Cedar Hill Sellers: Reserving Your Mineral Rights Can Cost You the Buyer (2026)

By Steven J. Thomas

You bought your Cedar Hill house years ago, and at some point somebody told you never to sell the minerals with the property. Now you are getting ready to list, the question is back, and nobody has explained what reserving minerals actually does to your contract. In Texas this is a real decision with a real form behind it, and in the southwest DFW corridor it comes up more often than sellers expect. Handled the wrong way, it can cost you the buyer you already have.

Direct answer

If you want to keep the minerals when you sell a Cedar Hill home, TREC Form 44-3 is the only way to do it. The form is mandatory whenever a seller reserves any part of the mineral estate, and without it the mineral estate you own transfers with the house. Section C, the box where you waive or keep surface rights, is what decides whether most buyers and lenders will still say yes.

Most agents sell houses. I build plans.

That difference matters more on this question than on almost anything else you decide before listing.

A mineral reservation is not a preference you mention at the listing appointment and then forget. It changes what your deed conveys. It changes what your title company puts on Schedule B. It changes what a buyer's underwriter reads and what a lender is willing to finance. And it follows the property permanently, long after you have moved.

So the honest way to approach it is to look at the whole picture at once: what you actually own, what the reservation does to your buyer pool, what it does to your net proceeds, and whether the thing you are holding onto is worth what you give up to hold it. That is a plan. It is not a checkbox. Here is how the pieces fit.

What TREC Form 44-3 actually does

The full name is the Addendum for Reservation of Oil, Gas, and Other Minerals, Form ID 44-3, effective 02/01/2023. It replaced Form 44-2. The Texas Real Estate Commission adopted it by reference in 22 TAC Section 537.51 for mandatory use as an addendum any time a seller reserves all or a portion of the mineral estate.

Mandatory is the word that matters. If you are reserving minerals on a TREC contract, this is the form, and nothing else substitutes for it.

Now the part sellers skip. The TREC One to Four Family Residential Contract (Resale) states that any reservation for oil, gas, or other minerals, water, timber, or other interests is made in accordance with an attached addendum. Read that the way a title attorney reads it. No attached addendum, no reservation. If you tell your agent and the buyer's agent that you are keeping the minerals and nobody attaches 44-3, you have reserved nothing at all. Whatever mineral estate you own conveys with the property at closing, and the deed will say so.

Sellers assume a handshake survives closing. In Texas, the paperwork is the deal.

Section A: what the mineral estate includes, and what it leaves out

Section A of the form defines the term, and the definition is broader than most people picture. The mineral estate means all oil, gas, and other minerals in and under and that may be produced from the property, plus:

• Any royalty under an existing or future mineral lease covering any part of the property
• Executive rights, which is the right to sign a mineral lease covering any part of the property
• Implied rights of ingress and egress
• Exploration and development rights
• Production and drilling rights
• Mineral lease payments
• All related rights and benefits

Then the form draws a line. The mineral estate does not include water, sand, gravel, limestone, building stone, caliche, surface shale, near-surface lignite, or iron. Plenty of sellers read that far, feel relieved, and stop reading. The sentence does not stop there. It goes on to say the mineral estate does include the reasonable use of those surface materials for mining, drilling, exploring, operating, developing, or removing the oil, gas, and other minerals from the property.

That second half is what turns a paperwork question into a yard question. The materials themselves stay with the surface owner. The right to use them in the course of getting minerals out of the ground does not.

Section B: all of it, or a fraction of what you own

Section B gives you two options and tells you to check one box only.

• Seller reserves all of the mineral estate seller owns.
• Seller reserves an undivided fraction or percentage of the mineral estate seller owns.

Option two carries a nuance that trips people up. The fraction applies to your interest, not to the whole mineral estate under the property. If you own a quarter of the minerals and you reserve half, you are reserving half of your quarter. The form states it plainly: if the seller does not own all of the mineral estate, the seller reserves only that percentage or fraction of the seller's interest.

Which raises the question almost nobody asks first. How much do you actually own? Most Cedar Hill homeowners have never checked. Severed mineral estates are common across Texas, and a severance made by an owner in 1954 or 1978 does not appear on your tax statement, your HOA packet, or the closing folder from the day you bought. There is exactly one place you find out, and it is coming up in a minute.

Section C: the surface-rights box most sellers get wrong

Section C is one line with two small boxes, and this is where the money sits.

The line says the seller does, or does not, waive rights of ingress and egress and of reasonable use of the property, including surface materials, for mining, drilling, exploring, operating, developing, or removing the oil, gas, and other minerals.

Check "does waive" and you keep the mineral interest but give up the right to come onto the surface to go after it. Check "does not waive" and you keep the mineral interest along with the right of entry and reasonable surface use attached to it.

Here is the trap. The form says the seller's failure to complete Section C is deemed an election to convey all of those surface rights. Leave the box blank and the default runs against the seller. I have talked to homeowners who believed a blank box meant they kept everything. It is the opposite.

