The questions, and the documents behind them
Questions to Ask an Agent in West U, and the Documents That Answer Them
Updated September 2026
What should I ask an agent in West U before I hire one, and which of their answers can I check against a public document?
Chapter 1103 of the Texas Occupations Code, read September 2026, leaves a broker's or sales agent's written analysis, opinion or conclusion relating to the estimated price of real property outside the appraisal chapter only where all three conditions of Section 1103.004(a)(2) hold, the first of them that it is not referred to as an appraisal.
Paige Martin, Houston Properties Team, West U
Source: Texas Occupations Code, Chapter 1103, September 2026.
Is the answer you are given about the house, or about the lot?
On this page, West U means the City of West University Place; Southampton, Boulevard Oaks and Rice Village sit inside the City of Houston. That distinction settles which rule book applies: the zoning tables, the tree chapter, the permit sequence and the drainage study read below are all the City of West University Place's, and none of them governs a lot on the Houston side. The page titled Which West U Is Your House In, and Why It Changes Your Rules sets out how the two cities differ.
Ask which of the two values an answer rests on, the house or the site, and then ask the three facts that settle it: the date the building site was established with its present boundaries, the site's width, depth and area, and the large trees standing on it. Each of the three is a matter of record rather than of opinion.
The city's zoning ordinance gives the numbers those facts are measured against. In the Single-Family District an old building site, one established with its present boundaries before 24 October 1987, may be as small as 5,000 square feet at 50 feet of width and 100 feet of depth, while a site established on or after that date must reach 75 feet of width, 110 feet of depth and 8,250 square feet, and in the Old Building Site Overlay District an old site is held to 75 by 105 feet for 7,875 square feet (City of West University Place zoning ordinance, read March 2026).
Under Chapter 82 of the city code, a large tree is a tree with a circumference of 19 inches or more, and once a permit for development or predevelopment activity is in effect on a site, every large tree on that site counts as a protected tree. The open, pervious and framed-area figures and the height caps are set out in the page titled What West U's Rules Let You Build on a Lot, which is where to read the whole envelope against your own plat.
Which kind of building site a lot is comes from the recorded plat and the city's Community Development office, and nobody can settle it from a desk.
One check runs before you speak to anybody. The taxing units a property sits in are printed on its own appraisal record, and the Harris Central Appraisal District's instruction is to open the page for the account and click the blue word Jurisdictions in the heading of the table of jurisdictions, or to call the district at the numbers on its contact page. Two cautions travel with that display: an inactive jurisdiction may still tax property although it does not participate in the district's budget, and a blank rate means the district does not yet have the information. Nothing was looked up in that tool for this writing, and no account, rate or address is printed here.
Is the number in front of you an appraisal, or a broker's opinion of price?
What a reader is usually holding at a listing appointment, or beside a builder's price sheet, is a written opinion of price produced by a brokerage, and Chapter 1103 of the Texas Occupations Code is where the line between that and an appraisal sits. The chapter states its own purpose: to conform state law relating to the regulation of real estate appraisers to the requirements adopted under Title XI of the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act of 1989, and to enforce standards for the appraisal of real property.
The chapter defines an appraisal, regardless of whether it is prepared for a federally related transaction, as an opinion of value or the act or process of developing one. Section 1103.004(a)(2) then places outside the chapter a real estate broker licensed under Chapter 1101, or a sales agent acting under the authority of a sponsoring broker, who provides to another person a written analysis, opinion, or conclusion relating to the estimated price of real property, where all three of the subsection's conditions hold together.
The other half of the chapter is the half a reader can use. A person may not perform an appraisal of real estate unless the person is licensed or certified as an appraiser under the chapter, registered as a temporary out-of-state appraiser under it, or acting as an appraiser trainee under the supervision of a supervisory appraiser. Unless a person holds the appropriate license or certification, that person may not use the title of certified real estate appraiser or licensed real estate appraiser, and may not refer to an appraisal they performed as a certified appraisal or a licensed appraisal.
The same chapter defines an automated valuation model as an automated system used to derive the value of real property through publicly available property records and various analytic methodologies, including comparable sales prices, home characteristics, and historical home price appreciations, and Section 1103.004(a)(6) places the procurement or use of one outside the chapter as well (read September 2026).
