What a seller-completed repair is, and why the money is often better
Repairs completed by the seller means the seller correcting the defect at the seller's expense before closing. It is the default instrument, the baseline every other one is measured against, and the one that most often disappoints — for a structural reason rather than a moral one. The buyer agrees to an outcome. The seller chooses who performs the work, how quickly, and to what standard.
Which makes the most useful sentence on this page the uncomfortable one. A buyer who cares how the work is done should usually take the money instead and hire the contractor themselves, because a seller completing repairs in the last two weeks before closing is buying the cheapest result that satisfies the contract language and will not live with it afterwards. A credit or a price reduction converts the seller's incentive problem into the buyer's choice of contractor. It is not a universal answer, and the last section sets out four cases where seller repairs win anyway. But the default should run the opposite way from the way it usually runs.
The contract sets the standard, not the amendment
Who says the work has to be done properly? In Texas the answer is the purchase contract rather than the repair amendment. The promulgated One to Four Family Residential Contract (Resale), TREC No. 20-19, carries the standard at Paragraph 7F, "Completion of Repairs and Treatments," and it is unusually prescriptive. Unless the parties agree otherwise in writing, the seller must complete all agreed repairs and treatments before the closing date and obtain any required permits, and:
- the work "must be performed by persons who are licensed to provide such repairs or treatments or, if no license is required by law, are commercially engaged in the trade of providing such repairs or treatments";
- the seller must "provide Buyer with copies of documentation from the repair person(s) showing the scope of work and payment for the work completed";
- the seller must, at the seller's expense, "arrange for the transfer of any transferable warranties with respect to the repairs and treatments to Buyer at closing";
- and if the seller fails to complete the agreed work before the closing date, the buyer "may exercise remedies under Paragraph 15 or extend the Closing Date up to 5 days."
Four protections and a remedy in one paragraph: a competence requirement, a permit requirement, an evidence requirement, and a warranty that follows the house rather than the person who bought it. Repairs and treatments is the contract's own phrase, and it is broader than repairs alone — a termite treatment is a treatment rather than a repair, and 7F governs both.
The repair amendment restates none of this. TREC No. 39-11 lists the agreed repairs in its second box and carries an express notice that "Paragraph 7 of the contract governs the completion, delivery of documentation, and transfer of warranties of repairs and treatments." The amendment creates the obligation; the contract supplies the standard. Two cautions. This is Texas, and other states' forms are considerably thinner here, so a reader elsewhere should treat Paragraph 7F as a checklist of what to ask for rather than a description of what they have. And form numbers move: TREC No. 20-19 is dated 05-04-2026 and replaces 20-18.
An As Is clause does not bar a repair request
This is the most common misunderstanding in the subject, and on the Texas form it is simply wrong. Paragraph 7D defines the term, then says what it does not do:
"'As Is' means the present condition of the Property with any and all defects and without warranty except for the warranties of title and the warranties in this contract. Buyer's agreement to accept the Property As Is under Paragraph 7D(1) or (2) does not preclude Buyer from inspecting the Property under Paragraph 7A, from negotiating repairs or treatments in a subsequent amendment, or from terminating this contract during the Option Period, if any."
Three rights survive an As Is clause expressly: the inspection, the negotiation, and the exit. What the clause removes is the warranty — the seller is not promising the condition of anything, so a buyer cannot later argue the house was not as represented. It does not remove the buyer's leverage, because the leverage was never a warranty. It was the right to walk away, which the clause expressly leaves alone.
The form also builds the combined version in. Paragraph 7D(2) is an As Is acceptance "provided Seller, at Seller's expense, shall complete the following specific repairs and treatments," followed by the most practical line on the page, a parenthetical instruction to whoever fills the form in: "(Do not insert general phrases, such as 'subject to inspections' that do not identify specific repairs and treatments.)"
That instruction is in the promulgated form itself, not in a brokerage training manual, and it is the reason a demand that the seller address "all items noted in the inspection report" does not work in Texas practice. A repair obligation has to name the repair. A reader with a long list should expect to choose from it; a vague list is unenforceable even if the seller signs it.
Access, utilities and the test the seller has to authorize
A seller agreeing to repairs also carries the obligations that let a buyer verify them. Paragraph 7A requires the seller to "permit Buyer and Buyer's agents access to the Property at reasonable times," allows inspection "by inspectors selected by Buyer and licensed by TREC or otherwise permitted by law," and requires that the seller "at Seller's expense shall immediately cause existing utilities to be turned on and shall keep the utilities on during the time this contract is in effect."
