If you're ten days into your option period on a resale in Teravista or Paloma Lake, ask yourself which HOA fee you've actually budgeted for. Most buyers can name one: the number on the resale certificate, the document the title company orders to prove dues are current. Fewer know there's a second fee riding along with it, one that Texas law doesn't cap the same way, and one that shows up on the closing statement as a separate line item that nobody flagged during the showing.
That gap between the fee everyone talks about and the fee nobody mentions is where Round Rock closings stall. Not because either amount is large. Because two different charges get treated as one, and the paperwork that's supposed to sort out who pays what only works if somebody actually uses it.
Two fees, one signature line
Texas Property Code Chapter 207 sets a cap on what a homeowners association can charge to prepare and deliver a resale certificate: $375. That's the document a title company requests when a house in a mandatory HOA changes hands. It has to show current assessment amounts, the association's operating budget, any pending special assessments, and whether there's a right of first refusal on the property. The statute also requires it to be prepared no earlier than 60 days before delivery and handed over within 10 business days of the request, which is the longest currency window of any state that regulates this.
Teravista Community Association charges $375 for that certificate, right at the statutory ceiling.
But a resale certificate and a transfer fee are not the same thing, and Chapter 207's $375 cap only touches the certificate. The transfer fee, the charge an HOA levies to move the property record from seller to buyer in its books, isn't governed by that same cap. It's a separate charge, and it varies by community because each HOA sets its own. Paloma Lake HOA, managed by FirstService Residential, charges $340 for that transfer. Add the two together in a community that charges both near the top of their respective ranges, and a buyer or seller who assumed "the HOA fee is $375" is looking at something closer to $700 once both documents hit the settlement statement.
Neither number is dramatic on its own. The problem is that most people only account for one of them until the closing disclosure lands.
The document that actually decides who pays
Here's the part that gets missed most often. The standard Texas home sale contract acknowledges mandatory HOA membership and a buyer's right to request association documents, but it doesn't spell out who pays for what or when. That negotiation happens through a separate form: TREC's Addendum for Property Subject to Mandatory Membership in a Property Owners Association, commonly called the 36-10.
That addendum does three specific things. It sets who orders and pays for the resale certificate. It caps the transfer fee and any deposit the buyer will absorb, with the seller covering anything above that cap. And it assigns who pays the title company for requesting the HOA information in the first place. Without it, there's no agreed framework, just an assumption on each side about who's supposed to cover what, and assumptions are exactly what surface as disputes during the option period when the title company can't move forward until someone signs off on the fee.
This isn't a formality that only matters when something goes wrong. It's the mechanism that decides, in writing, whether the $340 Paloma Lake transfer fee lands on the buyer, the seller, or gets split, before anyone's standing at the closing table arguing about it.
Why the timing matters more than the amount
A common assumption is that Texas law gives buyers a guaranteed window to walk away after reviewing the resale certificate, the way condo buyers get a five-day cancellation right under a separate statute. For a standard single-family HOA like Teravista or Paloma Lake, that's not quite right. Chapter 207 doesn't create its own cancellation period. Any right to review the certificate and back out based on what it says comes from the contract itself, specifically from the 36-10 addendum if it's included, or from the general option period everyone already has under the standard contract.
That distinction matters because it changes what you're actually protected by. If the addendum isn't part of the contract, a buyer's leverage to object to something in the resale certificate, a thin reserve fund, a pending assessment, a lawsuit against the association, depends entirely on whether the standard option period is still open when the certificate arrives. Order the certificate late, and a buyer can find themselves reviewing financial disclosures about the HOA after the window to walk away without losing earnest money has already closed.
Given the 10-business-day delivery requirement and how master-planned Round Rock neighborhoods work through third-party managers, ordering that certificate the day the option period opens, not the week it's set to expire, is the difference between having real leverage and having none.
What's riding on the paperwork
A resale certificate isn't just a formality that proves dues are paid. It's the one document in a Round Rock HOA transaction that shows a buyer the association's actual financial condition: current assessment amounts, whether the operating budget is healthy, whether the reserve fund is thin enough that a special assessment might be coming, and whether the association is a party to any pending lawsuit. Unpaid dues and fines on a property generally transfer with the property if they aren't cleared before closing, which is exactly the kind of detail this certificate is designed to catch before it becomes the new owner's problem.
That's the actual value of the $375 and the $340. They're not friction for its own sake. They're the price of a document that tells a buyer what they're actually inheriting when they close on a home inside Teravista's or Paloma Lake's boundaries.
Before you write the offer
- Ask your agent to confirm whether the 36-10 addendum is included in the contract, not just assumed.
- Find out whether the specific HOA charges a resale certificate fee, a transfer fee, or both, and get the actual dollar amounts in writing rather than budgeting a single "HOA fee" line.
- Order the resale certificate as early in the option period as possible so there's time left to act on what it says.
- Read the reserve fund balance and any pending litigation disclosure in the certificate itself, not just the assessment amount.
A few questions people ask
Is the $375 resale certificate fee the same in every Round Rock HOA? No. That figure is a statutory ceiling under Texas Property Code Chapter 207, not a flat rate. Some associations charge less. Teravista's certificate fee sits at the cap. Every community sets its own transfer fee separately, and that number isn't bound by the same statute.
Who's supposed to pay for the resale certificate, the buyer or the seller? The contract decides, and by default many Texas sales assign the cost to the seller, but it's negotiable and needs to be spelled out, ideally through the 36-10 addendum, rather than left as an assumption on either side.
What happens if unpaid dues turn up on the resale certificate after the option period has already closed? Those amounts generally stay attached to the property and can become the new owner's responsibility if they aren't resolved before closing, which is why ordering the certificate early enough to still have contractual leverage matters more than the dollar amount of the fee itself.
If you're weighing a move into Teravista, Paloma Lake, or another Round Rock HOA community and want someone who reads this paperwork before it becomes a problem instead of after, Denise Arndt has spent years walking Central Texas buyers and sellers through exactly this kind of detail. Contact Denise for a personalized consultation before you write the offer, not after.
