Sell My House As-Is, in Any Condition

No. Selling as-is means the buyer prices the property in its current condition instead of asking you to complete repairs first. You still have to disclose known defects on the Seller's Disclosure Notice unless your sale is exempt under Texas Property Code § 5.008(e).

It removes the buyer's ability to sue over value or condition — the buyer "agrees to make his own appraisal of the bargain and to accept the risk that he may be wrong" (Prudential, 896 S.W.2d at 161). It does not protect a seller who lies about or hides a known defect.

Yes, unless the transfer itself is exempt under § 5.008(e). An as-is clause changes what you promise about condition, not whether you have to disclose what you know.

Possibly. § 5.008(e) exempts transfers "pursuant to a court order or foreclosure sale" and transfers "by a fiduciary in the course of the administration of a decedent's estate, guardianship, conservatorship, or trust." Check with the title company before assuming you're exempt.

Yes. You disclose the damage you're aware of on the Seller's Disclosure Notice, and the buyer prices the repair into the offer instead of requiring you to complete it first.

You can still sell it as-is. The violation doesn't disappear with the sale — Texas Local Government Code § 214.001 lets a municipality order repair or demolition of a substandard building regardless of owner — so we price the cost of resolving it into the offer.

No. You can leave the house exactly as it sits — furniture, boxes, and all. The cleanout is priced into the offer the same way a bad roof or an old HVAC system would be.

We start from recent comparable sales for similar houses in similar condition, then subtract what it actually costs to bring the property to a sellable condition — repairs, systems, structural items, and cleanout.

"As-is" is a specific legal term in a Texas contract, not just marketing language. When a seller and buyer agree the property is sold "as is," the Texas Supreme Court has held the buyer is agreeing to make his own appraisal of the property and accept the risk that he may be wrong about its condition — "the seller gives no assurances, express or implied, concerning the value or condition of the thing sold" (Prudential Ins. Co. of America v. Jefferson Associates, Ltd., 896 S.W.2d 156, 161 (Tex. 1995)). A valid as-is clause shifts responsibility for judging condition onto the buyer — it's what lets a buyer skip repair demands or price renegotiations after inspection, because the condition was already priced into the offer.

What it doesn't let a seller get away with: an as-is clause is not a shield for hiding known problems. Texas courts have been clear that "a seller will not be protected by an 'as is' clause that the seller induced the buyer to enter into through fraudulent representations or by concealing information" (Prudential, 896 S.W.2d at 162). Selling as-is means you don't have to fix or promise anything about condition — it does not mean you can lie about a defect you know exists.

Selling "as is" changes what you promise about condition. It does not change your paperwork obligation. Texas Property Code § 5.008(a) requires a seller of residential property comprising not more than one dwelling unit to give the purchaser a written notice — the statutory Seller's Disclosure Notice — regardless of whether the sale is "as is," unless the transfer falls under one of the exemptions in § 5.008(e) below.

Who Is Exempt From the Disclosure Notice?

Texas Property Code § 5.008(e) exempts certain transfers entirely, including a transfer "pursuant to a court order or foreclosure sale" and a transfer "by a fiduciary in the course of the administration of a decedent's estate, guardianship, conservatorship, or trust." Outside those eleven listed exemptions, the notice is still required — even for an as-is cash sale. Under § 5.008(f), "the notice shall be delivered by the seller to the purchaser on or before the effective date of an executory contract binding the purchaser to purchase the property"; if a contract is signed first, the buyer gets seven days after receiving the notice to terminate.

Fire and storm damage are exactly the kind of condition an as-is sale is built for. You are not required to repair the roof, rebuild a fire-damaged room, or replace flooring before you sell — you disclose what you know, and the buyer prices the damage into the offer instead of asking you to fix it first.

Disclosure Still Covers What You Know

The disclosure form asks whether you're aware of defects in the roof, in "other structural components," and in the property's systems, plus whether the property has taken on water from a flood event (Tex. Prop. Code § 5.008(b)). Fire or storm damage you know about goes on that form even in an as-is sale — the as-is clause changes who pays for the fix, not whether you have to say it happened. If the insurance claim is still open, or you never filed one, that's fine.

A house with years of deferred maintenance — an aging HVAC system, a roof past its expected life, plumbing patched instead of replaced — doesn't have to be brought current before you sell it as-is. Once a buyer inspects the house and still completes the purchase, Texas courts treat that inspection as an independent basis for the deal: "a buyer's independent inspection precludes a showing of causation and reliance if the buyer continued to complete the purchase after the inspection revealed the same information that the seller allegedly failed to disclose" (Lutfak v. Gainsborough, No. 01-15-01068-CV, 2017 WL 2180716, at *5 (Tex. App.—Houston [1st Dist.] May 18, 2017, no pet.) (mem. op.)). Selling as-is turns the deferred-repair list into the buyer's problem to price, not yours to finish first.

An open code violation, an unpermitted addition, or a city order to repair or vacate doesn't have to be cleared before you sell. Texas law gives municipalities the authority to order the "vacation, relocation of occupants, securing, repair, removal, or demolition" of a building found "dilapidated, substandard, or unfit for human habitation" (Tex. Loc. Gov't Code § 214.001(a)) — that authority exists whether or not the house is for sale, and it doesn't go away because you found a buyer. An as-is cash sale doesn't erase the violation; it just moves the job of clearing it to whoever owns the house next — we factor an open violation, an active repair order, or an unpermitted structure into the offer the same way we factor in a bad roof, by pricing the cost of resolving it rather than asking you to resolve it first.

Years of accumulated belongings, trash, or storage filling every room is a labor problem, not a legal one — Texas law doesn't require a seller to empty a house before closing. You can leave furniture, boxes, and debris where they are; the cleanout gets priced into the offer, the same as a bad roof or a cracked foundation. Full-cleanout houses are sometimes inherited houses working through their own probate and estate paperwork on top of the cleanout.

Pricing an as-is house starts the way an appraiser would: recent comparable sales for similar houses in similar condition, then a deduction for what it costs to bring the house to a sellable, financeable condition — roof, systems, structural items, cleanout, and anything else on the Seller's Disclosure Notice. The deduction is tied to what those repairs actually cost to complete, not a guess.

If you want a number on the house, we can put a written cash offer in front of you after we see the property, in Dallas and the surrounding suburbs alike. If repairs piled up because you're behind on payments too, that gets factored into the offer the same way.