Do you have to disclose foundation repair in Texas?

Short answer: almost certainly yes — but not on the line item most people expect, because that line item doesn’t exist. Here’s what the form actually asks, where the law is genuinely unsettled, and what a buyer’s inspection will and won’t catch.

What the law requires

Texas Property Code §5.008 requires a seller of residential property “comprising not more than one dwelling unit” to give the buyer a written disclosure notice, in the form the statute prescribes or one substantially similar containing at minimum all the same items.

When it’s due: §5.008(f) requires the notice to be delivered “on or before the effective date of an executory contract binding the purchaser to purchase the property.” In practice, before the contract binds.

There are eleven exemptions — including foreclosure, a trustee in bankruptcy, a fiduciary administering a decedent’s estate, transfers between spouses or co-owners, and new construction never previously occupied. Most ordinary resales are not exempt.

One the statute doesn’t answer: an heir who has taken title and later sells in their own name isn’t obviously covered by the estate exemption, which applies to a fiduciary administering the estate. If that’s your situation, ask a lawyer rather than assuming.

The form: TREC No. 55-1

The Texas Real Estate Commission publishes the Seller’s Disclosure Notice as form 55-1, effective May 2026. The disclosure itself is required. What is optional is which form you use: TREC adopts 55-1 “for voluntary use to fulfill the disclosure requirements of Texas Property Code §5.008,” and the statutory form in §5.008(b) satisfies the law equally. In practice almost everyone uses TREC’s. Don’t read “voluntary form” as “optional disclosure” — they are different things.

If you find a form labelled OP-H, it’s two generations out of date — the lineage is OP-H → 55-0 → 55-1. Get the current one from TREC directly.

The two items that reach foundation work

Here is the thing that surprises people: there is no box on the TREC form that says “previous foundation repair.” Not on 55-1, and not in the statutory form either. (That phrasing appears on a Texas REALTORS trade form, which is why so many articles attribute it to TREC.)

What the form actually has:

These are extracts, not the full grids — read the whole form. Plumbing/Sewers/Septics is worth a second look if you’re in Central Texas: an under-slab plumbing leak is one of the most common causes of slab movement here, and it has its own box separate from the foundation one.

Item 5 asks about anything “in need of repair,” and item 9 asks about “alterations or repairs made without necessary permits or not in compliance with building codes in effect at that time” — which matters if the work was done without a permit in a city that requires one.

The genuinely unsettled part

Neither the statute nor the form defines “structural.” So whether slab piering, pier-and-beam shimming, mudjacking, or a root barrier and drainage job counts as “Previous Structural or Roof Repair” is not resolved by any authority we could find. We looked.

The textually coherent reading — and this is our reading, not settled law — goes like this. Items 3 and 5 are keyed to present condition: is there a defect now, is something in need of repair now. Item 4 asks about the past. So a foundation that was properly repaired and is now performing could honestly be:

• No on the Foundation/Slab(s) box in item 3 — no current defect in the slab
• No on item 5 — nothing currently in need of repair
• Yes on the Previous Structural or Roof Repair box in item 4 — there was previous structural repair

That combination is coherent and it is the safe answer. A seller who has had foundation work done and answers “No” to that box is taking a position the text does not clearly support. Disclose it, describe it accurately, and attach the engineer’s report and the warranty — documented repair is generally viewed better by buyers than the suspicion of a hidden one.

You don’t have to investigate — but don’t lie

The notice shall be completed to the best of seller’s belief and knowledge as of the date the notice is completed and signed by the seller. If the information required by the notice is unknown to the seller, the seller shall indicate that fact on the notice, and by that act is in compliance with this section. Texas Property Code §5.008(d)

There is no duty to investigate your own house before selling it, and marking something you genuinely don’t know as “Unknown” is expressly declared to be compliance. Marking “Unknown” about something you do know is not an Unknown — it’s a false answer. The form says the same thing at the top: it is a disclosure of the seller’s knowledge, not a substitute for inspections, and not a warranty.

But §5.008(d) governs compliance with §5.008. It is not a shield against an answer you knew was false. Those are different questions, decided under different law.

If it isn’t disclosed

§5.008 itself is thin on consequences: if a contract is signed without the notice, the buyer “may terminate the contract for any reason within seven days after receiving the notice” — a clock that runs from receipt. The statute says nothing about a notice that never arrives at all.

