrument or it traces to a listing somebody typed.

Put the question to anyone who quotes you a figure about 2727 Kirby, starting with how many homes are in it, because the counts in print for this building disagree with one another. The page that does that work is titled How Many Homes Are in 2727 Kirby? Four Published Counts, and the Document That Settles Them. Paige Martin's team publishes its own correction there, from the count it used to carry.

What has to be in writing before anyone shows you a home here?

A written agreement, entered into before the first showing. Since 1 January 2026, section 1101.563 of the Texas Occupations Code requires a license holder who performs any act of real estate brokerage for a prospective buyer of residential real property to enter into a written agreement with that buyer before showing any residential real property, or, if no residential real property will be shown, before presenting an offer to purchase on that buyer's behalf. The definition of residential real property in that section names a unit in a multiunit residential structure in which title to an individual unit is transferred to the owner under a condominium or cooperative system, so it reaches a home at this address by its own words.

Five things have to be stated in it: the services the license holder will provide, the termination date of the agreement, whether it is exclusive or non-exclusive, whether the license holder represents the buyer as the buyer's agent or does not, and the amount or rate of compensation the broker will receive and how that amount will be determined. The agreement must also disclose, in conspicuous language, that broker compensation is not set by law and is fully negotiable. Read those lines in the paper in front of you rather than taking a summary of them.

A narrower route sits beside that one, in section 1101.562. A broker may show real property available for sale or lease to a party without representing the party where the broker has not agreed, orally or in writing, to represent them, is not otherwise acting as their agent at the time of the showing, gives no opinions or advice about the property or about real estate transactions in general, and performs no other act of real estate brokerage for them, though the broker may still confirm information about the size, price and terms of the property. An agreement entered into for the sole purpose of showing property under that section carries two limits of its own, and a separate agreement is required if additional real estate brokerage acts are to be provided after the showing.

What should you ask a listing agent about the documents a seller owes?

Ask what the seller owes the purchaser and who is answerable for each piece of it. Except as provided by Subsection (c), section 82.157 of the Texas Property Code requires a unit owner other than a declarant who intends to sell to furnish the purchaser, before executing a contract or conveying the unit, 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.

One of those four is not the seller's to write. The certificate is issued by the association, it carries the association's current operating budget, and the first statement the association writes into it is any right of first refusal or other restraint contained in the declaration that restricts the right to transfer a unit. Three sentences in the same section say what the certificate is worth to each side. A selling unit owner or the owner's agent is not liable to the purchaser for erroneous information the association provided in the certificate. A purchaser, lender or title insurer who relies on a resale certificate is not liable for any debt or claim that is not disclosed in it. And an association may not deny the validity of any statement in the certificate.

So the question for a listing agent is which of the four documents will be in hand before the listing is written, and who has already been asked for the one the association issues. The whole of the seller's side, including the association's own deadline for the certificate and what it may charge, sits on the page titled Selling a Condominium at 2727 Kirby: The Documents a Seller Owes, and When.

What should a buyer's agent set in motion before an offer?

A writing from the seller naming them, because that is the only route to the association's records. Under section 82.1141 of the Texas Property Code, the right to examine the association's books and records, financial records included, runs to a unit owner or to a person the owner designates in a writing signed by the owner as the owner's agent, attorney or certified public accountant. A buyer is none of those people until the seller signs it, so a buyer's agent reaches the association's books and records through the seller rather than around the seller, and that is worth asking for before an offer rather than after one.

While that is in motion, know what you are waiting for. The Condominium Resale Certificate the Texas Real Estate Commission promulgates puts the transfer restraint in its first lettered box, a does or does not tick with a blank that points, where such a restraint exists, at the section of the declaration it sits in, and a later box records that the association's current operating budget and balance sheet are attached. The reserve figures, the standard a lender applies to them and the mechanics of the request are set out on the page titled 2727 Kirby Reserves and Assessments: What to Request Before You Offer.