So ask what the document is called, who prepared it, and under which of those descriptions it was produced. An answer that names one of them tells you which part of the statute the number was produced under, and an answer that names none of them is the one worth pressing.
(A) is not referred to as an appraisal;(B) is given in the ordinary course of the broker's business; and(C) is related to the actual or potential acquisition, disposition, encumbrance, or management of an interest in real property;
Who does the person selling a new West U house represent?
The person greeting a buyer in a builder's model home may hold no real estate license at all, because selling a builder's new houses requires none, provided the person is an employee of the new home builder, with being an independent contractor expressly not enough.
Where the person is a license holder, Section 1101.557(a) of the Texas Occupations Code makes 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, that party's agent. On a new build, that party is the builder.
Section 1101.562 is the narrow route by which a broker may show real property to a party without representing the party, on the conditions its Subsection (a) sets, and Subsection (b) is the fork: before showing, the broker must, as applicable, disclose to the party as required by Section 1101.558(b) where the broker represents the owner of the real property, or provide to the party the written notice described by Section 1101.558(b-1) where the broker does not represent the owner.
That notice is due at the time of a license holder's first substantive communication with a party relating to a proposed transaction regarding specific real property. It is in at least a 10-point font, and it describes the ways in which a broker can represent a party to a real estate transaction, including as an intermediary, the basic duties and obligations a broker has to a party it represents, and the basic obligations a broker has to a party it does not represent, and it provides the name, license number, and contact information for the license holder and the license holder's supervisor and broker, if applicable.
Section 1101.558(c) lists three cases in which that notice is not required: where the proposed transaction is for a residential lease for less than one year and a sale is not being considered, where the license holder meets with a party who the license holder knows is represented by another license holder, and where the communication occurs at a property that is held open for any prospective buyer or tenant and the communication concerns that property.
Since 1 January 2026 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 that buyer before showing any residential real property, and Section 1101.563(c)(2) requires that agreement to disclose in conspicuous language that broker compensation is not set by law and is fully negotiable.
The question to settle in a model home is which of those two things is true, and the written notice answers it on paper.
Do I need a license to sell a builder's new houses? No, provided you are an employee of the new home builder (being an independent contractor is not enough). Rule 535.34 provides guidelines to determine if evidence of an employer/employee relationship exists.
What may a license holder do with a builder's contract, and what may they not?
Ask what happens when you want a clause changed, because a rule answers it: if specifically instructed in writing by a principal, a license holder may add language to or strike language from a contract form, as long as any change is made conspicuous, by underlining an addition, striking through a deletion, or employing some other method which clearly indicates the change being made.
The form comes first. When negotiating contracts binding the sale, exchange, option or lease of any interest in real property, 22 Texas Administrative Code Section 537.11(a) requires a license holder to use only those contract forms approved for mandatory use by the Commission for that type of transaction, with four exceptions listed in the same subsection, among them a transaction for which a contract form has been prepared by the property owner or prepared by an attorney and required by a property owner. On a new build, that property owner is the builder.
The limits run the other way. A license holder may not give advice or opinions as to the legal effect of any contract forms or other such instruments which may affect the title to real estate, and may not draft or recommend language to be included in a contract form defining or affecting the rights, obligations or remedies of the principals of a real estate transaction, including escalation, appraisal, or contingency clauses. The section does not prevent a license holder from explaining to the license holder's own principals the meaning of informational items or choices in a contract form, so long as the license holder does not practice law or give legal advice.
Where a transaction involves unusual matters that should be reviewed by an attorney before an instrument is executed, or where the instrument must be acknowledged and filed of record, the license holder shall advise the license holder's principals to consult an attorney before executing the instrument (22 Texas Administrative Code Section 537.11). And the commission has no jurisdiction over builders, which is the Texas Real Estate Commission's own answer and worth knowing before a warranty question arises.
The builder's paper, with the promulgated form numbers and their dates, is taken up in the page titled New Construction in West U: Builder Contracts and What Is Negotiable.
What should you ask about the permit clock before you believe a completion date?
Ask who approves the tree survey, and ask what happens to the clock when plans are rejected. The City of West University Place publishes both answers: plan review for a new home runs about 10 to 15 business days, the urban forester's review of the tree disposition averages 5 to 7 business days, and new home plans are reviewed by the building official then forwarded to a third-party planning consultant for zoning compliance inside that same window.
