No, it is not required. Texas has no state agency regulating homebuilders and no law mandating a builder warranty. The Texas Residential Construction Commission, which once set statutory warranties and performance standards, was abolished through the Sunset process and wound down operations by August 2010.

The familiar 1-2-10 structure, one year on workmanship and materials, two years on plumbing, electrical and HVAC, ten years on major structural, is industry convention. Most builders offer it voluntarily. None are compelled to.

Read the actual warranty document, not the sales brochure. Coverage, exclusions, and the claims process vary meaningfully between builders.

Two separate clocks, and buyers routinely confuse them.

Statutes of limitation govern how long you have after discovering a problem: generally two years for negligence and property damage claims, four years for breach of contract and breach of warranty.

The statute of repose is the outer wall. Historically ten years from substantial completion under Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code §16.009. House Bill 2024, effective June 9, 2023, shortened that to six years for builders of detached one and two family homes and townhomes up to three stories, if the builder provides a written warranty of at least one year workmanship, two years systems, and six years major structural.

This is the part worth understanding: a builder marketing a 1-2-10 warranty may have structured the written document as 1-2-6 to capture the shorter six-year repose window. Absent a qualifying written warranty, the ten-year repose still applies. Ask which one you actually have.

The Texas Residential Construction Liability Act, Chapter 27 of the Texas Property Code, governs how a residential construction defect claim has to proceed. It is not a warranty mandate. It is a right-to-repair procedure, and it has hard deadlines.

Before you file suit or demand arbitration, you must send the contractor written notice by certified mail at least 60 days in advance, describing the defect in reasonable detail. The contractor then has 35 days to request an inspection and 45 days from your notice to make a written settlement or repair offer.

Skipping the notice step can derail an otherwise legitimate claim. Document everything in writing from the first conversation, not from the point where it becomes a dispute.

This is the single most common financial surprise in North Texas new construction, and it is entirely predictable.

Texas appraises property as of January 1. If your home was not finished on that date, your first tax bill reflects only the unimproved lot value. The following January, the completed home gets assessed at full market value. The bill does not creep up. It jumps.

The knock-on effect is an escrow shortage. If your lender set up the escrow account based on that lot-only figure, the account comes up short when the real bill arrives. Your servicer then collects the shortage and raises your monthly payment going forward to cover the higher ongoing taxes. Two increases at once.

The fix takes one conversation. Ask your lender to set escrow on the estimated completed value, not the lot value. If they will not, set the difference aside yourself. Either way, run the year-two number before you sign, not after.

Both add to what you pay, and neither shows up on the price sheet.

A MUD, Municipal Utility District, is a political subdivision that issues bonds to fund water, sewer, and drainage infrastructure in developments outside city utility service. It repays those bonds through an added property tax rate. MUD rates commonly decline as the district builds out and the tax base grows, often across ten to twenty years, but generally have no fixed expiration date. Texas has more than 1,200 active special districts, all regulated by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

A PID, Public Improvement District, is a city or county district levying special assessments for neighborhood improvements: parks, landscaping, trails, sometimes streets. A PID can usually be paid off in full up front or amortized, commonly over twenty to forty years, and it ends when the assessment is paid.

Ask for four things before you write an offer: the total effective tax rate rather than just city and county, whether the community sits in a MUD or PID or both, the current special district rate, and the PID payoff and installment schedule.

Two different things, and the timing gap on the second one costs people money.

The homestead exemption can now be filed in the year you purchase, a change made in 2022. You no longer wait until the following January. File free with your county appraisal district using Comptroller Form 50-114. There is no reason to pay a service for this.

The 10 percent appraisal cap under Tax Code §23.23 limits annual increases in your appraised value to ten percent plus the value of new improvements. But it does not apply in year one. The cap begins January 1 of the year after you first qualify for the exemption.

A new construction buyer typically has no cap protection during the first full year, which is exactly the year the assessment jumps from lot value to completed value. The cap arrives after the increase it would have limited.

Builders are exempt from TREC's promulgated form requirement and use their own purchase agreements, drafted by their attorneys to protect their production schedule. The differences from the standard TREC 1-4 Family Residential resale contract are significant.

There is typically no option period. That unrestricted right to terminate that Texas resale buyers take for granted does not exist by default in a builder contract. This is the most important difference on the page.

Earnest money and deposits can be much larger, and may be non-refundable. Upgrade selections often require additional deposits, sometimes due before your financing is fully approved.

There is often no appraisal contingency, meaning if the home appraises below contract price, covering the gap in cash may be your problem. Financing-failure protections vary widely by builder.

