Who pays for the survey in a Texas real estate transaction?

Who pays for the survey is negotiated in the contract, not set by Texas law. The TREC contract has a paragraph where the parties choose. Custom in much of Texas is that the seller furnishes an existing survey with a T-47 affidavit, and the buyer pays for a new one if the existing survey is not acceptable.

It is a contract term, not a rule

No Texas statute assigns the survey cost to either party. Anyone who tells you "the seller always pays for the survey in Texas" is describing a local habit, not the law.

It lives in Paragraph 6C of the One to Four Family Residential Contract (Resale), TREC form 20-19. The paragraph opens by requiring that "the survey must be made by a registered professional land surveyor acceptable to the Title Company and Buyer's lender(s)," and then gives three options under the printed instruction "Check one box only" (TREC form 20-19, ¶6C).

One box. Not two, not zero. A contract that arrives with ¶6C blank, or with two boxes marked, has a defect in it — and it is the kind that surfaces three weeks later when the title company asks whose survey it is waiting on. This is negotiable in the offer, negotiable in a counter, and changeable afterward on the Amendment to Contract, form 39-11 (TREC contract forms).

The three boxes, and what each one commits you to

Box (1): seller furnishes the existing survey plus a T-47

The common one. The seller delivers, within a stated number of days, the survey they already have along with a T-47 Affidavit or T-47.1 Declaration — the contract names both forms by name (TREC form 20-19, ¶6C(1)). The T-47 is notarized; the T-47.1 is signed but not notarized. Both are effective November 1, 2024 (TDI T-47, TDI T-47.1).

Box (1) then splits into two separate failure branches, and they are not paid for the same way. This is the part nobody reads until it matters.

Branch A — the seller fails to furnish them. If the seller does not deliver both the existing survey and the affidavit or declaration within the time required, "Buyer shall obtain a new survey at Seller's expense no later than 3 days prior to Closing Date."

Note the word both. A seller who sends the survey but never signs the T-47 has failed the paragraph and is buying a new survey. There is no checkbox on this branch and nothing left to negotiate — the contract already allocated it.

Branch B — the title company or lender will not accept what was furnished. Different outcome entirely: "If the Title Company or Buyer's lender does not accept the existing survey, or the affidavit or declaration, Buyer shall obtain a new survey at [ ] Seller's [ ] Buyer's expense no later than 3 days prior to Closing Date."

That is a second checkbox, nested inside box (1), and it decides who pays when the seller did everything right but the survey was simply too old or too incomplete for the title company. It is easy to leave blank because it looks like fine print. It is the most commonly overlooked election in the paragraph, and on a rural tract it is worth real money.

So: seller's fault, seller pays. Nobody's fault, whichever box you checked.

Box (2): buyer obtains a new survey at buyer's expense

The buyer orders and pays for a new survey within a stated number of days. Chosen when the seller has no survey, when the existing one is hopeless, or when the buyer wants current boundaries regardless.

It carries a trap the contract states outright: "If Buyer fails to obtain the survey, Buyer may not terminate the contract under Paragraph 2B of the Third Party Financing Addendum because the survey was not obtained" (TREC form 20-19, ¶6C(2)).

Read that twice. A buyer who checks box (2), forgets to order the survey, and then has the lender decline the loan for lack of one has forfeited the financing termination right — because the reason the loan died is the buyer's own failure. That buyer is now in a contract with no financing exit and earnest money exposed under ¶15. Electing box (2) means owning a deadline, and it belongs on a calendar the day the contract is executed.

Box (3): seller furnishes a new survey at seller's expense

The seller orders and pays for a new survey within a stated number of days. Less common, but a seller on a rural tract may do this before listing precisely so the question never delays a contract.

The other survey checkbox: ¶6A(8)

The one most buyers never notice, and it decides whether the title policy actually covers boundary problems.

Paragraph 6A(8) governs the standard printed exception "as to discrepancies, conflicts, shortages in area or boundary lines, encroachments or protrusions, or overlapping improvements." The election: "(i) will not be amended or deleted from the title policy; or (ii) will be amended to read, 'shortages in area' at the expense of [ ] Buyer [ ] Seller" (TREC form 20-19, ¶6A(8)).