A rejection resets the clock rather than pausing it. Where plans are rejected and need corrections, the contractor and homeowner are notified, the plans are corrected and resubmitted, and the plan review resets in full rather than resuming where it stopped (City of West University Place, permitting and plan review process, read September 2026).
Then comes the gate no contract can negotiate around. Under Chapter 82 of the city code, the building official shall not issue any permit for development or predevelopment activity until the applicant has filed a tree survey the urban forester has approved for compliance with that chapter, and until tree disposition conditions approved by the urban forester have been inserted into the permit.
Under Chapter 18 of the same code, each permit type runs for a term the code sets, beginning at issuance and ending at noon on the day the table gives for that type. A completion date in anybody's contract is measured against all of that, and the year-by-year record of authorizations for the city is this site's own series, set out in the page titled New Homes Authorized in West University Place, 2015 to 2025.
Which document answers a drainage question about a West U address?
A question about water at one address and a question about water across the city are two questions, and the City-Wide Drainage Study the City commissioned, prepared by HT&J, LLC and dated January 2021, answers the second. Five major drainage systems drain the city to Brays Bayou, the Academy Street, College Street, Poor Farm Ditch, Buffalo Speedway and Kirby Drive systems, and the report gives for each the storm event at which street and property flooding becomes an issue.
That event is not the same in every system. Of the Academy Street system the report says street and property flooding are an issue for the 2-year event and above; of the College Street system it says they are an issue for the 10-year event and above. All five are set out one by one in the page titled Does West U Flood? The City's Drainage Study, the Watershed, and the Draft Maps.
The City holds its system to two design standards, which the report states plainly: during a 2-year storm event the hydraulic grade line should not exceed the gutter elevation in the street, and anything above that does not meet the design standard; during a 100-year storm event the grade line should not pond beyond the right-of-way, which the report writes as the water not extending onto any homeowners' properties.
The report also lists what its modelers could not verify, which is what makes it a document to weigh. Tailwater values for outfalls in the studied system had to be interpolated from known water surface elevations in Brays Bayou, since the model was not extended to the final outfall into the bayou. The flooding records received from the City were not verified. The available FEMA claims data did not provide a depth of flooding to use for model calibration. Building finished floor elevations were available for only a very limited amount of homes compared to the overall number of homes in the City. The report is dated January 2021, and the conditions it describes are the ones that stood before the city's East Side and West Side drainage projects.
The document a buyer holds a right to is the seller's notice. Under Section 5.008 of the Texas Property Code the notice is delivered by the seller to the purchaser on or before the effective date of an executory contract binding the purchaser to purchase the property, and where a contract is entered without the seller providing the notice that section requires, the purchaser may terminate the contract for any reason within seven days after receiving the notice.
What can this page not tell you?
It cannot tell you whether a particular site is an old or a new building site, since that is settled by the plat history of the property and by the city's Community Development office.
It cannot tell you which trees on a site are protected, since that takes a survey listing every large tree with its circumference, species and crown area.
It cannot tell you what a particular builder's contract says, since it is the builder's own document and no license holder may give an opinion on its legal effect.
It cannot tell you what happens at one address in a storm, since the drainage study reports by system rather than by address and its own modelers listed what they could not verify.
It cannot tell you what a West U property is worth as a house or as a lot, since no public record carries a land price and that answer is a valuation rather than a statistic.
An owner or buyer in West U who wants these questions answered for their own address can put them to Paige Martin of Real Broker, LLC.
Questions & answers
West U questions, answered
What is the difference between an appraisal and a broker's opinion of price in Texas?
An appraisal is defined by Chapter 1103 of the Texas Occupations Code, whether or not it is prepared for a federally related transaction, as an opinion of value, or the act or process of developing one, and only a person licensed or certified as an appraiser under that chapter, registered as a temporary out-of-state appraiser, or acting as an appraiser trainee under the supervision of a supervisory appraiser may perform one. A broker's written price opinion sits outside the chapter only where three conditions all hold.
