The $1,000-a-day TREC penalty for Texas HOAs is not law — the bill died in committee
The $1,000-a-day TREC penalty for Texas HOAs is not law — the bill died in committee
2026-09-19 · Texas · Legislation · Did not pass
What happened. Two 2025 Texas bills would have required property owners' associations to file more information with the Texas Real Estate Commission and would have backed the duty with an administrative penalty. Neither passed. Both are still being described in circulating commentary as though they had, and the penalty figure in particular has taken on a life of its own.
The bill the penalty figure comes from
House Bill 4447, by Representative Hickland, was captioned “relating to information that a property owners' association must file with the Texas Real Estate Commission; authorizing an administrative penalty.” It would have added Property Code Section 209.00405, requiring associations to file their rules and their Section 209.0061 enforcement policy electronically with the Commission within seven days of recording a management certificate.1
Its subsection (d) is where the number originates:
“A property owners' association that fails to file the information required under Subsection (b) is subject to an administrative penalty imposed by the commission of $1,000 for the first day of the violation and $500 for each additional day that the association fails to file the information.”
The bill's last recorded action is “Referred to Trade, Workforce & Economic Development” on 2 April 2025. It received no hearing and no further action before the session ended.2
The second bill, which got further
Senate Bill 2586, by Senator Flores, carried the same caption — information a property owners' association must file with the Texas Real Estate Commission. It passed the Senate and was received in the House, where it was referred to the same Trade, Workforce & Economic Development Committee on 8 May 2025. That referral is its last action.3 There is no enrolled version, because the bill was never enrolled.
The distinction between the two matters for anyone reconstructing what happened. SB 2586 cleared a chamber; HB 4447 never left its first committee. Both ended in the same place.
What is actually in force
Texas associations do file management certificates with the Commission, and that duty is real. Property Code Section 209.004(b-1) has required property owners' associations to file electronically within seven days of county recording since 2021, and Section 82.116(b-1), added by SB 711 in 2025, extends the same duty to condominium associations.
What neither section contains is a penalty. The consequence Texas law attaches to a missing filing is the fee-and-interest forfeiture in Section 209.004(e) — an owner “is not liable for attorney's fees incurred by a property owners' association relating to the collection of a delinquent assessment… if the attorney's fees are incurred by the association or the interest accrues during the period a management certificate is not recorded with a county clerk or electronically filed with the Texas Real Estate Commission.”4 Section 82.116(d) is the condominium equivalent.
That is a private-law consequence raised as a defence in a collection dispute. It is not a fine, no agency assesses it, and no revenue goes to the state. Neither is the filing duty limited to rules or enforcement policies: the sections reach management certificates, which is a narrower set of documents than HB 4447 contemplated.
What the Commission says about its own role
The Texas Real Estate Commission's guidance describes a database function, and the enabling statutes say so expressly: the Commission “shall only collect the management certificate and amended management certificate for the purpose of making the data accessible to the public through an Internet website.” That statutory sentence appears in both Section 209.004(b-1) and Section 82.116(b-1), and it is the reason no licensing, no registration and no enforcement apparatus sits behind the filing portal.
Why the confusion persists
Two features of the 2025 session made the error easy to make. SB 711 and SB 2586 had overlapping subject matter and adjacent bill numbers, and SB 711 — the one that passed — did in fact expand TREC filing duties. A reader who knew that something about TREC filing had become law in September 2025, and who then encountered the penalty schedule from a different bill, had no obvious signal that the two came from different places.
What to watch next
Both bills are available to be refiled. Texas pre-filing for the 90th Legislature opens in November 2026 and the session convenes in January 2027. Neither chamber has assigned an interim charge covering association law for 2026, so no committee is formally studying whether the filing regime needs an enforcement mechanism before then.
Related Texas HOA Topics
- H.B. 4447, 89th Leg., R.S. (2025) — introduced text (proposed Prop. Code § 209.00405) ↩
- H.B. 4447, 89th Leg., R.S. — bill history (last action 04/02/2025, referred to committee) ↩
- S.B. 2586, 89th Leg., R.S. — bill history (last action 05/08/2025, referred to House committee) ↩
- Tex. Prop. Code § 209.004, Management Certificates — current text, including subsection (e) ↩
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