The clock that decides most Dallas condo contracts right now is not the option period. It is a ten-day statutory deadline sitting inside the Texas Uniform Condominium Act, and as of three weeks ago it collides with a federal underwriting change that quietly rewrote who is allowed to buy the unit you are selling.
Here is the claim worth holding onto: in Dallas today, a condominium's price per square foot is set by the unit, but its buyer pool is set by the association's budget. Those two things used to move together. They no longer do.
Two clocks, and only one of them is in your contract
Under Section 82.157 of the Texas Property Code, a condominium association must furnish a resale certificate no later than the tenth day after it receives a written request from the unit owner. The certificate has to have been prepared no earlier than three months before it is delivered to the buyer. TREC's Residential Condominium Contract (Resale) puts that cost on the seller and requires the certificate to contain, at minimum, everything Section 82.157 lists.
Then there is the second clock, which catches people who have only ever bought a single-family home in Texas:
If a purchaser has not received a resale certificate before executing a contract of sale, the purchaser may cancel the contract before the sixth day after the date the purchaser receives the resale certificate or executes a waiver, whichever occurs first.
That is Section 82.156. It runs independently of the option period. A buyer who has burned through a ten-day option can still walk if the certificate arrives late, and the association is given ten days to produce it. Sequence those poorly and a Dallas condo seller can be four weeks into a contract with a buyer who still holds a live exit.
If the association misses its ten-day window, the owner may substitute a sworn affidavit stating that the information was requested and not timely provided. That is a workaround, not a fix. What it does not do is satisfy the lender.
What a Full Review actually reads
On March 18, 2026, Fannie Mae issued Lender Letter LL-2026-03 and Freddie Mac published Bulletin 2026-C on the same day. Fannie published the updated Selling Guide on April 1. The consequential piece took effect for loan applications dated on or after August 3, 2026: Fannie retired the Limited Review process entirely, and Freddie retired Streamlined Review alongside it.
Before that date, a buyer putting meaningful money down on a primary residence could often skip deep scrutiny of the association. Now established projects that previously qualified for Limited Review go through Full Review, and the lender documents the outcome in Fannie's Condo Project Manager. A project carrying an "Unavailable" status in that system is not eligible for purchase by Fannie Mae at all.
Read the Full Review criteria next to the Texas resale certificate and the overlap is close to complete. Section 82.157 requires the certificate to disclose:
- the association's current operating budget and balance sheet
- the amount of reserves held for capital expenditures, and any portion designated for a specific project
- capital expenditures approved by the association for the next twelve months
- any unsatisfied judgments against the association
- the nature of any pending suits against the association
- insurance coverage provided for the benefit of unit owners
- any right of first refusal restricting transfer of a unit
Those are the same fields an underwriter is now reading on every conventional condo loan in Dallas. Texas has required the disclosure since 1994. What changed on August 3 is that a stranger in an underwriting department is finally required to read it.
Litigation is the field that surprises people most. Fannie's Selling Guide treats a project as ineligible when the association is named in pending litigation relating to the safety, structural soundness, habitability, or functional use of the project. Construction defect litigation where the association is the plaintiff is not treated as a minor matter unless the underlying issues have already been remediated and there is no anticipated material adverse impact if the funds are never recovered. A suit the board considers dormant and favorable can still be the line item that closes the conventional lending window.
The dates that are already behind us, and the one that isn't
| Effective for applications dated | What changed | Who feels it in Dallas |
|---|---|---|
| July 1, 2026 | Master policy per-unit deductible capped at $50,000; borrower must carry an individual unit owner's policy when any interior portion is uncovered or a per-unit deductible applies | Buildings that raised deductibles to hold premiums down |
| August 3, 2026 | Limited Review and Streamlined Review retired; baseline reserve funding method no longer accepted when a reserve study is used | Every conventional condo purchase, no exceptions by down payment |
| January 1, 2027 | Master policy must cover a defined peril list including windstorm, hail, water damage, and vandalism | Associations writing 2027 renewals this fall |
| January 4, 2027 | Minimum budgeted replacement reserve allocation rises from 10% to 15% of annual budgeted assessment income | Boards setting 2027 budgets right now |
The reserve math is simple enough to run yourself. Divide the annual budgeted replacement reserve allocation by the annual budgeted assessment income. An association can sidestep the 15% floor with a reserve study completed or updated within the last three years, prepared by an independent professional with reserve study credentials, provided the association funds at the highest level that study recommends. Baseline funding, the method that let reserve balances drift toward zero without crossing it, is off the table.