Those conditions sit in Section 1103.004(a)(2), and they are cumulative: the written analysis, opinion or conclusion relating to the estimated price of real property is not referred to as an appraisal, it is given in the ordinary course of the broker's business, and it relates to the actual or potential acquisition, disposition, encumbrance, or management of an interest in real property. The person giving it is a real estate broker licensed under Chapter 1101, or a sales agent acting under the authority of a sponsoring broker. The chapter also guards the titles. Unless a person holds the appropriate license or certification, that person may not use the title of certified real estate appraiser or licensed real estate appraiser, and may not call an appraisal they performed a certified appraisal or a licensed appraisal. So the useful question at a listing appointment is what the document is called and under which description it was prepared.
When is a broker's written price opinion not an appraisal?
Where all three conditions of Section 1103.004(a)(2) of the Texas Occupations Code hold at once. The analysis, opinion or conclusion is not referred to as an appraisal, it is given in the ordinary course of the broker's business, and it relates to the actual or potential acquisition, disposition, encumbrance, or management of an interest in real property. Drop any one of the three and that subsection no longer carries the document.
The subsection reaches a real estate broker licensed under Chapter 1101, or a sales agent acting under the authority of a sponsoring broker, who provides to another person a written analysis, opinion, or conclusion relating to the estimated price of real property. The scope words matter as much as the conditions, because the exemption is written for those license holders and for that kind of document. Section 1103.004 carries other entries beside that one, among them a person who is authorized by law to perform an evaluation of real property for another person or to provide one to another person, and the procurement or use of an automated valuation model. Each entry has its own words, and a document that does not fit the entry it is claimed under stays inside the chapter. Ask which entry the writer of the number is relying on, and ask to see the description on the document itself.
What is an automated valuation model under Texas law?
Chapter 1103 of the Texas Occupations Code defines an automated valuation model as an automated system used to derive the value of real property through publicly available property records and various analytic methodologies, including comparable sales prices, home characteristics, and historical home price appreciations. Section 1103.004(a)(6) puts the procurement or use of such a model outside that chapter, so the appraiser licensing provisions in it do not reach the procuring or the using of one.
That is a statement about which statute applies, and it carries no claim about how close any model's output lands to a sale price. The chapter's own definition of an appraisal, which covers an opinion of value and the process of developing one, sits beside it, and a person may not perform an appraisal of real estate unless licensed or certified as an appraiser under the chapter, registered as a temporary out-of-state appraiser, or acting as an appraiser trainee under the supervision of a supervisory appraiser. So when a figure is put in front of you, the questions that settle its footing are where it came from, what it is called, and whether a person or an automated system produced it. Each of those is a matter of record rather than of opinion, and each answer points at a different part of the statute. None of it answers whether a West U property is worth more as a house or as a lot.
Does the person selling a builder's new house in West U need a real estate license?
No, provided the person is an employee of the new home builder. The Texas Real Estate Commission's own answer is that selling a builder's new houses takes no license on that condition, and that being an independent contractor is not enough. Rule 535.34 provides guidelines for deciding whether evidence of an employer and employee relationship exists, so the condition is one that gets tested rather than assumed.
The consequence for a buyer is about duties rather than manners. The representation provisions in Chapter 1101 of the Texas Occupations Code bind a license holder or a broker, so a person holding no license owes none of those duties, and the written notice due at a license holder's first substantive communication about specific real property comes only from a license holder. The Commission also has no jurisdiction over builders. Its answer to a buyer whose builder had not completed a repair list points to the Better Business Bureau or the Texas Attorney General's Office, Consumer Protection Division, and suggests consulting a private attorney before any possible warranties or other legal remedies expire. In a model home, ask whether the person is a license holder, and if they are, ask who they represent. The builder's own paper is taken up in builder contracts in West U and what is negotiable in them.
Who does a builder's on-site salesperson represent?
Where the person holds a license, Section 1101.557(a) of the Texas Occupations Code makes a broker who represents a party in a real estate transaction, or who lists real estate for sale for a party under an exclusive agreement, that party's agent, and on a new build that party is the builder. Where the person holds no license, the representation provisions of that chapter do not reach them at all.
Section 1101.562 allows a broker to show real property to a party without representing the party, on the conditions its Subsection (a) lists, and Subsection (b) sets what comes first: the broker discloses representation as Section 1101.558(b) requires where the broker represents the owner of the real property, or provides the written notice described by Section 1101.558(b-1) where the broker does not. That notice is written, in at least a 10-point font, and it describes how a broker can represent a party, including as an intermediary, the basic duties and obligations a broker owes a party it represents, and the basic obligations it owes a party it does not represent, with the license holder's name, license number and contact information, and those of the supervisor and broker, if applicable. It is not required in the three cases Section 1101.558(c) lists: a proposed transaction for a residential lease of less than one year where a sale is not being considered, a meeting with a party the license holder knows is represented by another license holder, and a communication at a property held open for any prospective buyer or tenant where the communication concerns that property.
