New vs. Used Homes in North Texas: An Architect’s Honest Take (2026)

The first thing I noticed in the two-year-old house was the front door. It wouldn’t latch unless you leaned on it. In the kitchen, a hairline crack ran diagonally from the corner of the window header toward the ceiling, the kind of line that looks like nothing until you’ve seen a few hundred of them. The back patio had settled away from the slab, so rain ran toward the house instead of away from it. The owners were frustrated and a little embarrassed. “We bought new,” one of them told me, “so we wouldn’t have to deal with any of this.”

I hear some version of that sentence a lot. I’m an architect by training, and these days I spend much of my time inside North Texas houses: designing, renovating, and walking through other people’s homes with them. And one of the most common assumptions I run into is that a new house is automatically a better house. It’s cleaner, sure. It smells like fresh paint and carpet. Nobody else has lived in it. But “new” describes when a house was finished, not how well it was designed or built, and those are very different things.

This isn’t an anti-builder rant. Some of the best-built homes in Dallas–Fort Worth went up in the last five years, and some of the worst went up in the 1980s. What I want to do here is give you the way I think about it: what new construction does well, where it tends to fall short, what older homes quietly get right, and how to buy either one with your eyes open. It’s long, because the decision is big. Grab a coffee.

Why this question matters so much in North Texas

Few places in the country are building houses as fast as the northern suburbs of Dallas. Drive up the Dallas North Tollway past US 380, or out US 75 toward Anna and Melissa, and you can watch farm fields turn into subdivisions in a single season. In Realust’s data, about 96% of homes for sale in Celina are new construction. In Prosper it’s 85%, and in Frisco and McKinney it’s about 82%. Compare that with Plano at 17.5% or Flower Mound at 12.5%, where most of what comes up for sale is a resale.

So depending on where you’re shopping, “new or used” isn’t really a choice someone hands you. It’s baked into the city. If you’ve fallen in love with Celina, you’re probably buying new. If you want Plano, you’re probably buying used. Which means the question is actually bigger than the house: it’s partly a question about which kind of place you want to live in, and which set of trade-offs you’d rather manage.

It also matters because of what’s underneath us. Much of North Texas sits on expansive clay, soil that swells when it’s wet and shrinks when it’s dry. That one fact shapes more about how houses perform here than almost anything you’ll see on a listing. We’ll come back to it, because it’s the root of many of the “new house” problems I see.

What an architect means by a house that fits its lot

When I design a house from scratch, the lot comes first. Before I sketch a single room, I want to know where the sun rises and sets, where the good view is and where the neighbor’s garage is, which way the ground falls when it rains, where the big trees are, where the breeze comes from in May, and where the street noise is coming from. The house grows out of those answers. A living room faces the view and the morning light. The garage blocks the street noise. The big west-facing wall gets small windows, deep overhangs or both, because a Texas summer sun at 5 p.m. will cook a room no matter what the air conditioner thinks.

That’s the part of architecture most people never see, and it’s the part that makes a house feel right in a way you can’t quite name. You walk in and the light is good. The kitchen window frames something worth looking at. The bedroom is quiet. The back patio is shaded by the time you want to sit on it. None of that is luxury. It’s just a house that was designed for where it sits.

A production home works the other way around. The builder has a library of plans, maybe eight or twelve per community, each with three or four front elevations. Those plans are designed to work on almost any lot in the subdivision, which is exactly the point: it’s how builders keep costs down and schedules predictable. The same plan gets flipped left-to-right to fit a corner lot or put the driveway on the other side. What it usually doesn’t do is turn to catch the light or dodge the afternoon sun. The house is the same whether its back windows face a greenbelt or the back of a shopping center, whether the big glass faces north or west.

I don’t say that to knock the people who draw those plans. Designing a house that works on 300 different lots is a hard problem, and the good production plans solve it well. But it’s a different problem than designing a house for one lot, and it’s worth knowing which one you’re buying. When you tour a model home, you’re seeing that plan on the builder’s best lot, staged by professionals, with every upgrade turned on. Your version will sit on a different lot, facing a different direction, with a different view out the back.

How a production house actually gets built

To understand why new homes have the problems they do, it helps to understand how they’re built. A production builder in a fast-growing North Texas community might start dozens of houses a month. Each house moves through a sequence of trade crews: the slab, then framing, then roofing, windows, plumbing, electrical and HVAC rough-ins, insulation, drywall, trim, paint, flooring, fixtures. Most of those crews are subcontractors, and many are paid by the job, not by the hour. The faster they finish one house, the sooner they get to the next one.

