Texas Changed the Seller's Disclosure on July 1 — 5 New Things Lancaster Sellers Must Now Disclose (2026)

By Steven J. Thomas

If you are listing a house in Lancaster this year, the form you fill out at your kitchen table is not the form your neighbor filled out last spring. The Texas Real Estate Commission adopted a revised Seller's Disclosure Notice and a brand-new standalone water form on May 4, 2026. Using them was optional in May and June. As of July 1, 2026, both are mandatory.

Four new questions were added to the disclosure itself. A fifth disclosure now lives on its own separate form. That is five new things a Lancaster seller has to answer that nobody was asking two years ago.

Most agents sell houses. I build plans. On a form like this one, that difference is not philosophical — it is financial. A seller who fills this out blind does not create a problem on listing day. The problem shows up at the option period, after the buyer's inspector and the buyer's insurance agent start asking questions. Based on current conditions, the median days on market across DFW is 57. If you lose a contract on day 12 over a question you answered wrong, you do not restart at day 12. You restart at day zero, with a listing that now has a history.

The short answer

Beginning July 1, 2026, Texas sellers must disclose four additional items on the TREC Seller's Disclosure Notice — insurance coverage and claim history, private roads the buyer would pay to maintain, above-ground storage tanks over 500 gallons, and conservation easements — plus complete a separate Seller's Disclosure About Groundwater and Surface Water Rights. Every answer is Yes, No, or Unknown. A blank counts as an incomplete disclosure.

What actually changed, and who ordered it

TREC adopted the revised Seller's Disclosure Notice (TREC No. 55-0, which follows the TXR-1406 lineage) along with the new standalone Water Notice on May 4, 2026. The two-month voluntary window ran through June. July 1 was the hard date. You can read the adoption summary in the May 2026 Texas Realtors forms update.

The push did not come from the industry. It came at the direction of the Sunset Advisory Commission, the body that periodically reviews Texas state agencies and tells them what to fix. TREC's own rule text for 22 TAC §537.62, the standard contract form for TREC No. 55-0, lists the four additions to the notice.

That origin story matters for one reason. These questions were not written to make a house easier to sell. They were written to make a buyer harder to surprise. Answer them like a seller trying to look good and you will get caught. Answer them like a seller building a file and the form works for you instead of against you.

The five new things Lancaster sellers must now disclose

1. Insurance coverage, denials, and past claims

This is the one with teeth. The revised notice asks three separate things: whether the property is presently covered by insurance including windstorm coverage, whether you have ever been unable to insure it, and whether you have ever filed a claim and received proceeds.

Read that middle one again. Not whether you shopped around and did not like the price. Whether you were ever unable to get coverage. That is a different question, and it is the one that changes how a buyer's lender looks at the file.

The third question is the one most Lancaster sellers underestimate. A hail claim from four years ago that paid for a new roof is a claim that paid proceeds. You disclose it. The instinct is to hide it because it sounds like damage. In practice, a paid roof claim usually reads as an asset — the roof is newer than the house. What reads badly is the buyer's insurance agent finding a CLUE report claim history that the seller did not mention.

Why this bites harder in southwest DFW: home insurance in the Dallas-Fort Worth area averages roughly $4,122 per year based on current conditions, well above the national average. Your own premium depends on the house, the roof, and your claim history, so treat that figure as a benchmark and not as your number. Storms in this corridor are not rare events. When a buyer's premium quote lands and it is meaningfully higher than they budgeted, the first thing they do is go back to your disclosure to see what you said. Your answer either backs them up or blows up the deal.

2. Private roads the buyer would be financially responsible for maintaining

The notice now asks specifically about private roads the buyer would have to help pay to maintain. Not roads in general. Private roads with a maintenance obligation attached.

Lancaster is a city with a genuine mix — platted subdivisions with city-maintained streets on one side, acreage tracts with shared drives and easement access on the other. If your property sits on a tract reached by a shared gravel drive, or your deed references a road maintenance agreement, that is now an explicit disclosure item.

Pull your title commitment and your deed before you answer. If there is a recorded maintenance agreement, find it. If there is an informal handshake arrangement among four neighbors, say so and describe it. "Unknown" is an allowed answer, but on a question this concrete, "Unknown" from a seller who has lived there eleven years does not read as honest. It reads as evasive, and it invites the buyer's attorney to go looking.

3. Above-ground storage tanks over 500 gallons

The third addition asks about above-ground storage tanks with a capacity greater than 500 gallons that stored petroleum products or chemicals.

Most Lancaster homeowners on a standard lot will answer No and move on. This one is aimed squarely at the properties with acreage, a barn, a shop, or an agricultural history — the tracts on the edges of town where a diesel tank for equipment was normal for decades. If a tank was removed before you bought the place, you may honestly not know. That is what "Unknown" is for. What you should not do is guess No because it feels cleaner.