Is broker compensation set by law in Texas?
Section 1101.563 of the Texas Occupations Code requires the written agreement a license holder enters into with a prospective buyer of residential real property to disclose in conspicuous language that broker compensation is not set by law and is fully negotiable. That is the statutory requirement, stated as the statute states it, and it fixes what the agreement has to say rather than what any figure should be.
Residential real property in that section means a single-family house, a duplex, triplex or quadraplex, or a unit in a multiunit residential structure in which title to an individual unit is transferred to the owner of the unit under a condominium or cooperative system. The disclosure requirement travels with that definition. The same subsection sets out other things the agreement has to state, each as its own item in the statute. Read the agreement in front of you against those items before you sign it, and take anything you want changed to an attorney, because a license holder may not give advice or opinions as to the legal effect of a contract form.
What does a Texas license holder have to tell me when a contract involves unusual matters?
Under 22 Texas Administrative Code Section 537.11(e), where a transaction involves unusual matters that should be reviewed by an attorney before an instrument is executed, or where the instrument must be acknowledged and filed of record, the license holder shall advise the license holder's principals to consult an attorney before executing the instrument. Subsection (f) adds that the license holder shall advise the license holder's principals that the instrument they are about to execute is binding on them.
Those duties close a rule that is mostly about limits. A license holder may not practice law, may not directly or indirectly offer, give or attempt to give legal advice, may not give advice or opinions as to the legal effect of any contract forms or other such instruments which may affect the title to real estate, and may not draft or recommend contract language that defines or affects the principals' rights, obligations or remedies, including escalation, appraisal or contingency clauses. A license holder may explain to the license holder's own principals the meaning of informational items or choices in a contract form, so long as that stops short of practicing law or giving legal advice, and, if specifically instructed in writing by a principal, may add language to or strike language from a form as long as the change is made conspicuous. The same rule also bars a license holder from attempting to prevent or in any manner discourage a principal from employing an attorney.
What should I ask an agent about drainage before I buy in West U?
Ask which drainage system the address sits in, and ask which document the answer comes from. The City-Wide Drainage Study the City of West University Place commissioned, dated January 2021, reports on the city's five major drainage systems and gives each one the storm event at which flooding of streets and property becomes an issue, and that event differs between systems: the Academy Street system at the 2-year event and above, the College Street system at the 10-year event and above.
Then ask for the notice. Under Section 5.008 of the Texas Property Code the seller's disclosure notice is delivered by the seller to the purchaser on or before the effective date of an executory contract binding the purchaser to purchase the property, and where a contract is entered without the seller providing it, the purchaser may terminate the contract for any reason within seven days after receiving it. The City's two design standards are worth carrying into the conversation as the report states them: during a 2-year storm event the hydraulic grade line should not exceed the gutter elevation in the street, and during a 100-year storm event it should not pond beyond the right-of-way. Both describe the system rather than one house, which is why an address-level question and a city-level question have separate answers, and the city-level one is set out in the city's drainage study read whole.
How old is the City's drainage study, and what does it not cover?
It is dated January 2021, prepared by HT&J, LLC for the City of West University Place, and the conditions it describes are the ones that stood before the city's East Side and West Side drainage projects. It reports by drainage system rather than by address, and it sets out what its own modelers could not verify, which is what lets a reader weigh it rather than read it as a verdict.
Four limits are stated in the report itself. Tailwater values for outfalls in the studied system had to be interpolated from known water surface elevations in Brays Bayou, since the model was not extended to the final outfall into the bayou. The flooding records received from the City were not verified. The available FEMA claims data did not provide a depth of flooding to use for model calibration. And building finished floor elevations were available for only a very limited amount of homes compared to the overall number of homes in the City. Read with those limits beside it, the report still answers a city-level question about capacity in a dated, sourced way. The five systems and the storm event reported for each are set out in the page titled Does West U Flood? The City's Drainage Study, the Watershed, and the Draft Maps.