Overseeing all of that is a construction superintendent who may be responsible for twenty, thirty or more houses at once. A good superintendent is worth their weight in gold. But even the best one can’t stand over every window install or watch every nail go into every shingle. Things get missed, not because anyone is cutting corners on purpose, but because the system is built around speed and volume.

Then there’s what builders call value engineering: finding the cheapest material or method that still meets the requirement. Sometimes that’s smart. Sometimes it means the thinnest acceptable roof decking, the most basic window line, builder-grade fixtures, or ductwork routed wherever it fits instead of where it works best. Each choice saves a little money on one house, which adds up to real money across a community. You, the buyer, inherit the sum of those choices.

You might assume someone is checking all of this for you. Partly, yes. Cities inspect new homes at key stages: the foundation, framing, the mechanical systems and a final. But city inspectors are checking for code compliance, and the building code is a minimum standard: the least a house can be and still be legal to occupy. It’s not a measure of quality, and inspectors have a lot of houses to get through in a day. Here’s a fact that surprises a lot of people: Texas doesn’t license home builders. The state created a Residential Construction Commission in 2003 and abolished it in 2009. Plumbers, electricians and HVAC contractors are licensed; the company putting the whole house together generally is not.

None of this means new homes are bad. It means the quality of a new home depends heavily on the specific builder, the specific superintendent, the specific crews that happened to be on your lot, and the week they were there. Two houses on the same street, from the same builder and the same plan, can perform very differently. That’s why I’ll tell you later to hire your own inspector at several stages. You’re buying the result of a process, and you want someone watching the process.

The problems I see most in new North Texas homes

Here’s the part you came for. These are the issues I run into again and again in homes that are one to five years old. Some are serious. Some are the normal growing pains of a house settling in. Learning to tell the difference is half the battle.

Slabs, soil and water

Almost every house in North Texas sits on a concrete slab, and almost every slab here sits on clay that moves. When the ground soaks up water in a wet spring, it swells and pushes up. When it dries out in a hot August, it shrinks and drops. A well-designed slab, usually a post-tensioned slab with steel cables pulled tight inside the concrete, is engineered to ride that movement as a unit. But the slab is only as good as the soil prep, the engineering, the drainage around it, and the way the ground is managed for years afterward.

New houses have a specific vulnerability: they haven’t been through a full cycle yet. The lot was graded recently, often after the builder cut, filled and compacted soil across the whole subdivision. The trees that once pulled moisture out of the ground are gone. The yard is new sod over disturbed dirt. The first couple of years, as the soil finds its new normal, are when a lot of movement shows up. That’s when I see the diagonal drywall cracks from the corners of doors and windows, doors that stick or won’t latch, tile grout that cracks in a line, and gaps opening up where trim meets the wall.

Some of that is normal and cosmetic. A little settling is expected in any new house, which is why builders often do a round of drywall touch-ups near the end of the first year. What I watch for is patterns: cracks that keep growing, doors on one side of the house that all start sticking, floors you can feel sloping, brick that cracks in a stair-step pattern, or a gap opening between the brick and a window frame. Those deserve a structural engineer, not a can of spackle.

Water is the other half of this story. Final grading is supposed to slope the ground away from the house on every side, so rain runs off instead of pooling against the slab. On a lot of production homes, I find spots where it doesn’t, or where it did at closing and doesn’t anymore because the soil settled, a flower bed got built up, or a patio went in flat. Many new homes in North Texas also come with little or no guttering, sometimes just a short run over the front door. That means every rainstorm dumps the roof’s runoff straight down onto the soil right next to the foundation, which is exactly where you don’t want it on expansive clay.

Roofs

North Texas is hail country. Insurance in Texas costs more than in most states largely because of it, and roofs are where that cost lands. On new homes I see the same handful of roof issues: shingles nailed too high or at an angle so they don’t hold the way the manufacturer intended, flashing that’s missing or done wrong where the roof meets a wall or a chimney chase, valleys that weren’t woven or lined properly, and attics without enough ventilation, which cooks the shingles from below and shortens their life.

