Buying Real Estate is Complicated – OR – It is hard being an adult

Greater Houston homeowners are shocked about flooding. There was a warning about flooding on the official plat, which is the very definition of being in the public record. The plat IS the official public record. Or at least part of the public record. Texas homeowners: We weren’t warned about flooding risk

The official plat that covers some of the subdivisions in the greater Houston area, contains a notation indicating that there is a risk of flooding.

They say they didn’t know about a warning added more than 20 years ago to an obscure land record known as a plat. The warning says subdivisions near the Barker Reservoir could be subject to “controlled inundation.”

Every real estate contract I have ever signed includes a clause stating that I accept everything in the public record. That sort of implies that I know what the public record says.

If you rely on what your real estate agent tells you, then you are playing a game of telephone that goes back years. What the previous owner was told by their agent, who got the information from another agent who sort of remembers what the previous owner said 15 years ago.

Before I bought the house I currently live in, I went to the office of the County Recorder. I spent about an hour, with the help of a very nice clerk who worked there, going back though the records to see if there were any covenants and restrictions on the property. And the only way to do that is to look through the record.

It isn’t as easy as doing a web search. You need to find the page in the record that shows that most recent entry for the property. (That you can find via a web search usually). That page will direct you the previous page, usually when the property was last sold, but in any event when the deed was last changed. Rinse and repeat.

For this property we went all the back to when this area was mapped by the US Army, which was sometime before the Civil War. (I really did not want to buy a property encumbered by Covenants and Restrictions.) And I look at all of the Plats current and historical plats as well. Because I was going to sign a contract accepting all that was in those documents. Finding stuff out after the fact is not good.

Fort Bend County’s top elected official says homeowners have a right to be upset, but information about the flooding risk around the Barker Reservoir was available if they had done research.

Now homeowners are screaming that it’s not their fault.