Boards are budgeting for 2027 between now and December. That is the window in which a Dallas building either protects its buyer pool or narrows it.
The change also opened doors, which is the part nobody covers
The March update was not uniformly restrictive. Fannie eliminated the investment property concentration limit for established projects reviewed under the Full Review option, effective immediately. The old rule made a project non-warrantable when more than half its units were non-owner-occupied, which functionally cut off conventional financing for a category of urban buildings across the country.
Dallas has that category. Downtown loft conversions and older Oak Lawn and Las Colinas mid-rises with heavy lease activity were sitting outside conventional financing for a reason that no longer applies. A building written off two years ago may now be financeable, and nobody has told the owners.
This is why the current moment rewards checking rather than assuming. Fannie's Condo Status Finder lets a board member or property manager see the project's eligibility status and the reason behind it, and associations can submit corrected documentation to have a status revisited. A buyer or owner can ask a manager to run it before anyone spends an option fee.
What a Dallas seller should actually do first
The instinct is to photograph, price, and list. In a condominium, that order is now backwards.
- Submit the written request for the resale certificate before the listing goes live, not after an offer. The association gets ten days by statute, and the certificate stays current for three months, which comfortably covers a normal marketing period.
- Read the operating budget and the reserve allocation line yourself, then run the division. You will know before a buyer's lender does whether the building clears the current 10% floor or is leaning on a reserve study.
- Ask the board two questions: when was the last reserve study, and what does the master policy carry as a per-unit deductible.
- Confirm whether any special assessment is due and unpaid. Under the TREC condominium contract, that balance is the seller's obligation at closing.
- Check for a right of first refusal in the declaration. Under the same contract, the effective date shifts to when the buyer receives the association's certification that the seller has complied, which moves every subsequent deadline with it.
None of this makes a difficult building easy. It converts a surprise in week four into a known quantity in week zero, which is the difference between pricing a condition and discovering one.
The wider market is not going to bail this out
The Texas Real Estate Research Center's August 2026 report has Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston moving toward stabilization while Austin and San Antonio show more pronounced price correction, with Fort Worth-Arlington posting consecutive months of modest year-over-year gains. Statewide in June 2026, active inventory sat at a 5.4-month supply, sold homes averaged 62 days on market, and unsold inventory averaged 90 days. The median seller price cut was $12,000, or 3.3% of the initial list price.
That is a serviceable backdrop. It is also a single-family backdrop, and the Research Center breaks its statistics out by property type for exactly that reason. A condominium seller is not competing on the same terms. A price reduction answers a buyer who thinks the unit costs too much. It does nothing for a buyer whose lender cannot place the loan.
New construction is insulated from all of this, which is worth saying plainly. Rosewood Residences Turtle Creek, the 17-story, 33-residence tower from Preston Cheng's One Turtle Creek in partnership with Rosewood Hotel Group, is targeting first deliveries before the end of 2026 with completion in early 2027. The Dallas City Plan Commission approved an $800 million redevelopment at Preston Road and Royal Lane this month, including a 19-story hotel and condominium tower on roughly seven acres. Projects like these arrive with a developer-prepared budget and a fresh reserve study. They clear Full Review without breaking stride.
The friction lands on Dallas's existing inventory, where the building has a history, the reserve allocation was set by a board years ago, and the document that governs the outcome has been sitting in a management company's files the whole time.
Two units, same corridor, same price per foot, different buyer pools. That gap is not visible on any listing page. It is visible in a budget you are entitled to request, in writing, today.
Questions we get
Does this apply if my buyer is paying cash? No. The review standards govern loans sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. A cash buyer or a portfolio lender holding the loan on its own books operates outside them, which is precisely why a narrowed buyer pool tends to show up as a lower closed price rather than as no sale at all.
My building was declared non-warrantable a couple of years ago. Is that permanent? It should be re-checked rather than assumed. Eligibility status can change when an association resolves the underlying issue and submits updated documentation, and the elimination of the investor concentration limit removed one common cause outright.
How much extra time should I plan into a condominium closing? Build in room for document collection that a single-family transaction never requires. The association has ten days to produce the resale certificate, and the lender needs project documentation on top of the standard file. Start both before you need them.
This is process guidance, not legal or lending advice. Your lender and your attorney should read your specific file.
If you own a Dallas condominium and are thinking about listing this fall, the most valuable thing you can do this week costs nothing: request the resale certificate and read the reserve line. If you would rather have someone read it with you, or you are buying and want the building vetted before the option fee is spent, Simms Frontier Real Estate will handle that part before anything goes on the market. Work With Us.