There is a second line in Section C worth reading twice. Surface rights that may be held by other owners of the mineral estate who are not parties to your transaction, including existing mineral lessees, are not affected by your election. You can only waive what is yours. If someone else already holds a piece of the mineral estate under your property, your checkbox does nothing to their rights, and telling a buyer otherwise puts you in a hole you cannot climb out of.

Based on current conditions, waiving surface rights is the version most residential buyers and lenders are comfortable with. A reservation with surface rights retained reads to a buyer as a stranger holding a legal right to be in the backyard. Fair or not, that is how it lands during the option period.

Section D: the seven-day clock

Section D applies when you reserve part of your interest rather than all of it. In that case, within 7 days after the Effective Date, you have to provide the buyer with current contact information for any existing mineral lessee known to you.

Short paragraph on the page, real work in practice. If you do not know whether a lease exists, you now have a research problem with a seven-day clock on it, running alongside inspections, the appraisal, and the buyer's financing. That is a rough week to spend hunting for a landman's phone number.

The title commitment is where you find out what you really own

Under the TREC contract, the seller furnishes a title commitment within 20 days after the title company receives a copy of the contract. The buyer gets legible copies of restrictive covenants and exception documents at the buyer's expense. If those are not delivered on time, the deadline automatically extends up to 15 days, or 3 days before the Closing Date, whichever is earlier. If they still are not delivered, the buyer may terminate and the earnest money is refunded.

That commitment answers the question you should have asked before you ever checked a box. The title policy is issued subject to the mineral exception or exclusion approved by the Texas Department of Insurance, and a prior severance by an earlier owner shows up as a Schedule B exception. This is how a great many Texas homeowners learn they never owned the minerals under their house in the first place.

Picture the sequence when it goes badly. A seller decides at the listing appointment to keep the minerals. Form 44-3 gets attached. Three weeks later the commitment comes back showing the mineral estate was severed decades ago. The reservation is now reserving a slice of nothing, the buyer has spent two weeks imagining a drilling rig behind the fence, and the whole file needs renegotiating around a problem that never existed.

Order the title work early. Read Schedule B. Then decide.

What the Cedar Hill market looks like while you decide

Timing belongs in this conversation, because a mineral reservation is a renegotiation risk, and renegotiation risk costs more in a slower market than a fast one.

• Cedar Hill median sold price: $335,000 across 278 closings over the trailing six months (Source: Resideline, figures last updated August 28, 2026)
• Cedar Hill median time from listed to under contract: 28 days, across 225 closings (Source: Resideline, August 28, 2026)
• Texas average days on market for homes sold in June: 62 days, up from 60 a year earlier (Source: Texas A&M Real Estate Research Center, Texas Housing Insight, August 2026)
• 30-year fixed mortgage rate: 6.66% for the week ending August 27, 2026, up from 6.65% the prior week and 6.56% a year earlier (Source: Freddie Mac PMMS, August 2026)

Read those numbers together. Buyers are paying more for money than they were a year ago, and homes across Texas are sitting a little longer than they did last summer. A buyer stretching to make the payment at 6.66% has less patience for a title exception nobody has explained to them, and less room in the budget to absorb a surprise. Every extra reason to hesitate is expensive right now.

"When a buyer is already stretched on the payment, anything on Schedule B they cannot explain to their spouse turns into a price conversation." — Steven J. Thomas, Broker at Refind Realty DFW and Loan Officer at Envision Home Lenders

What reserving minerals can cost you

Nobody can promise you a number here, and I am not going to try. What I can tell you is where the cost tends to show up.

• Your buyer pool. A documented mineral reservation with retained surface rights narrows who will write an offer on your house. Plenty of buyers pass rather than learn a new area of Texas property law during a ten-day option period.
• Lender and underwriter review. The reservation is an encumbrance sitting in the file. A buyer's lender and the title underwriter will look at it, and looking takes time you did not budget.
• Renegotiation. In many cases this turns into a price or terms conversation after the buyer's attorney or lender weighs in, which is the worst possible moment for it.
• Days on market. More days means more carrying cost: mortgage, taxes, insurance, utilities, lawn service, and the second set of showings you thought you were done with.
• A dead contract and a relist. When a deal falls apart over a title exception, your listing goes back on the market with the days already spent and buyers wondering what went wrong.

Now set that against the other side of the ledger. For most Cedar Hill homeowners, the reserved interest produces no income at all. No lease. No royalty check. Nothing but a line in a deed and a story to tell. Trading real, present-day proceeds for an interest that has never paid anything is a decision worth making on purpose rather than by reflex.

This is not legal advice

Plain English: nothing in this post is legal advice. I am a broker and a loan officer, not your attorney. A mineral reservation changes what your deed conveys, and it is permanent, so it should be reviewed by a Texas real estate attorney before you sign anything. If there is an existing lease, an inherited interest, or a family arrangement in play, that review comes first, ahead of the listing photos and ahead of the sign in the yard.

