Resale Certificate Fees and Who Pays Them at 2727 Kirby

You do, as the selling owner, usually through your listing agent. The condominium statute starts the association's clock with a written request from the owner. The association then has ten days from receiving it to hand over a signed, dated certificate. Sending that request early keeps the certificate from becoming the last open item before a buyer signs.

The Texas Real Estate Research Center describes the same habit on the subdivision side. Its 2026 legal column says the documents are usually requested by the seller or the seller's agent from the POA or its management company. The same column says a POA must deliver the subdivision information within 10 business days of the request. Keep the two clocks apart. The ten-day condominium deadline counts from the day the association receives your request. The 10-business-day deadline belongs to property owners' associations. Write down the date your request went out, because the association's deadline runs from its arrival.

No. The $375 ceiling prices the certificate and nothing else. Any fee the association or its agent charges because ownership is changing hands is a separate line. The certificate itself must list each one: what it is, who receives it and how much it is. Read that table before the contract's transfer-charge figure is filled in.

TREC's condominium resale contract handles transfer charges with a blank. The buyer covers the fees, deposits, reserves and similar charges the transfer triggers, up to the amount the parties write in. The seller pays anything above it. Regular monthly dues follow a different rule. They are prorated through the closing date, so each side carries its own share of the month. A special assessment that is due and unpaid at closing stays with the seller under the same contract.

It is the association's own snapshot of its money and of what the seller owes. The current operating budget and a balance sheet come attached. Inside, you find the periodic assessment on the home, anything the seller has left unpaid, the reserve amount and any part set aside for a named project, and capital spending approved for the next twelve months.

The Texas State Law Library describes the certificate in similar terms for property owners' associations. Its guide says the certificate summarizes the association's financial status and lists any unpaid debts owed by the property owner. For a buyer, the unpaid line carries weight. A buyer who relies on a properly executed certificate is not liable for delinquent amounts beyond the total it states as unpaid on the date it was prepared. Compare that line with what the seller expects to clear at closing.

Order a fresh one. For a condominium sale, the certificate must have been prepared no more than three months before the buyer receives it. A certificate pulled at listing can expire while the home waits for a contract. Under the condominium resale contract, preparing the certificate is the seller's expense, so plan for that second charge.

Subdivision rules include a cheaper update. The Texas Real Estate Research Center's 2022 article on POA rules puts updated certificates at $75. Its 2026 legal column adds that an update must be requested within 180 days of the original certificate's issue. It must then be provided within seven business days after the new request. Those figures belong to property owners' associations. Before counting on a $75 update at 2727 Kirby, ask the association what it charges to refresh a condominium certificate. With a median of 40 days to contract here, a second certificate is a realistic line in a seller's budget.

Only under a policy it has adopted and recorded. A condominium board must adopt a records production and copying policy. It cannot charge an owner for compiling, producing or copying records unless that policy is on record. Those charges sit apart from the certificate fee, and the request comes from the owner rather than the buyer.

The Texas Real Estate Research Center reported the same duty in its 2022 article on POA rules. It wrote that an association board is required to adopt a records production and copying policy that prescribes charges for the requested information. A buyer has no records right of their own before closing. A request for minutes, the audit or earlier financial records goes out in the seller's name, or through someone the seller names in a signed writing. Ask for the copying policy in the same letter, so the charge is known before copies are made.

Once ten days pass after the association receives the written request, the seller may give the buyer a sworn affidavit, signed by the seller, saying the association was asked and did not deliver. Buyer and seller can then agree in writing to proceed without a certificate. That skips the fee, and it also gives up what the certificate protects.

The waiver is one of the boxes in the certificate paragraph of TREC's condominium resale contract. Before ticking it, weigh what the certificate carries. An association cannot later deny a statement it made in one. A buyer who relies on it is shielded from debts it leaves out. A seller's affidavit carries no comparable weight against the association. If the deadline has passed, a written follow-up to the association or its managing agent is worth sending before anyone signs a waiver.