One more answer belongs in the same conversation, because it decides what an unpaid amount is. An assessment levied by the association against a unit or unit owner is a personal obligation of the unit owner and is secured by a continuing lien on the unit and on rents and insurance proceeds received by the unit owner and relating to the owner's unit, and that lien is created by recordation of the declaration, which is itself record notice and perfection. Its priority runs over every other lien except four the statute lists by name, and section 82.113 is where those four are read.

Which dates belong on the calendar before anyone signs?

The dates a document sets, rather than the ones a person promises. In TREC's Residential Condominium Contract (Resale), the paragraph covering the declaration, bylaws and rules and the paragraph covering the resale certificate each begin with boxes the parties tick, and neither starts a clock until the buyer ticks the box saying that document has not arrived. That box puts delivery on the seller within a number of days written into a blank after the effective date, and gives the buyer a termination right running seven days from the buyer's receipt of that document, with the earnest money refunded on a termination made under it. Each of those two boxes adds that the buyer retains rights to terminate under section 82.156.

Where the documents reveal that the property is subject to a right of refusal under which the association or one of its members may buy the property, the right-of-refusal paragraph moves the effective date itself, to the day 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 it or have waived it. The two delivery blanks above are counted from the effective date, so they move when it does. And where the buyer does not receive that certification within a number of days after the effective date, again written into a blank, or the right of refusal is exercised, the contract terminates and the earnest money is refunded.

Underneath all of it runs section 82.156. A purchaser of a unit from a unit owner other than a declarant who had not received the declaration, bylaws and association rules before executing the contract of sale, or whose contract carries no underlined or bold-print provision acknowledging receipt of them and recommending they be read before signing, may cancel the contract before the sixth day after those documents arrive. A purchaser who had not received a resale certificate before executing the contract may cancel before the sixth day after the certificate arrives or a waiver under section 82.157 is executed, whichever occurs first. Either cancellation is made by hand-delivered written notice or by certified mail with return receipt requested within the five-day cancellation period, without penalty and with every payment made before cancellation refunded. A selling unit owner may not require a purchaser to close until the declaration, bylaws and any association rules have been given.

Parking earns one sentence here: a limited common element and the declaration's provisions relating to the right to use it may not be altered without the consent of each affected unit owner and that owner's first lien mortgagee, which is why a parking answer comes out of the recorded amendments rather than out of a listing. The full timetable, the option period and the parking record sit on the page titled Buying at 2727 Kirby After a Relocation: Timing, Parking, the Board.

What can you look up before you meet anybody?

Three things, and none of them needs a conversation. The Texas Real Estate Commission publishes a license holder search that takes a name or license number together with a license type, with Broker or Sales Agent among the types it offers. The commission also publishes a Consumer Protection Notice as a numbered form, Form ID CN 1-5, with an effective date of 09/01/2023.

The third is the association, which is itself a public record. It must record a management certificate in each county in which any portion of the condominium is located, signed and acknowledged by an officer, stating the name of the condominium, the name of the association, the location of the condominium, the recording data for the declaration and any amendments to it, and the mailing address of the association. The county clerk records that certificate in the county's real property records and indexes it as a Condominium Association Management Certificate, and not later than the seventh day after it files one for recording the association files the certificate electronically with the Texas Real Estate Commission, which collects it only to make the data accessible to the public through a website.

Two cautions about those three. The license holder search is an application a browser runs rather than a document, and nothing was run through it, so no license number, case or result appears anywhere here. The Consumer Protection Notice is a PDF that was not opened, and no management certificate for this condominium was retrieved, so what either one says is not repeated here.

What can this page not tell you?

It cannot tell you what this building's own declaration and amendments actually say, since they were not read here and the county index is where they are listed.

It cannot tell you what any particular agent's license record shows, since nothing was looked up and the commission's license holder search is an application rather than a document.

It cannot tell you what the written agreement in front of you says, since that is a private contract whose terms are whatever the parties wrote.

It cannot tell you what a home here is worth.

It cannot tell you whether this association has published its dedicatory instruments anywhere, since no association website was found or read.

Anyone weighing these questions about a home at 2727 Kirby can put them to Paige Martin of Real Broker, LLC.