The Royalton: The HOA Documents That Change Your Offer

Which document can change the price you offer?

The resale certificate is the association's signed statement about the home you are buying and about its own finances, issued by the association and prepared no earlier than three months before it is delivered to you. Four of its lettered boxes move a number in your offer. Box C states whether a common expense or special assessment is due and unpaid by the seller, and how much. Box D states any other amounts the seller owes the association. Box E states the capital expenditures the association has approved for the next 12 months, which means large spending on the building itself. Box F states the reserves held for capital expenditures, and how much of that amount has already been designated for a named project.

Read the approved-spending line and the reserve line together. Approved spending with nothing set aside behind it is a special assessment waiting for a vote, and a special assessment is a bill that reaches every owner, including the one who closed last week. Reserves already committed to a named project are spoken for, so a large reserve figure can still leave the next repair unfunded. After an initial assessment by an association, assessments in a Texas condominium are made at least annually and based on a budget adopted at least annually by the association, so the gap between approved work and funded reserves closes at a meeting, on a timetable nobody can promise you.

Three attachments come with the promulgated form, and they are what make those figures checkable: the operating budget, the insurance summary and the balance sheet. Box G states that the current operating budget and balance sheet of the association is attached, so confirm all three arrived. The lettered boxes belong to the Condominium Resale Certificate, TREC No. 32-5, effective 25 November 2024.

For scale on the recurring number, the median monthly fee reported on the homes sold here was $1,377 in 2026, on a series computed 31 August 2026. That is a record of what owners paid on the homes that changed hands. The association's budget and balance sheet are the documents that state its finances.

Which document can move your closing date?

The declaration is the recorded document that creates the condominium and binds every owner in it, and it is the one that can move your closing date. The certificate must state any right of first refusal or other restraint contained in the declaration that restricts the right to transfer a unit, meaning a right for the association or one of its members to step in and buy the home instead of you. Box A of the promulgated certificate asks the association to say which section of the declaration that right sits in, so you can read it for yourself.

What the contract does with that right is the part worth knowing before you sign anything. Where the Documents reveal a right of refusal, TREC's Residential Condominium Contract (Resale) amends the Effective Date to the date you receive a copy of 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 or have waived it. Three of the contract's deadlines are written as a number of days after the Effective Date and move with it: the days the seller has to deliver the Documents, the days to deliver the certificate, and the option period. Every other deadline states its own starting point, so read what your closing date counts from in the contract in front of you rather than assuming they all run together.

It has its own failure mode. If the certification does not reach you within the number of days the parties wrote into the blank, or if the right of refusal is exercised, the contract terminates and the earnest money is refunded to you. Ask the seller for the declaration before you write the offer, so the number in that blank is one you chose.

How many days do you get to walk away, and what starts the clock?

Three separate clocks run here, and each one starts off a different delivery.

One, the termination option. The seller grants you an unrestricted right to end the contract by giving notice within the number of days written into the blank, that period being the option period, and notice under that paragraph must be given by 5:00 p.m. local time where the property is located. Time is of the essence for it, so strict compliance with the date is required. The trap sits in the fee: where no dollar amount is stated as the option fee, or the fee is not delivered within the time required, you do not hold the unrestricted right to terminate at all.

Two, the Documents, which the contract defines as the declaration, the bylaws and any rules of the association. Where you did not have them when you signed, the seller delivers them at the seller's expense within the days written in, and you may terminate within 7 days after you receive them, with the earnest money refunded.

Three, the certificate. Same structure, separate clock: where you did not have the certificate at signing, the seller delivers it and you may terminate within 7 days after the date you receive it, earnest money refunded. Those 7 days run from the day the certificate arrives, which can be weeks after the Documents did.

Underneath all three sits a statutory right on its own clock, and this building carries it because the declaration was recorded after the December 2004 conversion. A purchaser who did not receive the declaration, bylaws and association rules before executing the contract may cancel before the sixth day after the date those documents arrive, and a purchaser who did not receive a resale certificate may cancel before the sixth day after it arrives or a waiver is executed, whichever comes first. Cancellation is by hand-delivering written notice or by mailing notice by certified United States mail, return receipt requested, inside the cancellation period; it is without penalty, and all payments made before cancellation must be refunded. A floor runs under the whole sequence: a selling unit owner may not require a purchaser to close until the purchaser is given the declaration, bylaws and any association rules.

