Questions to Ask Before You Hire an Agent at The Royalton: Checking the Answers Against the Building's Record

What can you actually check about an agent at The Royalton?

At most addresses, a question to an agent has no checkable answer. At this one it does. The Royalton is a 33-story, 253-home condominium tower at 3333 Allen Parkway, and it has a published record: an evacuation in August 2022 with engineering findings on the record, a Texas statute that decides how a large repair reaches an owner, a recorded declaration that decides what each home owes, and a lender with a written list of questions about all three.

You are hiring a brokerage as well as a person. Under Section 1101.351(c) of the Texas Occupations Code, a licensed sales agent may not engage or attempt to engage in real estate brokerage unless the sales agent is sponsored by a licensed broker and is acting for that broker, so the duties the next section sets out sit with the broker behind the person you meet.

Each section below asks one question, names the document that already answers it, and leaves you to mark the answer you got right or wrong.

What does Texas require a broker who represents you to tell you?

Start with who your agent is in law. Under Section 1101.557(a) of the Texas Occupations Code, a broker who represents a party in a real estate transaction, or who lists real estate for sale under an exclusive agreement for a party, is that party's agent. The duties in the next subsection are owed by a broker described that way, which means they run once somebody represents you rather than before.

Subsection (b) sets three of them. The broker may not instruct another broker to directly or indirectly violate Section 1101.652(b)(22). The broker must inform the party if the broker receives material information related to a transaction to list, buy, sell or lease the party's real estate, including the receipt of an offer by the broker. And the broker shall, at a minimum, answer the party's questions and present any offer to or from the party.

Those three words, at a minimum, do work when you are weighing what two people say they will do for you. The statute sets a floor. Service above the floor is a promise you get into the written agreement, because the section supplies the floor and leaves the rest to the parties.

On the buying side one more requirement attaches to that agreement. Under Section 1101.563 of the Texas Occupations Code, a license holder who performs any act of real estate brokerage for a prospective buyer of residential real property must enter into a written agreement with the prospective buyer before showing any residential real property to them, or, if none will be shown, before presenting an offer to purchase on their behalf, and the agreement must disclose in conspicuous language that broker compensation is not set by law and is fully negotiable.

The enforceable end of all this sits in Section 1101.652(b). The commission may suspend or revoke a license issued under that chapter, or take other disciplinary action authorized by it, if the license holder, while engaged in real estate brokerage, makes a material misrepresentation to a potential buyer concerning a significant defect, including a latent structural defect, known to the license holder that would be a significant factor to a reasonable and prudent buyer in making a decision to purchase real property, or fails to disclose such a defect to a potential buyer. Every ground in that subsection opens on the same words, while engaged in real estate brokerage.

The same subsection reaches a license holder who fails to make clear to all parties to a real estate transaction the party for whom the license holder is acting. Section 1101.557(b) states the floor this way.

How can you tell whether an agent has read this building's 2022 record?

Ask about August 2022, then check the answer against what is recorded. An underground water line serving the building's fire sprinkler system broke on 11 August 2022, water flooded the lower level, a section of ground slab heaved, and the 33-story tower was evacuated. The engineers who inspected the day after reported that they did not identify conditions representing an immediate concern to the structural integrity of the building's primary vertical and lateral systems, while noting that further conditions could be exposed once repairs were opened up.

The 2022 Evacuation at The Royalton: What Happened, What the Engineers Found, and What a Buyer Should Ask sets out the rest of the sequence, so what follows is about testing an answer rather than about the event.

Four questions do that. What did the engineers who inspected actually report, and where is that recorded? What happened to the certificate of occupancy, and who corrected the record? When did residents return? And what repairs followed, and how were they funded?

The fourth is the one nobody outside the association can answer from anything published, so ask for it in writing from the association rather than taking a summary of it.

There is a reason to press on all four. The questions in the next section belong to a mortgage lender, and they ask about the same record.

What will a mortgage lender ask about this building, and who answers it?

Ask which of a lender's own questions about this building the agent has already seen answered. The Condominium Project Questionnaire, published as Fannie Mae Form 1076 and Freddie Mac Form 476, is sent to the association or its management company on behalf of an individual seeking mortgage financing to purchase or refinance a unit in the project, and the lender needs the information to determine the eligibility of the project for mortgage financing purposes.

Its December 2021 addendum asks the building half in this order. When was the last building inspection by a licensed architect, licensed engineer or any other building inspector? Did that inspection have findings related to the safety, soundness, structural integrity or habitability of the project's buildings? Where it did, have the recommended repairs been completed, and where they have not, which remain and when will they be done? Is the association aware of any deficiencies of those same four kinds, what are they, which repairs remain and when will they be done? Are there outstanding violations of jurisdictional requirements, such as zoning ordinances and codes, related to those four things, and are any anticipated? An earlier section of the same form asks whether the association is involved in any active or pending litigation.

Two rules in Fannie Mae's Selling Guide give those answers consequences, and each is a condition a lender sets on a loan rather than anything Texas requires of an association. In its topic on ineligible projects, as that topic stands in August 2026, a project with an evacuation order due to an unsafe condition, either for a partial or total evacuation of its buildings, is ineligible until the unsafe condition has been remediated and the buildings are deemed safe for occupancy. And where a structural or mechanical inspection was completed within 3 years of the lender's project review date, the lender must obtain and review the inspection report, which cannot indicate that any critical repairs are needed, that evacuation orders are in effect or that regulatory actions are required.

