Buying · Fort Worth & Tarrant County
Buying a home in Fort Worth
The agent on the sign works for the seller. You get your own — someone who reads the contract with you, uses every day of your option period, and watches the deadlines so you don’t have to.
Or call or text (817) 631-9803
What you’re looking at
A kitchen you like, and one you don’t.
What your agent is looking at
What it sold for last time, what the disclosure left out, and how many days you have to find out.
What you get
Five things a Fort Worth buyer’s agent does for you
Here is the job, and what each part of it is worth to you.
An agent who works only for you
A listing agent works for the seller, so the person who answers the sign in the yard is not your person. Before an agent in Texas can show you a home, you and they now put in writing what they will do and what they are paid, and the agreement has to say, in plain language, that broker compensation is not set by law and is fully negotiable. That sentence is in the agreement because the law requires it.
The termination option
Help using your option period before it runs out
Texas gives a buyer something unusual: a window, bought outright, in which you can walk away for any reason at all and get your earnest money back. It is the most useful thing in the contract, and the easiest one to let run out. Two details trip people up. The deadline is 5:00 p.m. local time on the last day, not midnight. And the option fee goes to the escrow agent within 3 days — not to the seller, which is how it worked until 2021 and how it is still widely described. Your agent's job is to have the inspection, the questions and the decision inside that window, not racing it.
5:00 p.m. local time
Not midnight, on the last day
3 days
To get the fee to the escrow agent
Any reason
Is a valid reason to back out
TREC No. 20-19 · ¶ 5B
TREC No. 20-19 · ¶ 5B
A price on renovation work before your option period ends
The standard advice is to price the work before your option period ends. It is good advice that is hard to act on, because a contractor with a full schedule is not walking a house you do not own yet on a few days’ notice. Ours work in this building. If you are weighing a house that needs something — a wall moved, a kitchen redone, a second bathroom — your agent can get our designers and builders to put a number on it while you can still change your mind. Your agent never touches the work itself. Our builders put the number on paper; the call is yours.
Someone who tells you what the disclosure does not cover
Texas makes a seller write down what they know is wrong with the house. It is genuinely useful and it has gaps you should know about: it is only what the seller knows, and some sellers do not have to give you one at all — a house that has never been lived in and a foreclosure are both exempt. If it arrives late, after you are already under contract, you get 7 days from receiving it to terminate for any reason. That right is rarely mentioned.
TREC No. 40-11
A way out if your financing falls through
Two different things can go wrong late, and they are protected by two different paragraphs with two different deadlines. If your own approval falls through, that is one clause. If the lender decides the house itself does not satisfy its requirements, which is how a low appraisal usually affects you, that is another, and it runs on or before the 3rd day before the closing date. Neither is automatic. Each needs a notice of termination and the lender's written statement of the reasons, filed in time. Your agent should be tracking those deadlines for you.
Your own approval falls through
Terminate in time and the earnest money comes back to you. It takes a notice of termination and the lender's written statement of the reasons.
A deadline counted from the effective date
TREC No. 40-11 · ¶ 2A
The lender says no to the house
Terminate in time and the earnest money comes back to you. It takes a notice of termination and the lender's written statement of the reasons.
on or before the 3rd day before the closing date
TREC No. 40-11 · ¶ 2B
Who you’re hiring
You work directly with a full-time agent.
You get an agent who represents buyers and sellers full time, working out of our Fort Worth and Mansfield offices and across Tarrant and Parker County. Our owners aren’t agents and our broker doesn’t take clients, so the agent who takes your call isn’t competing with anyone above them for your business.
And because our designers, drafters and builders work here too, your agent can get you a price on changing a house while you can still change your mind.
Where our agents work
Tanglewood · Mira Vista · Ridglea Hills · TCU & Westcliff · Arlington Heights · Overton Park · Crestline · Monticello · Park Hill · Aledo
Also Benbrook, Keller, North Richland Hills, Hurst, Euless, Bedford, Haltom City, White Settlement, Saginaw, Crowley, Burleson, Kennedale, Willow Park, Hudson Oaks, Mansfield, and most blocks in between.
Recognition
Top Agents & Producers, five years running.
Three magazines name that list every year, and our agents have been on it: Fort Worth Magazine, Real Producers & 360 West. The Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce named the brokerage Small Business of the Year.
