Two houses list this fall, four miles apart, both technically in West El Paso. One is a 1920s bungalow off Cincinnati Avenue with the original wood floors still intact. The other is a ten-year-old build climbing toward the Franklin foothills near Coronado, poured on a post-tension slab. Both sellers will hand their agent the same Texas paperwork this year. Neither will fill it out the same way, because the form asks about the house they actually own, and West El Paso has never been one kind of house.
That distinction matters more than usual right now. Texas rolled out a substantially longer Seller's Disclosure Notice this year, and it has been mandatory since July 1, 2026, not optional. If you've sold a home in this market before, the form your agent hands you this time asks things the old one never did.
What Actually Changed on July 1
The Texas Real Estate Commission updated the Seller's Disclosure Notice under direction from the Sunset Advisory Commission, the state body that periodically reviews whether an agency's rules still serve the public. The commission told TREC the old form had gaps. The new one closes several of them.
Sellers now answer whether the property is currently covered by insurance, including windstorm coverage, and whether they've been unable to obtain insurance for any reason. That's new. TREC also added a standalone Water Notice, a separate form covering groundwater and surface water rights, along with new questions about private roads the buyer would be responsible for maintaining, aboveground storage tanks over 500 gallons, and conservation easements.
None of this replaces what Texas Property Code Section 5.008 already required. Sellers still have to disclose known material defects, and the legal exposure for hiding one hasn't softened. What changed is the form's reach. It asks more questions than it used to, and it asks them in more specific language than the old checkboxes allowed.
West El Paso Was Never One Disclosure Profile
Here's what a generic explainer of the new form won't tell you: how much of it actually applies to your house depends heavily on where in West El Paso that house sits and when it was built.
Central pockets like Kern Place, Sunset Heights, and parts of Mission Hills carry housing stock built mostly from the 1900s through the 1950s, much of it on original pier-and-beam or masonry foundations rather than concrete slabs. Kern Place itself is a walkable, historic neighborhood a couple of miles north of downtown known for Spanish Revival and ranch-style homes dating back to the 1920s. Pier-and-beam construction ages differently than a slab. It develops its own vocabulary of problems: wood pier sistering, crawl space moisture, shimming.
Push further west and higher into the foothills, toward Upper Valley and the newer subdivisions near Coronado, and the construction era shifts entirely. Homes built from the 1980s onward in these areas are dominated by post-tension concrete slab construction. Slabs don't rot the way old wood piers can, but they move. Expansive clay soils across the Upper Valley and Westside corridor shrink hard in the dry months and swell fast once monsoon rain hits, and that wet-dry cycle is the primary driver of the cracking and door-sticking that shows up on a disclosure form.
Here's the split in practical terms:
| Older Central Blocks (Kern Place, Sunset Heights, parts of Mission Hills) | Newer Foothill Blocks (Upper Valley, Coronado corridor) | |
|---|---|---|
| Typical construction era | 1900s through 1950s | 1980s onward |
| Foundation type | Pier-and-beam or masonry | Post-tension concrete slab |
| What tends to show up on disclosure | Wood pier repairs, crawl space moisture, prior underpinning work | Slab heave, helical or push-pier installations, hairline cracking after monsoon season |
| Rough repair cost range | Varies widely with crawl access and how much original wood substructure remains | Roughly $450 for a simple crack injection up to $15,000 or more for full slab underpinning |
A seller in Kern Place answering the foundation section honestly is often describing a different kind of history than a seller near Coronado. Both are required to disclose. What they're disclosing isn't the same thing.
The Insurance Question Nobody Used to Ask
The new insurance section deserves its own look, because it changes when a buyer learns something they used to find out much later in the process.
Before this year, a buyer typically didn't discover that a house had a rocky insurance history until they applied for their own coverage, sometimes after the option period had already closed. Now the seller has to say it upfront: is the property currently insured, is it covered for windstorm, and has the seller been unable to get coverage for any reason.
A house with a documented foundation repair sitting a mile from a house with none used to look identical on paper until a buyer's insurance application came back with a surprise. Now that surprise shows up in section one.
For a West El Paso seller, this connects directly back to foundation type. A prior claim tied to foundation movement, water intrusion in a crawl space, or slab repair work is exactly the kind of history that can affect what a carrier is willing to write, and now it has to be named on the form rather than discovered later.
The Monsoon Clock Still Runs the Calendar
If you're reading this in mid-August, you're still inside this year's monsoon season, which typically runs July through September. That's not a coincidence worth ignoring. The wet-dry cycle that stresses foundations across El Paso peaks during exactly this window, and any new hairline crack, sticking door, or slight elevation change you've noticed since June is the freshest item you'll need to describe honestly on the new form.
Foundation contractors in El Paso see this every year. Inspection wait times during the dry months of January through May typically run 24 to 72 hours. Once monsoon season hits, that stretches to a 3 to 7 day wait just to get someone out, with repair crews often booking two to four weeks beyond that. If you noticed something move this summer and you're planning to list in the next few months, getting ahead of that backlog matters more than it did in April.
What to Gather Before Your Listing Appointment
Whichever side of West El Paso your home sits on, the new form rewards sellers who show up prepared rather than sellers who fill in boxes on the spot.
- Pull any invoices or contractor reports tied to foundation, pier, or slab work, no matter how old. The form asks about known history, not just recent history.
- Know your current insurance status cold: carrier, coverage type, whether you've had a non-renewal or a claim in the past several years.
- Note when you first noticed any cracking, door sticking, or floor unevenness, especially anything that appeared since this summer's rains started.
- Confirm your foundation type before your agent hands you the paperwork. Pier-and-beam and slab homes get asked about different things in practice, even on an identical form.
A Few Questions Worth Answering Directly
Does this apply if I sell my house as-is? Yes. An as-is sale changes what a seller agrees to fix, not what a seller has to disclose. Texas courts have been consistent that a seller can't use an as-is clause to avoid naming a known defect and then claim the buyer accepted the risk.
Do I still need this form if I'm selling new construction? New construction sold directly by a builder who has never occupied the home is generally exempt from the Seller's Disclosure Notice requirement. If you bought new and lived in the house even briefly before reselling, the exemption no longer applies to you.
What if I genuinely don't know whether I have a private road or a storage tank on the property? Mark it unknown. The form is built around your actual knowledge, not a professional inspection. Leaving a section blank looks like you avoided the question. Writing "unknown" when that's the truth is a complete answer.
Getting the Paperwork Right the First Time
The new form is longer, but longer doesn't mean harder if you know what your specific house is actually being asked. A pier-and-beam home in Kern Place and a slab home near Coronado are both in West El Paso, and they are not filling out the same form for the same reasons.
If you're weighing a listing this fall and want a read on what your specific address and foundation history mean for this year's disclosure requirements, BHG Elevate | Thelma Briffa can walk through it with you street by street. Start with a Get a Free Home Valuation and bring your questions about the paperwork along with it.