4. Whether the property sits in a conservation easement

A conservation easement is a recorded restriction that limits how land can be developed, usually permanently, usually in exchange for a tax benefit taken by a prior owner. It runs with the land. A buyer who finds out after closing that they cannot build the shop they planned has a real problem, and now they have a disclosure question you answered to point at.

Your title commitment is the place to check. Schedule B exceptions list recorded restrictions. If you see language you do not recognize, ask your title company to explain it in writing before you fill out the form.

5. The new standalone water rights disclosure — Form 61-0

This one is not an added line. It is an entire new document: Form 61-0, Seller's Disclosure About Groundwater and Surface Water Rights. The Key Title Group July 2026 TREC update summary lays out what it covers.

Three areas:

• Water wells — active or abandoned. An abandoned, capped well from decades ago still counts.
• Groundwater Conservation District status — whether the property sits inside one, which can affect what a future owner is permitted to pump.
• Whether groundwater rights were leased or sold separately from the surface. In Texas, water rights can be severed from the land the same way mineral rights can. If a prior owner sold them, the buyer is not getting them.

One exception worth knowing: the water form does not apply to the Residential Condominium Contract.

If you are on Lancaster city water on a quarter-acre lot, this form is quick. If you have any acreage, any well, or any inherited land where you are not certain what a prior owner did, this is the form that requires actual research before you sign it. Start with your title commitment and your deed, and confirm your district status with the county.

The sixth change nobody is talking about: Paragraph 7(I)

The water disclosure did not just create a new form. It created a new line in the contract itself. Under new Paragraph 7(I), the seller must state one of three things: that the buyer has already received the Water Disclosure, the date by which it will be delivered, or that the seller is not required to provide it.

That is a timing obligation with a deadline attached, sitting inside the contract, in writing. Miss the delivery date you wrote down and you have handed the buyer a clean reason to renegotiate or walk. The Texas Realtors forms update covers the paragraph language.

Generators now convey — check your listing sheet

Not a disclosure item, but a 2026 contract change that catches sellers off guard: permanently installed or built-in generators are now their own line item and convey with the house, per published summaries of the 2026 Texas contract changes. Confirm the current contract language at trec.texas.gov before you rely on it.

If you spent eight thousand dollars on a whole-home standby generator after the last hard freeze and you assumed you would take it with you, that assumption is now wrong unless you exclude it in writing. Portable units on wheels are a different animal. Permanently installed and wired into the panel goes with the house.

Why a blank is worse than an uncomfortable Yes

Every question on the notice is Yes, No, or Unknown. There is no fourth option, and there is no neutral skip.

A blank is an incomplete disclosure, and an incomplete disclosure gives a buyer grounds to challenge the document. The statutory basis for all of this is Texas Property Code §5.008, which is what makes the notice a legal obligation rather than a courtesy.

Two things sellers get wrong here, over and over:

They think a repaired problem stops being a disclosure item. It does not. A foundation that was piered and has been stable for six years still gets disclosed. So does the slab leak that was fixed properly in 2021. The repair is not the liability. Hiding it is.

They think "Unknown" is a safe default. It is safe when it is true. Used across a dozen questions about a house you have lived in for a decade, it starts to look like a strategy, and buyers' agents read it that way. Use it where you genuinely do not know, and be ready to say why.

Who is exempt from the seller's disclosure

Not every Texas transfer requires the notice. Common exemptions under §5.008 include new construction that has never been occupied, transfers from an estate, foreclosure sales, and transfers between co-owners or between lineal family members.

Two cautions. First, exempt does not mean you may misrepresent — you still cannot make a false statement about a known material defect. Second, "exempt" is a legal determination, not a preference. If you inherited a house in Lancaster and you think you are exempt, confirm it with your attorney before you skip the form.

This article is not legal advice. Forms change, and they changed twice this year. Confirm the current version of the notice and the water form directly with TREC or with your attorney before you sign anything.

What this means in the Lancaster and southwest DFW market right now

Context matters, because the cost of a blown contract depends on what the market gives you when you go back out. Based on current conditions, the North Texas Q2 2026 housing numbers, as reported in published North Texas market updates, look like this:

• DFW median sale price: $395,145, down 1.2% year over year
• Median days on market: 57
• Months of inventory: 4.5

Four and a half months of inventory is a balanced market. Not a seller's market. In a balanced market a buyer who gets spooked during the option period has other houses to look at, and they know it. That is the whole reason the disclosure now carries more weight than it did in 2021, when buyers were waiving inspections to win.

Nothing here is a prediction, and nothing here is a promise about what any particular Lancaster house will sell for or how long it will take. Conditions change. What does not change is the math on a dead contract: you pay for it in time, and time is the one thing you cannot negotiate back.

How I work through this before a house goes live

Here is the order of operations I use with Lancaster sellers, and you can run it yourself.

Pull the paperwork first, fill out the form second. Title commitment, deed, survey, and any HOA or road maintenance documents. Most of the four new questions get answered off those pages, not off memory.