4.7 stars
Across 91 Google reviews
Read off our Google Business Profile, September 2026
Before you sign
Questions Fort Worth home buyers ask before they sign
Do I have to sign something before an agent can show me a house in Texas?
Yes, and this is new. Since January 1, 2026, Texas Occupations Code § 1101.563 requires a written agreement between you and a license holder before they show you a residential property. It started as a national industry rule in 2024. In Texas it is now also state law. The agreement has to state the services, the termination date, and whether it is exclusive or non-exclusive, and whether the agent represents you as your agent, or expressly does not, and the amount or rate of compensation and how it is determined.
Can I look at one house without hiring anybody?
There is a narrow version for exactly that. Texas Occupations Code §§ 1101.562, 1101.563(e) allows a showing agreement with no representation attached — but the law caps it: it cannot be exclusive, and it cannot run longer than 14 days. An agent working under one is limited in what they can tell you, because they are not representing you.
Is what my agent gets paid negotiable?
It is, and the law requires your agreement to say so conspicuously: broker compensation is not set by law and is fully negotiable. What changed in 2024 is where it gets settled. Your obligation to your own broker is set in your agreement with them. A seller can still contribute toward it, and that contribution is written into the purchase contract at TREC No. 20-19 ¶ 12B — but the contract says in its own words that the contribution does not change what the two sides already agreed to pay their brokers. So "the seller pays the buyer's agent" is no longer accurate. Ask what the number is, and ask early.
When does the option period actually start?
At the effective date of the contract — the day it is fully executed — not the day you agreed on a price, not the day you wrote the offer, and not the day the fee clears. Buyers who count from the wrong day lose days they paid for. The deadline is 5:00 p.m. local time on the last day, and under TREC No. 20-19 ¶ 5A the fee has to reach the escrow agent within 3 days. Miss that and ¶ 5D says the unrestricted right to terminate does not exist at all.
Do I get my earnest money back if I terminate during the option period?
Yes. If you give notice inside the option period, the earnest money is refunded to you. The option fee itself is a different thing: it is not refunded, because it is what you paid for the right to change your mind. If you go through with the purchase instead, the option fee is credited to the sales price at closing.
What are my options if the appraisal comes in under the price?
The contract itself has no appraisal contingency, which surprises people. The protection sits in the financing addendum and it is triggered by your lender's decision rather than by the number: if the lender determines the property does not satisfy its underwriting requirements, you can terminate on or before the 3rd day before the closing date and your earnest money is refunded. There is also a separate promulgated form for it, TREC No. 49-1, and it can help or hurt you. One box adds a right to terminate if the appraisal lands under a figure you name. Another box waives your ¶ 2B right altogether — and in a competitive offer that is the box you may be asked to check. Read which one is ticked before you sign. Short of all that, the choices are the ordinary ones: cover the difference, renegotiate, or walk under a clause you still have. A seller is never obliged to drop to the appraised value.
The deadline people miss
5:00 p.m. local time on the last day. Not midnight.
Three things above get a page of their own, if you want the document rather than the summary: what a Texas buyer representation agreement actually says, when a Texas option period actually ends, and who decides whether a low appraisal lets you back out.
And if you already know the neighborhood you want, our neighborhood guides cover what a search filter can’t: Tanglewood — including the elementary-school zone that split in 2020 — or Mira Vista, which sits in two school districts and reviews your exterior plans before the city does.
Sources for the Texas contract and statute detail on this page, verified September 2026: TREC One to Four Family Residential Contract (Resale), No. 20-19 · TREC Third Party Financing Addendum, No. 40-11 · TREC Addendum Concerning Right to Terminate Due to Lender’s Appraisal, No. 49-1 · Texas Occupations Code Chapter 1101 · Texas Property Code § 5.008. Paragraph numbers move between form revisions, so each one is cited with its form above. We’re real estate agents, not attorneys — for advice about your own contract, TREC No. 20-19 says it plainly in its own last paragraph: consult one.
Start your search
Let’s go find your house.
No address to hand over and nothing to commit to. Tell us roughly what you’re after and an agent will come back to you with the neighborhoods worth touring.
Rather talk? Call or text (817) 631-9803
Got it.
An agent will reach out, and they will walk you through the agreement itself — what it commits you to, what’s negotiable in it, and what happens next.
Can’t wait? Call or text (817) 631-9803