Both halves do work after an inspection. Access is what makes a re-inspection of completed work possible at all; utilities kept on is what makes it meaningful, because a system that cannot be run cannot be tested.
One carve-out catches Texas buyers in particular: "any hydrostatic testing must be separately authorized by Seller in writing." Hydrostatic testing of the drain lines is among the most common further-evaluation recommendations a Texas report produces, and the one piece of follow-up a buyer cannot order alone. If the report calls for it, request that written authorization in the same breath as the repair, and before the option period runs out.
Repairs the lender requires are a different category
Nobody is required to make a repair for the buyer's benefit. Some repairs have to happen for the loan to close at all, and that is a different and stronger lever.
FHA states the test plainly in the rules governing its repair completion escrow: a post-closing escrow is available only where the house is "habitable and safe for occupancy at the time of loan closing." Conditions failing that test cannot be deferred into an escrow and cannot be bought off with a credit. They are corrected before closing or the loan does not fund. The source is the FHA Handbook 4000.1, last revised in this part in 2019 and under modernization.
The Texas contract then handles the money for that category separately, at Paragraph 7E:
"Unless otherwise agreed in writing, neither party is obligated to pay for lender required repairs, which includes treatment for wood destroying insects. If the parties do not agree to pay for the lender required repairs or treatments, this contract will terminate and the earnest money will be refunded to Buyer. If the cost of lender required repairs and treatments exceeds 5% of the Sales Price, Buyer may terminate this contract and the earnest money will be refunded to Buyer."
That is not the inspection contingency, and readers conflate the two constantly. It is a separate exit operating on repairs the lender demands, it usually matters after the option period has run out, and it works in two stages: if nobody agrees to pay, the contract terminates by its own terms with the earnest money refunded, and above five percent of the sales price the buyer may terminate unilaterally. A Texas buyer who believes their exits closed with the option period has not read Paragraph 7E.
What recourse looks like when the work is bad
Thinner than buyers expect, which is the strongest argument for the money.
The enforceable parts are the ones Paragraph 7F names. The seller has to hand over documentation from the repair person showing the scope of the work and payment for it, which is how a buyer finds out that a licensed trade did not perform the repair. The seller has to transfer any transferable warranty, which gives the buyer a claim against the contractor rather than against a seller who has moved away. And if the work is not complete by the closing date, the buyer may pursue remedies under Paragraph 15 or extend closing by up to five days — a window measured in days rather than weeks, and the reason a repair agreed late is usually a repair agreed badly.
What the contract provides no mechanism for is work that was completed and completed poorly. Once closing happens the repair agreement is largely spent and the buyer is on the ground covered by post-closing discovery instead. The defenses are therefore all pre-closing: name the repair specifically rather than by reference to the report, require the documentation before the final walkthrough rather than at it, and treat the five-day extension as a tool rather than an embarrassment.
What no honest page can supply is a frequency. Nothing published measures how often seller-completed repairs are done badly, re-done, or found inadequate at the walkthrough, so any failure rate offered for this is invented. The mechanics are published in full in TREC No. 20-19 and TREC No. 39-11.
When seller repairs are the right instrument anyway
Four cases, and none of them is rare.
- The lender or the appraiser requires the work. A credit does not satisfy a condition of the appraisal, and FHA's habitability test cannot be met with money. Either the seller completes the repair or the file needs an escrow holdback the lender agrees to administer.
- A permit is required. Paragraph 7F puts the obligation to obtain required permits on the seller, who is the record owner. A buyer cannot pull a permit on a house they do not own yet.
- The buyer will have no money afterwards. A reader stretched to the down payment who takes a credit and intends to do the repair later frequently does not. Taking the work rather than the cash is a form of forced saving, and a legitimate reason to choose it.
- The repair is a commodity. Where the work is standardized and the result verifiable — a water heater replaced, a panel corrected by a licensed electrician, a treatment applied with a transferable warranty — the incentive to go cheap has little room to express itself, and the licensing and documentation requirements do the rest.
Outside those four, the question is the one the contract already answers: who chooses the contractor, and who lives in the house afterwards. When those are different people, take the money.