Call your insurance agent before you answer the insurance section. Ask for your claim history in writing and ask directly whether the property was ever declined or non-renewed. Write down what they tell you. You want the paper.

Walk the water question with actual eyes on the property. Old wellheads hide in fence lines and under decks. If the property has acreage or an agricultural past, look before you check No.

Decide the generator question in advance. If you want to keep it, exclude it in writing at listing, not in a counteroffer three weeks later.

Then price the house with the disclosure already in hand. This is the part most sellers get backwards. If your form says the foundation was repaired, that fact belongs in the pricing conversation on day one — not as a surprise concession on day 12. Ahead of that, work through a pre-listing checklist for Dallas-area sellers, and read up on the problems that derail Dallas home sales so the disclosure is not the first time you are thinking about condition.

Sellers who want to compare paths — traditional listing, cash offer, sell and stay while a new build finishes — can review the home selling options available in DFW. The disclosure obligations follow you into every one of them.

Quick recap of what changed

• TREC adopted the revised Seller's Disclosure Notice and the new Water Notice on May 4, 2026. Both became mandatory July 1, 2026.
• Four items were added to the notice: insurance coverage and claim history, private road maintenance responsibility, above-ground storage tanks over 500 gallons, and conservation easements.
• Form 61-0 is a separate water rights disclosure covering wells, Groundwater Conservation District status, and severed groundwater rights. It does not apply to the Residential Condominium Contract.
• New contract Paragraph 7(I) requires the seller to state whether the Water Disclosure was delivered, when it will be, or that it is not required.
• Every answer is Yes, No, or Unknown. Blanks create an incomplete disclosure. Repaired-and-stable conditions still get disclosed.

FAQ: the 2026 Texas seller's disclosure changes

When did the new Texas seller's disclosure become mandatory?

July 1, 2026. TREC adopted the revised Seller's Disclosure Notice (TREC No. 55-0) and the standalone Water Notice on May 4, 2026, with voluntary use permitted starting in May. Any Lancaster listing written on or after July 1, 2026 uses the new forms.

Do I have to disclose an insurance claim I already fixed?

Yes. The notice asks whether you have ever filed a claim and received proceeds. A hail claim that paid for a roof replacement is a claim that paid proceeds, even though the outcome was a newer roof. Disclose it and let the paper trail work in your favor.

What happens if I leave a question blank?

A blank is treated as an incomplete disclosure and can give a buyer grounds to challenge the document. Every question has a Yes, No, or Unknown option. Use "Unknown" when it is genuinely true, and be prepared to explain why you do not know.

Does the new water rights form apply to a standard Lancaster subdivision home?

The form applies broadly, but most homeowners on city water in a platted Lancaster subdivision will answer No across it and be done in two minutes. It matters most on acreage, on properties with an active or abandoned well, and on inherited land where groundwater rights may have been leased or sold separately from the surface.

Am I exempt from the seller's disclosure if I inherited the house?

Transfers from an estate are among the exemptions under Texas Property Code §5.008, along with never-occupied new construction, foreclosures, and transfers between co-owners or lineal family members. Exempt still does not permit a false statement about a known material defect. Confirm your specific situation with your attorney.

Does my whole-home generator stay with the house?

Under the 2026 contract, permanently installed or built-in generators are their own line item and convey with the property. If you plan to keep one, exclude it in writing when the house is listed rather than trying to carve it out during negotiations.

Fill the form out with a plan, not a pen

Five new disclosure items landed on Texas sellers on July 1 with almost no public warning, and the questions they ask — insurance denials, road maintenance obligations, severed water rights — are not things most homeowners can answer accurately off the top of their head. They are things you look up.

Most agents sell houses. I build plans. The plan here is simple and it happens before the sign goes in the yard: gather the documents, answer every line honestly, price the house with those answers already visible, and take the option-period surprises off the table before a buyer finds them. A disclosure that is complete on day one is not a liability. It is an advantage you already paid for.

If you are thinking about listing in Lancaster, DeSoto, Cedar Hill, Red Oak, or anywhere in southwest DFW, start with an honest read on the house itself. Get your Home Selling Score — I come out, walk the property with you for about 30 minutes, and give you a straight number. Score 85 or above and the house is in shape to go after your target price. Below 85 and I will tell you exactly what to address first. Either way you will know what your disclosure is going to say before a buyer does. Call or text me at 972-846-9170.

Steven J. Thomas is a licensed Texas real estate broker with Refind Realty DFW, TREC Broker License #657467, and a loan officer with Envision Home Lenders, NMLS #689220. Office: 128 S. Cockrell Hill Rd, DeSoto, TX 75115. Market data cited reflects current conditions and is not a prediction of future results. Nothing here is a promise about the price any home will bring or how long it will take to sell. This article is general information, not legal advice. Equal Housing Opportunity. Equal Housing Lender.