Most people I talk to about back taxes are still ahead of the sale. A few call after it, when the house has already gone to a bidder and they want to know whether anything is left for them. There can be. Texas gives a former owner two separate things after a tax sale: a right to buy the property back, and a claim to any money the sale brought in above what was owed. The Tax Code is specific about both, and the details decide whether either one is worth anything to you. Here is what I read in Chapter 34 this week. The right of redemption in Texas, for a homestead Section 34.21(a) says the owner of property sold at a tax sale to a buyer other than a taxing unit "may redeem the property" if it was the owner's residence homestead, or land designated for agricultural use, when the tax suit w... 10/06/2026

If you are selling a Bacliff house that runs on an aerobic septic system, the buyer is going to ask about it, and the questions are more specific than most sellers expect. An aerobic septic system in Texas comes with a paper trail that a plain septic tank does not: a maintenance contract, test reports, and a tag on the equipment that shows when somebody last checked it. I wrote about septic systems in general a while back: the county file, the bedroom count, the repair nobody permitted. This post is narrower. It covers the maintenance side only, from the rule that sets it, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality's on-site sewage rule at 30 Texas Administrative Code 285.7. I read it on October 11, 2026, and the quotes below come from that reading. Why an aerobic septic system in Te... 10/11/2026