Most of those are invisible from the street and hard to see from the ground. Many buyers don’t find out until the first big storm, when a leak shows up in a bedroom ceiling, or until the first hail claim, when the adjuster points out installation problems that complicate the claim. One more wrinkle: the standard shingles on most production homes are basic three-tab or entry-level architectural shingles. Impact-resistant (Class 4) shingles cost more up front, but many Texas insurers offer a discount for them, and in hail country they can pay for themselves.

Windows and doors

Windows are one of the most common places production builders save money, and one of the most common sources of complaints. Builder-grade vinyl windows can be perfectly fine. The bigger issue is usually installation. A window is supposed to be flashed and sealed in a specific order so that any water that gets behind the brick or siding is directed back out instead of into the wall. When that sequence is rushed or skipped, the leak can stay hidden inside the wall for a long time before it shows up as a stain, swollen trim, a musty smell, or worse.

Doors give you early warning of movement. When an exterior door starts to drag, or the deadbolt no longer lines up with the strike plate, that’s often the house telling you the slab or framing has shifted. Sometimes it’s minor and an adjustment fixes it for good. Sometimes it’s the first sign of something that keeps going. Weatherstripping that doesn’t seal, sliding doors that don’t slide, and patio doors that let in daylight around the edges are all common new-home punch-list items too.

Brick, siding and the outside skin

Most North Texas houses are brick or stone veneer over a wood frame. Veneer is a great look and a durable skin, but it isn’t waterproof. It’s designed to let a little water in, then drain it out through small openings called weep holes at the bottom of the wall. I regularly find weep holes that were left out, mortared shut, or buried under landscaping or a raised flower bed. When the water can’t get out, it finds another way, and that way is usually into the framing.

HVAC, ducts and comfort

A new house with a brand-new air conditioner should be comfortable, and many are. But I hear a lot of the same complaint: “The upstairs is never cool,” or “The back bedroom is always five degrees warmer than the rest of the house.” Often the equipment is fine. The problem is ductwork that was routed for convenience instead of airflow, crushed or kinked flex duct in the attic, too few return-air paths, or a single system trying to serve two very different floors. Those are design and installation issues, and they’re much cheaper to fix during construction than after.

Plumbing and the small stuff

Plumbing in new homes is generally modern and reliable. PEX supply lines and PVC drains are standard and work well. The problems I see are mostly installation details: a drain line with not enough slope, a shower pan that wasn’t tested before the tile went in, a water heater without a proper drain pan, a hose bib that leaks into the wall. Small things, but water is the enemy of every house, and small leaks get expensive when they run for months before anyone notices.

Then there’s the punch list: the cabinet door that won’t close, the outlet that doesn’t work, the paint touch-ups, the scratched tub, the missing caulk. Every new house has a punch list. That’s normal. What matters is whether the builder takes care of it promptly and completely, and whether you know which items are cosmetic and which ones are clues.

Two stories you’ll recognize

These are composites, a blend of situations I’ve seen many times, with details changed. But if you’ve spent time in North Texas real estate, you’ll recognize them.

The dream lot that wasn’t. A couple I’ll call Dan and Priya bought a new two-story on a premium lot backing up to a creek greenbelt. They paid an extra lot premium for the view. The plan they chose put the main living area and its wall of windows across the back of the house, which faced almost due west. The view was beautiful in October. In July, the living room hit 84 degrees by late afternoon with the AC running nonstop, the blinds stayed closed all summer, and their first August electric bill was a shock. Nothing was technically wrong with the house. It passed every inspection. It was just the right plan on the wrong lot, and nobody in the sales office was going to tell them that.

The punch list that kept coming back. A buyer I’ll call Marcus closed on a new home in a fast-growing community. By month eight he had a stuck back door, three diagonal drywall cracks, a grout line splitting across the kitchen floor, and a damp spot on the garage wall after every heavy rain. The builder fixed the cosmetic items. The damp spot turned out to be a grading problem plus a missing kick-out flashing where the roof met the garage wall, which had been sending water down behind the brick since day one. It got fixed, but only because Marcus documented everything with dated photos, sent written notice, and had an independent inspector do an 11-month warranty walk-through before his first-year coverage ran out.

Neither of those buyers made a crazy decision. Both houses are fine now. But both would have been spared real money and stress by asking a few more questions up front, which is what the rest of this guide is about.

In fairness: what new homes do really well

I’ve spent a lot of words on problems, so let me be clear about the other side, because new construction has real advantages and I’d never tell anyone to dismiss it.