How to work through this before your house hits the market

Here is the order I use with Cedar Hill sellers who bring this up.

• Get the title work started early instead of waiting for a contract. What Schedule B says drives everything else.
• Read the exceptions with someone who can explain them. A prior severance is the most common answer, and it ends the conversation quickly.
• If you do own an interest, find out what it has ever produced. An interest with no lease and no history of payments is a different decision from one with a check attached.
• If you still want to reserve, have Form 44-3 completed correctly: one box in Section B, Section C filled in deliberately, and a calendar entry for the Section D seven-day deadline.
• Have a Texas real estate attorney review the addendum and the deed language before it goes out with the contract.
• Disclose the reservation up front in the listing, not in week three. Buyers forgive a known condition. They do not forgive a surprise.
• Price and market the house with the reservation on the table. If you want to compare paths before you commit, the home selling options page lays out the routes side by side, and the seller guides library covers the rest of the pre-listing work.

The bottom line for Cedar Hill sellers

Most agents sell houses. I build plans. On this question, that is the entire difference. A mineral reservation touches title, financing, your buyer pool, and your net proceeds at the same time, which puts it at the front of your sale rather than at the bottom of a checklist. Find out what you own before you decide what to keep. Complete Section C on purpose instead of leaving it to a default that runs against you. Get a Texas real estate attorney to read the addendum. Then price and market the house with the reservation disclosed from day one, so the only surprises in your transaction are the good kind.

Get your Home Selling Score

Before you decide anything about minerals, let's look at the house itself. The Home Selling Score is a 30-minute walk-through I do with you at your Cedar Hill home, and you get an honest number at the end. An 85 or above means the house is in shape to go after your target price. Below 85 tells us exactly what to address first, while there is still time to do something about it. Get your free Home Selling Score.

Key takeaways

• A verbal understanding reserves nothing. Without TREC Form 44-3 attached, the mineral estate you own conveys with the house, because the TREC resale contract requires the reservation to be made in an attached addendum.
• Section C is the box that decides your buyer pool, and leaving it blank is deemed an election to convey all of the surface rights described in the form.
• A fractional reservation in Section B applies to your interest only. Reserving half when you own a quarter reserves half of the quarter.
• The title commitment, delivered within 20 days after the title company receives the contract, is where a prior severance shows up as a Schedule B exception. That is how most Texas owners learn they never had the minerals.
• Cedar Hill's median sold price is $335,000 with a median 28 days from list to contract (Resideline, August 28, 2026), and at a 6.66% 30-year rate (Freddie Mac PMMS, week ending August 27, 2026), a buyer's tolerance for an unexplained title exception is thin.

FAQ: Cedar Hill mineral rights and TREC Form 44-3

When do I have to decide whether to reserve my mineral rights?
Before you go under contract. The reservation has to be made in TREC Form 44-3 attached to the contract, so it is a listing-appointment decision, not a closing-table one. Trying to add it after the fact means amending an executed contract with a buyer who has no reason to agree.

Does reserving mineral rights lower what I net on my Cedar Hill home?
It can, and in many cases it does. A reservation with surface rights retained is a documented encumbrance that a buyer's lender and title underwriter will review, it narrows the pool of buyers willing to write, and it is a common renegotiation point. No one can guarantee the size of the effect, but the direction is usually against the seller.

What happens if I leave Section C blank?
The form treats it as an election to convey all of the surface rights it describes. A blank box does not preserve your rights, and it does not create a neutral position. Complete Section C deliberately, one way or the other.

Do Cedar Hill homeowners actually own the minerals under their homes?
Many do not, and most have never checked. Severed mineral estates are common across Texas, and a severance by an earlier owner appears as a Schedule B exception on the title commitment. That commitment is where you find out, not the appraisal district and not your original closing paperwork.

How long does it take to find out what I own?
Under the TREC contract, the seller furnishes a title commitment within 20 days after the title company receives a copy of the contract, with an automatic extension of up to 15 days, or 3 days before the Closing Date, whichever is earlier, if the exception documents are late. You can start the title work before you list rather than waiting on that clock.

Can I reserve the minerals without using TREC Form 44-3?
Not on a promulgated TREC contract. The Texas Real Estate Commission adopted Form 44-3 by reference in 22 TAC Section 537.51 for mandatory use whenever a seller reserves all or a portion of the mineral estate. Any mineral reservation should also be reviewed by a Texas real estate attorney before you sign.

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Steven J. Thomas · Broker, Refind Realty DFW · TREC Broker License #0657467 · Loan Officer, Envision Home Lenders · NMLS #689220 · 128 S. Cockrell Hill Rd, DeSoto, TX 75115 · 972-846-9170 · Equal Housing Opportunity.

This article is general information about Texas real estate contract forms and is not legal advice. Market data is cited as of the dates shown and reflects current conditions, which change. No sale price, timeline, or outcome is guaranteed.

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