Option (i) means the policy excludes every one of those matters. A fence three feet over the line, a neighbor's driveway crossing a corner, a shed built past the setback — none of it is covered.

Option (ii) narrows the exception down to "shortages in area" alone, so encroachments, conflicts, protrusions and overlapping improvements become covered instead of excluded. That is what an acceptable survey plus the T-47 makes possible, and it is the entire point of the exercise.

A buyer who "saved money" by leaving ¶6A(8) on option (i) did not save anything. They absorbed the risk and bought a policy that excludes the thing a survey exists to find.

Texas title insurance premiums are promulgated by the Texas Department of Insurance, so the rate for a given policy amount is the same at every title company in the state; the current schedule is "Texas Title Insurance Premium Rates, Rates Effective March 1, 2026" (TDI). Ask the title company handling your file what amending the survey exception costs.

Whatever the survey shows, the objection clock is already running

Under ¶6D the buyer must object in writing to defects, exceptions or encumbrances disclosed on the survey by the earlier of the closing date or a stated number of days after receiving the commitment, exception documents and the survey. "Failure to object within the time allowed will constitute a waiver of Buyer's right to object," except that the requirements in Schedule C of the commitment are not waived (TREC form 20-19, ¶6D).

If the buyer does object in time and the seller does not cure within the 15-day cure period, the buyer has 5 days after the end of that period to terminate with the earnest money refunded, or waive. Silence is a waiver.

A survey that finally arrives two days before closing, on a contract where the objection deadline has already run, is a survey the buyer can look at and not much else. That is the real argument for choosing a survey option with a short deadline rather than one that lets the document land at the end.

What a new survey costs

Survey pricing is set by the individual surveyor and varies with acreage, terrain, how well the existing corners are marked, and how much record research the tract requires. A quarter-acre lot in a platted subdivision and a twenty-acre tract with a creek and an old fence line are not comparable jobs. Get a quote from a licensed Texas surveyor for the specific property.

Where this matters most: acreage and the Hill Country

On a subdivision lot inside a city, the survey question is usually routine. On acreage in Kendall County and the rest of the Hill Country, it is where deals actually get complicated.

The recurring issues:

Fence lines that never matched deed lines. A fence built for convenience decades ago, now treated by everyone as the boundary.
Shared drives and access easements. Whether the easement is recorded, and whether it covers what people assume it covers.
Well and septic locations. Setbacks from property lines and from each other matter, and the survey is where you see them.
Informal splits. A parent tract divided among family without a new plat, leaving a legal description that does not match what is on the ground.
Old surveys. A twenty-year-old survey on a rural tract is more likely to be genuinely out of date than a twenty-year-old survey on a city lot.

Boerne is in Kendall County, not Bexar County and not the City of San Antonio, so platting and subdivision requirements are Kendall County's and the City of Boerne's, not San Antonio's. Property inside Boerne's extraterritorial jurisdiction can be subject to city subdivision rules even though it is outside the city limits. The City of Boerne Planning Department is the right place to confirm what applies to a specific tract.

The practical negotiation

The survey question is a legitimate lever in an offer, and buyers routinely leave it unused.

A buyer with a strong offer can check box (3) and ask the seller to furnish a new survey. A buyer competing against other offers can take the survey cost off the seller's plate as a concession that costs less than a price reduction. A seller with a clean recent survey and a signed T-47 ready to go has removed a source of friction from every offer they will receive, which is worth something on a rural listing.

Three elections decide the whole question and all three are easy to skip: which ¶6C box, the Seller/Buyer expense box inside ¶6C(1) Branch B, and the ¶6A(8) survey-exception amendment. None of it is automatic. It is whatever gets written into the contract.

Questions about a specific property?

Call or text 830-446-3847 · Email heath.shepard@kw.com

This page explains how the survey cost is allocated under the TREC contract. It is not legal advice. Boundaries are determined by a licensed Texas surveyor, and title or easement questions belong with a Texas real estate attorney.