• Energy efficiency. Today’s energy codes require far better insulation, tighter air sealing and more efficient windows than houses built in the 1980s and 1990s. A well-built new home can cost noticeably less to heat and cool than an older home of the same size.
• Modern systems. New wiring, new plumbing, new HVAC, new water heater, new roof. You’re not inheriting a 20-year-old air conditioner that’s one hot week from dying.
• Current codes and safety. Things like GFCI and arc-fault protection, smoke and carbon monoxide detection, and egress windows are built in.
• A warranty. Most builders provide a written warranty (more on what it really covers below). A resale home usually comes with whatever the seller disclosed and nothing more.
• Plans for how people live now. Open kitchens, big pantries, laundry rooms near the bedrooms, home offices, walk-in closets. Older homes often need renovation to work this way.
• Choices. If you buy early in construction, you pick finishes. It’s your house from the start.
• Builder incentives. In a cooler market like this one, builders often offer rate buydowns or closing-cost help that a resale seller can’t match. Run the numbers carefully, but they can be real money.

A great new home, built by a careful builder on a lot that suits the plan, is a wonderful thing to own. My point isn’t that new is bad. It’s that new is not automatically good, and the label alone shouldn’t do your thinking for you.

What older homes get right, and what they hide

Now flip it around. When I walk into a well-kept house from the 1990s or early 2000s, a few things are working in its favor before I’ve opened a single closet.

The slab has already told you its story. A 20-year-old foundation has been through droughts and floods. If it was going to move badly, it probably has, and you can see the evidence: cracks, repairs, a foundation company’s warranty in the seller’s paperwork. That sounds scary, but it’s actually information. A new slab is a promise. An old slab is a track record.

Bigger lots and real trees. Lots have gotten smaller. Nationally, the median lot for a new single-family home sold in 2025 was about 8,500 square feet, and in the region that includes Texas, half of new spec homes started in 2025 sat on lots under 0.15 acres, roughly 6,500 square feet. In Realust’s data, the average lot in Frisco is about 8,400 square feet; in Plano it’s about 12,100, and in Flower Mound it’s over 36,000. Older neighborhoods also have something you can’t buy at any price: 30-year-old shade trees. In a Texas summer, a big live oak on the west side of a house is worth more than any upgrade package.

Established neighborhoods. You know what’s going in next door, because it’s already there. The HOA (if there is one) has a track record. The schools, the shopping, the traffic patterns are known quantities, not projections on a sales office map.

Character. Older houses were more often custom or semi-custom, with more variety from one house to the next. Not always better, but more individual.

And now the honest flip side, because older homes hide things too:

• Deferred maintenance. The roof, the HVAC, the water heater and the windows all have lifespans. A house where all of them are near the end can cost you tens of thousands in the first few years.
• Old plumbing. Many older slab homes in North Texas have cast iron drain lines under the slab, which can corrode and crack. Some homes from roughly the late 1970s to the mid-1990s have polybutylene supply lines, which are prone to failure. Older homes may also have galvanized steel pipes.
• Old wiring. Some homes from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s used aluminum branch wiring, which needs special attention. Very old homes may have undersized electrical service for modern life.
• Past repairs of unknown quality. A previous owner’s weekend project, an unpermitted garage conversion, a foundation repair from a company that’s no longer in business.
• Energy performance. Less insulation, older single-pane or early double-pane windows, leaky ducts in a hot attic.
• Insurance. An older roof can mean higher premiums, a bigger deductible, or coverage that pays only depreciated value on the roof.

My favorite sweet spot

If you made me pick one age range, I’d point you at houses roughly 15 to 30 years old that have been well cared for. They’re old enough that the slab and framing have settled in and shown their character, and old enough that the original builder-grade roof, HVAC and water heater have often already been replaced. But they’re new enough to have reasonably modern layouts, wiring and plumbing. In North Texas, that’s a lot of the housing in cities like Plano, Allen, Flower Mound, Coppell, Carrollton and The Colony. Not a rule, just where I find the most value per dollar of thoughtfully built house.

The money: what each one really costs

Sticker price is only the start. Here’s how the hidden costs tend to stack up on each side. Your numbers will vary, but the categories are worth budgeting for.