The affidavit route is the one that costs a buyer something. Where the association misses its ten days, the selling owner may give you a sworn affidavit stating that the information was requested and not timely provided, and you and the seller may then agree in writing to waive the requirement to furnish the certificate. Agreeing to that means writing the rest of the deal with the association's financial position unread.

Which documents change what you pay at the closing table?

Box O of the certificate is a table of the association fees resulting from the transfer, with a description of each fee, who it is paid to and the amount, and the statute requires every fee payable to the association or its agent in connection with the transfer of ownership to be stated that way. Read it as a line-by-line list of cash you bring to closing.

Box P is a separate line for any required contribution to the capital reserves account. That money goes into the association's reserves and stays with the association.

The certificate itself has a price. An association may charge a reasonable and necessary fee, not to exceed $375, to furnish it. That is a ceiling on that one item, and it says nothing about what the transfer fees in box O come to. Under the contract the certificate is prepared at the seller's expense, and the Documents are delivered at the seller's expense as well.

What the seller owes, on the two lines for unpaid assessments and for other amounts payable, is a title matter. The association's lien for assessments is created by recordation of the declaration, which constitutes record notice and perfection of the lien, and unless the declaration provides otherwise no other recordation of a lien or notice of lien is required, so there is no separate filing to go looking for. The statutory definition is wide: assessments means regular and special assessments, dues, fees, charges, interest, late fees, fines, collection costs, attorney's fees and any other amount due to the association by the unit owner or levied against the unit, all of them enforceable as assessments unless the declaration provides otherwise.

Reading the certificate buys a protection with a boundary. 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 the certificate, and an association may not deny the validity of any statement in it. The protection stops at the date the certificate was prepared. It leaves the association free to recover debts or claims that arise or become due after that date, and it leaves untouched the association's lien on a unit securing payment of future assessments.

The owner policy of title insurance carries an exception for the terms and provisions of the Documents including the assessments, so the assessment question is answered by the certificate and the declaration.

Which documents can cost you your financing?

Every test in this section is a test of the building. Your income, your credit and your down payment are reviewed on their own, and the items below can end a loan on a home you can comfortably afford.

An unfunded repair costing more than $10,000 per unit that should be undertaken within the next 12 months counts as a critical repair, and the rule excludes two things from that count: repairs made by the unit owner, and repairs funded through a special assessment. A project needing critical repairs stays ineligible until the work is done and documented, and funding one through a special assessment does not settle it, because where a special assessment is associated with a critical repair and the issue is not remediated the project is ineligible. For each special assessment, current or planned, a lender has to establish its purpose, when it was approved, whether it is planned or already being executed, the original amount, the amount left to collect, and when it will be paid in full.

Projects in which the association is named as a party to pending litigation that relates to the safety, structural soundness, habitability, or functional use of the project are ineligible. The guide's carve-out from that is narrower than the 10% threshold usually quoted from it, and that threshold is one condition inside it. It applies where the lender determines that the pending litigation involves minor matters with no impact on the safety, structural soundness, habitability, or functional use of the project, and then only where the litigation also meets one or more of the conditions the guide lists, among them that the reasonably anticipated or known damages and legal expenses are not expected to exceed 10% of the project's funded reserves. The line giving the amount of unsatisfied judgments against the association, and the line saying whether suits are pending and what their nature is, are what a lender reads first.

Two ceilings come off documents you will already hold. No more than 15% of the total units in a project may be 60 days or more past due on common expense assessments, and the same 15% ceiling applies to each special assessment. The projected budget has to be adequate, which means it includes allocations for the line items pertinent to the type of project and funds replacement reserves for capital expenditures and deferred maintenance at at least 10% of the budget.