Because there is no option period to fall back on, contract review has to happen before you sign. Not after.

Most builders require your agent to be registered or physically present on your first visit for that representation, and the builder-paid compensation, to be recognized in that community. Walk into the model home alone, hand over your information at the desk, and you can forfeit the ability to bring your own agent on that specific community entirely.

This is builder corporate policy, not Texas law, and it varies between builders. Some post signage stating they are not obligated to honor an agent added later. The policy exists because it saves the builder a commission, which tells you who it is designed to benefit.

The person at the desk is a licensed agent working for the builder. Under Texas rules they must provide you the TREC Information About Brokerage Services notice, which discloses who they represent. Read it.

Two changes landed close together and they work in tandem.

The NAR settlement, effective August 2024, removed offers of buyer-broker compensation from the MLS and requires a written representation agreement before touring. Seller and builder-paid compensation remains entirely legal. It is simply negotiated outside the MLS now.

Texas Senate Bill 1968, effective January 1, 2026, added Occupations Code §§1101.562 and 1101.563. A license holder performing any act of brokerage for a residential buyer must have a written agreement before showing residential property. That agreement must state the services provided, a termination date, whether it is exclusive, whether the license holder represents you, the amount or rate of compensation and how it is determined, and conspicuous language that broker compensation is not set by law and is fully negotiable.

In practice on new construction, builder-paid compensation is still common. It is now negotiated and documented rather than assumed.

No. Under RESPA, a builder cannot require you to use its affiliated or preferred lender, and cannot charge you a higher price for the home because you used someone else.

What a builder can do is offer incentives for using the preferred lender: closing cost credits, design center allowances, rate buydowns. Those are legitimate. A builder can also require you to be pre-qualified by their lender even if you finance elsewhere. Where the builder and lender are affiliated, you should receive an Affiliated Business Arrangement disclosure.

Run the math both ways. Sometimes the incentive genuinely beats a better rate elsewhere. Sometimes it does not, and the only way to know is to get a competing loan estimate.

A temporary buydown, structured as 2-1 or 3-2-1, subsidizes your payment for the first two or three years using funds held in escrow, usually paid by the builder. A 2-1 means two percent below the note rate in year one, one percent below in year two, then the full rate. The note rate itself never changes, and you must qualify at the full rate regardless.

A permanent buydown uses discount points paid at closing, where one point equals one percent of the loan amount, to permanently reduce the note rate for the life of the loan.

The break-even between the two typically falls around years five to seven. Temporary wins if you expect to sell or refinance sooner. Permanent wins if you plan to stay. Ask which one the builder is actually offering, because the marketing often blurs them.

Standard rate locks run thirty to sixty days, which is useless on a build. What you need is an extended rate lock, available in 120, 180, 270, and 360 day terms depending on the lender.

Extended locks generally require money up front and carry a higher rate than a short lock. That premium is what you pay for certainty across a long build.

A float-down provision lets you capture a lower market rate if rates fall during the lock. Availability is usually restricted to a window near the end, commonly once you are within sixty days of closing, the builder has committed to a firm date, and underwriting has fully approved your file.

If you are building rather than buying a completed home, also ask about a construction-to-permanent loan, which combines both into one closing with funds released in draws tied to build milestones.

Standing inventory and quick move-in homes carry the richest incentives, for a simple reason: an unsold finished home costs the builder money every month it sits.

Incentives concentrate at predictable moments. End of fiscal quarter, meaning March 31, June 30, September 30, and December 31, and fiscal year end for the large public builders. Also at phase close-outs, when a builder wants the last few lots of a section cleared before opening the next. Late fall through winter generally sees the least buyer competition, which adds room on top.

The tradeoff is real: you accept the finishes someone else selected. A to-be-built home in a popular early phase gives you full control and the thinnest incentives.

Actual incentive amounts vary substantially by builder, community, and how long a specific home has been standing. The timing pattern is reliable. The dollar figures are not something anyone should quote you in advance.

DFW sits on Blackland Prairie expansive clay, soil that swells when wet and shrinks when dry. That movement is the leading cause of residential foundation distress across North Texas, and it is why foundation is the one inspection item here that deserves genuine attention.

Post-tension slabs are the common engineered response, but a post-tension slab is only as good as the design behind it. It requires a lot-specific geotechnical report, not a generic subdivision spec applied across every pad.

Ask your builder directly whether a soil report was performed for your specific lot, and ask to see it. Then pay attention to drainage and consistent soil moisture after you move in, because those two things do more for long-term foundation performance than anything else within your control.