Cost	New construction	Resale
Window coverings	Usually not included. Blinds or shades for a whole house add up fast.	Often included.
Fence, gutters, landscaping	Often minimal or extra. Many new homes get partial gutters and basic sod.	Usually in place, though maybe aging.
Appliances	Refrigerator, washer and dryer often not included.	Often negotiable.
Special districts	Many new communities carry a MUD or PID assessment on top of regular property tax.	Possible in some newer areas; less common in older ones.
Taxes in year two	The first bill is often based on a lot value. The second reflects the finished house.	Based on the existing appraisal, with the 10% homestead cap once it’s your homestead.
Big-ticket replacements	Low for the first 10 to 15 years, if built well.	Roof, HVAC, water heater may be due. Budget based on their ages.
Repairs in the first two years	Covered by warranty for workmanship and systems, if you document and follow the process.	On you, unless you buy a home warranty.
Upgrades	Easy to overspend at the design center. Some upgrades add little resale value.	Renovation later, on your own timeline and budget.

A useful exercise: take the price of the new home, add every item in the left column you’ll actually need in the first two years, and compare it with the resale price plus a realistic repair and update budget based on an inspection. The gap is often smaller than the sticker prices suggest, and sometimes it flips.

The warranty: what it covers and what it doesn’t

Most new homes in Texas come with what’s often called a 1-2-10 warranty, or something similar: one year for workmanship and materials, two years for the plumbing, electrical and HVAC delivery systems, and ten years for major structural components. Since a 2023 change in Texas law, builders who offer a written warranty with at least one year on workmanship, two years on systems and six years on major structural components get a shorter six-year window for most construction defect claims, instead of the old ten. So read your warranty closely: the structural coverage may be six years, not ten.

A few things about builder warranties surprise people:

• “Structural” is narrow. Major structural coverage usually means the parts that hold the house up, and it often comes with performance standards that define how much movement or cracking counts as a defect. Drywall cracks, sticking doors and tile cracks may be considered cosmetic or normal settling, even when they’re caused by movement.
• The clock is the clock. The one-year workmanship window goes fast. If you notice something in month 11 and report it in month 13, you may be out of luck.
• There’s a legal process. Texas’s Residential Construction Liability Act sets out steps before a homeowner can sue a builder over defects: written notice by certified mail, a chance for the builder to inspect, and time for the builder to make a repair offer. You generally have to give at least 60 days’ notice before filing suit. Many purchase contracts also require arbitration instead of court.
• Who stands behind it matters. Some warranties are backed by the builder; others by a third-party warranty company. Know which one you have and how to file a claim.

I’m not a lawyer, and this isn’t legal advice. The practical takeaway is simple: read the warranty before you sign the contract, put every issue in writing with dated photos, and don’t wait for the one-year mark to report problems.

If you buy new, do it like this

1. Choose the lot before the plan. Find out which way the back of the house faces, where the sun sets, how the lot drains and what will be built around it. Then pick the plan that suits the lot, not the other way around. If you love a plan with a wall of glass across the back, put it on a lot where that wall faces north or east.
2. Walk the older sections of the same community. Find homes from the same builder that are two to five years old. Look at the brick, the drywall at window corners, the grading. Knock on a door or two and ask the owners how it’s gone. People are surprisingly candid.
3. Hire your own inspector, at least three times. A pre-pour inspection of the foundation forms and cables before the concrete goes in, a pre-drywall inspection when the framing, plumbing, wiring and windows are all exposed, and a final before closing. Then a fourth one at month 11, before the workmanship warranty ends. It costs a fraction of one percent of the price of the house and it’s the best money you’ll spend. Make sure your contract allows it.
4. Spend upgrade money where it lasts. I’d rather see buyers put money into better windows, impact-resistant shingles, full gutters, extra attic insulation, a better HVAC design, and the outlets and conduit you’ll want later, than into a fancier backsplash. Finishes are easy to change in five years. Windows, roofs and ducts are not.
5. Ask about drainage and gutters directly. Get the final grading on the record before closing, and plan to add gutters if they’re not included. On expansive clay, managing water around the slab is the single best thing you can do for your foundation.
6. Compare the builder’s lender incentive to the open market. Rate buydowns can be great, but get an independent quote and compare the total cost, not just the rate.
7. Read the contract and warranty, then keep a file. Every email, every service request, every photo, with dates. You’ll probably never need it. If you do, you’ll really need it.