Single-entity ownership is a third: in a project with 21 or more units, ownership of more than 20% of the units by the same individual, investor group, partnership, sponsor or corporation puts the project outside the guide. 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 that report, and it cannot indicate that critical repairs are needed.

Timing is its own risk. A full review of an established project must have been completed within one year prior to the note date. A lender who becomes aware of significant deferred maintenance or major litigation reports it no later than five business days after learning of it, and Fannie Mae reserves the right to change a project eligibility status designation when information acquired after approval bears on the earlier determination.

The answers come from the association and its managing agent, often on the Condominium Project Questionnaire (Form 1076) or a substantially similar form, and lenders are responsible for the accuracy of any information obtained from those sources. All of this is a condition a lender sets on a loan rather than a rule Texas law imposes on the association, and nothing here states how this building scores on any of these tests. That answer belongs to a lender, on a particular note date.

What does the 2022 record mean for the documents you read here?

An underground water line serving the building's fire sprinkler system broke on 11 August 2022 and the 33-story tower was evacuated. The engineers who inspected the next day reported that they did not identify conditions representing an immediate concern to the structural integrity of the building's primary vertical and lateral systems, and a Houston Public Works spokesperson later corrected a report that the building's certificate of occupancy had been pulled. For the full sequence, read the account of the 2022 evacuation and what the engineers reported.

Against that record, name the lines you are reading for. Approved capital expenditure and designated reserves, because a repair program shows up there before it shows up anywhere else. Unsatisfied judgments and pending suits, because a dispute over a large repair arrives as a suit before it arrives as an assessment.

The insurance line, box J, states whether the association provides coverage for the benefit of unit owners as per the attached summary from the association's insurance agent. How that claim settled is what decides whether owners funded a shortfall themselves. Two statutory facts sit behind that line: a claim for a loss covered by the association's property insurance must be submitted by and adjusted with the association, and the proceeds are payable to an insurance trustee designated by the association, or otherwise to the association, rather than to a unit owner or lienholder.

Two records sit outside the certificate package and have to be asked for by name: minutes of meetings of the association and board, which the association is required to keep, and the annual independent audit of the records, which the association obtains as a common expense with copies made available to the unit owners. Ask for any structural or mechanical inspection report as well, because a lender will want it anyway if one was done in the last 3 years.

No public source records what the 2022 repairs cost or how they were funded. That sits in the association's budgets, its minutes and its insurance file, and a buyer under contract can ask for all three.

Which document can you read before you write the offer?

One document in the stack is readable before you write anything, and it is public record: the management certificate. An association has to record one stating the name of the condominium, its location, the recording data for the declaration and any amendments to it, the mailing address of the association, the name, mailing address, telephone number and e-mail address of any management company, the website address of any site carrying the association's dedicatory instruments, and the amount and description of a fee or fees charged to a unit seller or buyer relating to a transfer of a property interest in a unit.

It is findable by name. The county clerk records it in the real property records of the county and indexes the document as a Condominium Association Management Certificate, so it can be pulled by that name.

It is also kept current. An amended certificate has to be recorded no later than the 30th day after the date the association has notice of a change in the recorded information, and the association files the certificate or the amended certificate electronically with the Texas Real Estate Commission no later than the seventh day after filing it for recording.

So the transfer fees, the management company and the place the governing documents are published are knowable before an offer. The rest waits for the certificate.

What can this page not tell you?

Five answers a reader needs here are held by other people, and this section says who holds each one.

This association's reserves, its budget, its transfer fees, its insurance deductibles, any litigation and its assessment history live in the certificate package and the association's own records, which reach a buyer from the seller and the managing agent once a contract is in place.

What the 2022 repairs cost and how they were paid for is recorded in the association's ledgers and in the insurance file for that claim.

Each home's share of every figure above comes from the schedule of allocated interests, an exhibit to the recorded declaration, which the seller furnishes with the Documents and which the county's real property records also hold.

Whether a loan is available on this project today is a lender's answer, given as of a note date and revisited when the lender learns something new.

The number of days to write into each blank in the contract is negotiated between you and the seller, which is why the form leaves them open. Settle them with your agent and your lender before you sign.