The real remedy is in the contract, not the statute. Paragraph 7B of the TREC One to Four Family Residential Contract (Resale), form 20-19, is a three-way checkbox. Where the parties check box (2) — buyer has not yet received the notice — it provides that if the buyer doesn’t receive it, the buyer “may terminate this contract at any time prior to the closing and the earnest money will be refunded to Buyer.” That remedy depends on which box was checked, so look at your contract. A lot of articles report the seven-day rule as though it were the penalty for non-disclosure. It isn’t.

Beyond that, two routes exist for a buyer who was misled:

Two things widely misstated, worth correcting: treble damages are capped and discretionary — “not more than three times” — and require a finding that the conduct was knowing or intentional. And a buyer who brings a groundless claim can end up owing the seller’s fees.

You may have seen a statistic claiming most Texas disclosure lawsuits involve foundation problems. We went looking for its source and couldn’t find one — it traces to marketing sites with no citation, and no court dataset codes disclosure cases by defect type. We’re not repeating it.

Buyers: what an inspection actually covers

A licensed Texas inspector must render a written opinion on foundation performance, and must report visible indications used to reach it — the state standards name “binding, out-of-square, non-latching doors,” framing separations, “sloping floors,” wall, floor and ceiling cracks, and “rotating, buckling, cracking, or deflecting masonry cladding.”

The limits are the part worth reading twice. Under the TREC standards, an inspection “is a limited visual survey” and “is not intended to be a comprehensive investigation or exploratory probe to determine the cause or effect of deficiencies noted by the inspector.” An inspector is not required to:

• Use elevation determination devices or perform elevation measurement — so it is not a floor level survey
• Determine “the cause or source of a condition”
• Anticipate future events, including future performance
• Report “past repairs that appear to be effective and workmanlike except as specifically required by these standards” — and for foundations the standards contain no such requirement, though they do require reporting evidence of previous roof-covering repairs
• Provide engineering services, or repair cost estimates

That fourth one matters most if you’re buying a house that has been repaired: a competent-looking past repair may not appear in your inspection report at all. If the disclosure notice says there was previous structural repair, the inspection is not where you’ll learn whether it was done properly. That takes an independent structural engineer.

TREC’s own guidance draws a useful distinction: uniform settlement, where a house settles evenly, is “generally not harmful,” while differential settlement, where parts move relative to each other, “can lead to structural damage.” That difference is what the crack checker walks through.

Common questions

Does disclosing foundation repair kill the sale?

Buyers generally react better to a documented, warrantied repair than to the suspicion of a concealed one — and the alternative carries real legal exposure. Keep the engineer’s report, the invoice and the warranty together and hand them over as a package.

What if I genuinely don’t know whether the house had work done?

Mark it unknown. §5.008(d) says that in terms: if the information is unknown to you, indicate that, and by that act you are in compliance. You are not required to go digging.

I’m buying — is a clean inspection report enough?

Not on expansive clay, and not if repair was disclosed. The inspection is visual and explicitly excludes elevation measurement, cause, and past repairs that look workmanlike. An independent engineer is the next step.

Is any of this different in Williamson County?

The disclosure law is statewide. What’s local is the likelihood: on Blackland clay east of I-35, movement is common enough that buyers here ask about it as a matter of course. See which soil you’re on.

Sources

• Texas Property Code §5.008 — seller’s disclosure notice, exemptions, knowledge standard, termination right.
• TREC form 55-1, Seller’s Disclosure Notice and the TREC One to Four Family Residential Contract (Resale), form 20-19 ¶7B — item wording quoted from TREC’s published forms; get the current versions from TREC’s contracts page. 22 TAC §§535.227–535.228 — inspector standards of practice. TREC’s guide on rendering an opinion of foundation performance — the uniform vs differential settlement distinction.
• Texas Business & Commerce Code Ch. 17 (Deceptive Trade Practices Act) and §27.01 (statutory real-estate fraud).
• Not legal advice. This is general information about Texas law as we read it, including one point — the meaning of “structural” — that we’ve flagged as genuinely unsettled. Talk to your agent or an attorney about your own transaction.

Statutes and form wording last verified July 27, 2026. TREC revises its forms periodically; confirm you have the current one.

Foundation repair by city

Soil, neighborhoods and permit rules differ across the county. Local detail for Round Rock, Georgetown, Cedar Park, Leander, Hutto, Pflugerville and Taylor, or see every area we serve.