If you buy used, do it like this

1. Get a full inspection from a licensed Texas inspector, and read the whole report. Not just the summary.
2. Add a sewer scope on older slab homes. A camera down the main drain line can spot broken or sagging cast iron before it becomes a jackhammer-through-the-floor repair.
3. Bring in a structural engineer if the inspector flags movement. An engineer’s report tells you whether the cracks are history or a trend, and what a fix would cost.
4. Ask for the paperwork. The seller’s disclosure, any foundation repair records and transferable warranties, roof and HVAC install dates, permits for additions or conversions.
5. Get an insurance quote early. Before your option period ends, so the roof age or claims history doesn’t surprise you.
6. Budget for the first two years. Look at the ages of the roof, HVAC and water heater, and set money aside for whichever is closest to the end.

Where each one makes sense in North Texas

Because new and used homes cluster in different places, your choice of city and your choice of house are linked.

• If you want new: the northern growth corridor is where it is. Celina, Prosper, much of Frisco and north and west McKinney, plus Anna, Melissa and Princeton farther out. Expect newer schools and amenities still filling in, longer drives to Dallas, and years of nearby construction.
• If you want established: Plano, Richardson, Carrollton, Coppell, Flower Mound and much of Allen. Bigger lots, mature trees, shorter commutes in many cases, and a housing stock where renovation is part of the deal.
• If you want both options: cities like McKinney, Frisco and Allen have older neighborhoods near their original downtowns and new subdivisions on their edges, so you can compare side by side without changing cities.

You can see how these cities compare on schools, safety, commute, prices and more on their Realust city pages, or put a few side by side on the compare page. Our matchups, like Frisco vs. Plano and Prosper vs. Celina, are almost a new-versus-established comparison in themselves.

An architect’s checklist for any house, new or old

When I walk a house, these are the things I’m noticing. None of them show up on a listing, and all of them change how it feels to live there.

• Light. Which rooms get morning light and which get the harsh late-afternoon sun? Where would you sit to read on a Sunday morning?
• The west wall. How much glass faces west, and is anything shading it: trees, overhangs, a porch?
• Views from where you actually sit. Not from the doorway. From the sofa, the kitchen sink, the bed.
• Sound. Can you hear the street from the bedrooms? The laundry from the living room? Footsteps from upstairs?
• Proportions. Do the rooms feel good, or just big? A well-proportioned 14-by-16 room can feel better than a cavernous one.
• Storage where you need it. A drop zone by the garage door, a coat closet by the front, linen storage near the bathrooms.
• Flow. How do you get groceries from the car to the pantry? How far is the laundry from the bedrooms?
• Outdoor space you’ll use. Is the patio shaded in the evening? Is the yard private, or does it look into three other yards?
• Water. Walk the outside. Does the ground slope away from the house? Where do the downspouts (if any) discharge?

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So, new or used?

Here’s where I land after a lot of years and a lot of houses. A house isn’t better because it’s newer. It’s better because it fits: its lot, its climate, its soil, and the life you plan to live in it. Sometimes that’s a brand-new home from a careful builder on a lot that suits the plan. Sometimes it’s a 20-year-old house with a proven slab, a big tree on the west side and a kitchen you’ll redo in a few years. Often the best house in your price range is the one that most people walked past because it didn’t smell like fresh paint.

If you’re buying new, buy the lot first, watch the build with your own inspector, and spend your upgrade money on the parts of the house that are hard to change later. If you’re buying used, read the house like a story: what’s been fixed, what’s aging, what it’s telling you about the ground underneath. Either way, ask more questions than feels polite. A house is the most expensive thing most of us will ever buy. It deserves the scrutiny.

And if you’re still figuring out where to look, start with the city, not the house. Take the 90-second city quiz or set your own priorities to see which North Texas cities fit you best, then go find the house that fits the city.

Sources

• NAHB Eye on Housing: Lot sizes of new single-family homes (2025)
• NAHB: Single-family home size continues to decline
• Denton Record-Chronicle: The Texas Residential Construction Commission and builder regulation
• MWL Law: Texas creates a six-year statute of repose for residential construction (HB 2024, 2023)
• MWL Law: Texas Residential Construction Liability Act 101
• Bramlett Partners: What is a 1-2-10 warranty?

The stories in this article are composites with details changed. City figures (share of new-construction listings, average lot sizes) are from Realust data as of October 2026. Warranty and legal information is general and not legal advice; read your own contract and warranty, and talk to a real estate attorney about your situation.