Two conditions narrow that whole family and travel with it. The guide puts routine repairs outside the critical category and says they include work that is preventative in nature or part of normal capital replacements and that is accomplished within the project's normal operating budget or through special assessments that are within guidelines. And where damage or deferred maintenance is isolated to one or a few units and does not affect the overall safety, soundness, structural integrity or habitability of the project, those requirements do not apply.

How this project stands against any of those tests is a lender's answer, given on a particular note date. The hiring question sits elsewhere in the same guide: sources for project information include, among others, appraisers, associations, management companies and real estate agents, and lenders are responsible for the accuracy of any information obtained from those sources. The person you hire may be one of the sources your lender relies on.

The Royalton: The HOA Documents That Change Your Offer carries the resale certificate, the clocks a contract runs on and the lender's other project tests. The guide states the evacuation-order rule this way.

What should an agent be able to say about how a large repair here gets paid for?

Ask how a large repair at this building reaches an owner, and listen for three routes. The first is reserves the association already holds: unless otherwise provided by the declaration, Section 82.102(a) of the Texas Property Code lets the association, acting through its board, adopt and amend budgets for revenues, expenditures and reserves and collect assessments for common expenses from unit owners.

The second is an assessment: except as provided by Section 82.111 of the Texas Property Code, the cost of a repair or replacement above the insurance proceeds is a common expense, and the board may levy an assessment to pay the expenses in accordance with each owner's common expense liability.

The third is a loan: except as provided by Subsection (g), Section 82.102(f) lets the association, by resolution of the board of directors, borrow money and assign as collateral the association's right to future income, including the right to receive assessments, and the association's lien rights, and where a dedicatory instrument requires a vote of members to borrow or to assign, the loan or assignment must be approved as that instrument provides, requiring the consent of owners holding 67 percent of all voting interests if no lower approval threshold is given.

So the question is whether the person in front of you can name all three and say which documents would show each one. Somebody who asks only about reserves has asked about one of the three. Reserves, Special Assessments and Association Loans at The Royalton: How a Repair Gets Paid For works through them in full. The Texas Property Code states the second of those routes this way.

What should you ask before you accept an estimate of a home's monthly fee?

Ask which document states this home's own number. Under Section 82.057(a) of the Texas Property Code, the declaration shall allocate a fraction or percentage of undivided interests in the common elements and in the common expenses of the association, and a portion of the votes in the association, to each unit, and state the formulas used to establish those allocations. So each home's share of the common expenses is the share the recorded declaration allocates to it, under a formula that declaration has to state. A figure worked out from a floor area is an estimate of the building rather than a statement about one home.

The answer is the association's resale certificate, which states the amount of the periodic common expense assessment and the unpaid common expenses or special assessments currently due and payable from the selling unit owner. Under Section 82.157(a), except as provided by Subsection (c), a unit owner other than a declarant who intends to sell must, before executing a contract or conveying the unit, furnish the purchaser 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.

Two checks in the statute are ones you can run yourself. Except for minor variations due to rounding, the sums of the undivided interests in the common elements and of the common expense liabilities allocated at any time to all the units shall each equal one if stated as fractions or 100 percent if stated as percentages, and where a discrepancy exists between an allocated interest and the result derived from application of the pertinent formula, the allocated interest prevails. And under Section 82.112(e), if common expense liabilities are reallocated, common expense assessments and an assessment installment not yet due are recomputed in accordance with the reallocated common expense liabilities.

HOA Fees at The Royalton: What They Cost, What They Cover, and Why They Differ Between Homes carries the fee series, and The Royalton: The HOA Documents That Change Your Offer carries the rest of what the certificate states.

What does a national list of questions leave out at The Royalton?

Ask the national questions as well. The National Association of REALTORS publishes a consumer guide of ten questions to ask a buyer's agent, and three of them turn into questions about one building. What types of services the agent can provide, which the guide describes as finding homes that meet your criteria, accompanying you to showings, sharing an analysis of the market and available properties, negotiating on your behalf and more. How the agent approaches scouting properties, which the guide says differs by business model and by the technology, tools and resources a brokerage uses. And whether the agent can recommend service providers who can help you obtain a mortgage, make home repairs or support other closing tasks.

A list written for the whole country cannot ask what the engineers reported at this address, what a lender's questionnaire asks this association, how a repair at this tower reaches an owner, or which document states one home's assessment. Those are the six sections above, and each of them is a question about one building.

Two qualifiers travel with anything taken from that guide. The association notes that consumer guides do not constitute any change in its policy, and it says practices may vary based on state and local law.

What can this page not tell you?

It cannot tell you what any particular agent has read. That is why every section above is written as a question rather than as a verdict, and why the document behind each one is named.

It cannot tell you what the 2022 repairs cost or how they were funded. That sits in the association's ledgers, its minutes and its insurance file, and a buyer reaches them through the seller.

It cannot tell you whether any loan, assessment or reserve figure named in the Texas statute exists at this association. None of it is public, and the board minutes and the association's financial records are where it would appear.

It cannot tell you what this building's declaration allocates to a particular home. The schedule of allocated interests is an exhibit to the recorded declaration, which a seller furnishes alongside the bylaws, the rules and the resale certificate.

It cannot tell you whether a loan is available on this project today. That is a lender's answer, given on a note date.

Somebody who wants these questions answered about a particular home at The Royalton can put them to Paige Martin of Real Broker, LLC.