How to Vet a Cash Home Buyer in Texas (Including Us)

Somewhere in your mailbox right now there's probably a postcard offering to buy your house. Some of the operators behind those offers are honest businesses. Some are counting on you not knowing the rules. This guide gives you the rules — the actual Texas statutes that protect sellers — and a vetting routine that costs almost nothing and takes minutes. Run every buyer through it. Including us. An honest buyer passes this test easily; a dishonest one gets angry at the questions, which is itself your answer.

Start with the state's own findings

When Texas's real estate regulator, TREC, surveyed the wholesaling market, the harms sellers reported were specific: people felt misled about the nature of the transaction, or confused about whether the person in their living room was the actual end buyer or an agent. Title professionals told TREC that sellers are often unaware they're ultimately selling to someone other than the person who signed the contract — and that wholesale contracts cancel more often than other deals. So the regulator has already named the two questions that matter: who is actually buying my house, and will this contract actually close? Everything below is a way of answering them.

The disclosure laws most sellers have never heard of

Texas does not ban assigning purchase contracts — "wholesaling" is legal, and TREC says plainly that no license is required for it. What the law demands is honesty about it, in writing:

• Occupations Code § 1101.0045: a person selling an option or assigning a contract without a real estate license must disclose the nature of their equitable interest in writing. Skip the disclosure and the statute deems them to be practicing real estate brokerage without a license — a Class A misdemeanor.
• Property Code § 5.0205 (renumbered from § 5.086 in 2024 — older articles cite the dead number): before contracting to assign, written disclosure must go to any potential buyer that the assignor holds no legal title, and to you, the owner, that they intend to assign.

Two honest caveats, because this guide doesn't oversell: the law does not require your consent to an assignment, and it does not require disclosing what the assignee paid. What it gives you is the right to know what kind of transaction you're actually in — which is why the single best question remains: "Are you buying this yourself, or assigning the contract — and will you put the answer in writing?" (Our answer, in writing, on every deal: we sign as a principal; the contract may be closed by us or assigned; your price and closing date don't change either way.)

The five-minute background check (free or nearly free)

• Look up the entity. The Texas Comptroller's Taxable Entity Search is free and public — is the company on the contract a real, active Texas entity?
• Look up their track record. The Harris County Clerk's real property records are searchable online; copies cost about a dollar a page. A buyer who claims to buy houses has deeds recorded. Ask for the entity name and check.
• Demand a written offer. Price, terms, entity name, on paper. A number quoted at your door and revised at signing is a tactic, not an offer.
• Understand option fee vs. earnest money. Under the standard Texas contract these are two different payments: the option fee buys the buyer a short unrestricted right to walk; the earnest money is the deposit at risk, held by the escrow agent — never by the buyer. A "deposit" the buyer holds themselves isn't one.
• Never sign anything with blanks. That one comes from the Texas Department of Insurance's own fraud checklist, alongside high-pressure tactics and unsolicited contact as the recognized warning signs.

The closing is your fortress — insist on it

Every protection converges at a real closing. Texas escrow officers are individually licensed and regulated by the Department of Insurance; title insurance premiums are set by the state itself, identical at every title company. And a deed generally can't even be recorded unless it was acknowledged before a notary (Property Code § 12.001) — which is exactly why the classic scam move is a deed signed at a kitchen table. The rule that filters out nearly everything bad: you sign the deed at the title company, and nowhere else. For the money itself, follow the CFPB's wire-fraud rule — verify payment instructions by phone using a number you found independently, and treat any last-minute change to those instructions as an emergency.

Texas just raised the stakes on deed fraud

The Legislature moved in 2025: SB 16 created the criminal offenses of real property theft and real property fraud with a ten-year limitations period, and now requires county clerks to check photo ID from anyone filing a conveyance document. A companion law, SB 1734, gives a homeowner a low-cost route to challenge a fraudulent recorded document through an affidavit-and-petition process with no district-court filing fee. Translation: the era when deed fraud was a civil headache with no teeth is ending.

If something already went wrong

Know who does what. The Attorney General's Consumer Protection Division takes complaints (and a pattern of complaints can trigger investigations) — but doesn't recover money for you individually. TREC disciplines its license holders but has no jurisdiction over unlicensed buyers. Your personal remedy is the Deceptive Trade Practices Act: it reaches misrepresenting what an agreement does (§ 17.46(b)(12)) — like claiming a contract can't be assigned when it can — allows up to treble damages for knowing violations, requires a written 60-day notice before suit, and runs on a two-year clock from discovery. That's attorney territory; TexasLawHelp.org maps the complaint path for free.

Now apply all of it to us

Tenant Real Estate Company expects this test and built for it: written offers with the reasoning shown, every closing at a title company, the assignment question answered in writing before you sign, and no pressure deadlines — our offers stay open long enough to be compared. Our as-is page explains why the number we write doesn't shrink at the table. Vet us with the checklist above, vet everyone else with it too, and sell to whoever passes with the best number.