If your San Antonio home has had foundation work done, or you suspect it needs some before you list, two things changed this year that matter more than the crack running along your hallway baseboard. The Texas Real Estate Commission's Seller's Disclosure Notice moved to a new version, Form 55-1, effective May 28, 2026. At the same time, the market you're selling into now gives buyers far more room to walk away than it did in 2021 or 2022. Put those two facts together and a paperwork shortcut that would have been quietly absorbed three years ago can cost you the entire deal today.
Most guides to this topic treat San Antonio as one city with one soil problem. It isn't. The Balcones Escarpment runs straight through town, and it splits how foundations behave depending on which side of that line your slab sits.
The Line That Decides What Your Inspector Will Find
North of the escarpment, in Stone Oak, Shavano Park, and along the 1604 corridor, homes sit on shallow limestone that mostly holds still. When a north-side slab does settle, the cause is usually something local and fixable: a clay pocket under one corner, an old utility trench, fill dirt around a pool deck. The repair scope tends to be small.
South and east of downtown, the ground turns to deep Houston Black clay, one of the more expansive soil types in the state. Whole slab edges rise and fall with the rain gauge here, and repairs run longer because more of the foundation is moving, not just one corner. In between those two zones sit transition areas where two houses on the same block can shift at completely different rates, because the soil underneath them isn't the same soil.
Older neighborhoods add a third variable. Pre-1960 homes around Monte Vista and Beacon Hill were often built pier-and-beam rather than slab, and when they need leveling, the fix is frequently a beam-and-block adjustment rather than a full ring of steel piers, a cheaper and less invasive repair than what a slab home in the same price range might need. The 1950s slab stock around Jefferson carries its own decades of settling. Meanwhile the newer subdivisions pushing northeast toward Windcrest, Live Oak, and Converse are still finding their seams as 1970s and 80s construction ages into the clay cycle.
None of this shows up on a listing sheet. It shows up in the inspection report, and increasingly, it shows up in what the disclosure form now legally requires you to prove.
What Actually Changed On the Form
Texas has required a Seller's Disclosure Notice since long before this year, under Section 5.008 of the Texas Property Code. The free version most for-sale-by-owner sellers use is the TREC OP-H form. Most agent-represented deals use the more detailed TXR-1406 instead, because buyer's agents typically ask for it if a seller only hands over the bare minimum.
What's newer is Paragraph 7F of the standard resale contract, which now requires that if repair work is negotiated, the seller provide the buyer with copies of documentation from the repair company showing both the scope of work and payment for it, and transfer any transferable warranty at closing, at the seller's own expense. That last clause is the one people miss. A "lifetime" foundation warranty is usually tied to whoever paid for the original contract. Without the formal transfer paperwork, it can lapse the moment ownership changes, whether or not anyone remembers to mention it.
Here's the part that catches sellers off guard: checking "as-is" on the contract does not get you out of any of this.
The as-is box tells a buyer you won't make repairs. It says nothing about whether you told them what's wrong. Those are two separate obligations, and Texas courts treat them that way.
If you had piers installed in 2019 and you disclose it vaguely, the buyer's inspector is going to find the evidence anyway, in the form of patched slab sections or a suspiciously level floor next to visible pier caps. Disclosing first, with the engineering report and the contractor's name attached, reads as transparency. Getting caught vague after the fact reads as concealment, and that's the difference between a negotiated credit and a Deceptive Trade Practices Act claim.
Why This Costs More Now Than It Did Two Years Ago
Estimates for San Antonio's 2026 median sale price vary by source and by month, ranging from the mid-$260,000s to the low $300,000s, but the underlying trend is consistent across all of them: appreciation has flattened and inventory has grown. Over the three months ending in August 2026, homes here averaged 58 days on market, and new listings surged through the spring, giving buyers more homes to choose from and more time to choose carefully.
That matters for a very specific reason. During the option period, a Texas buyer can terminate a contract for any reason at all, including something they learned from your disclosure. In a market where multiple offers arrive within days, a buyer who spots a vague foundation answer might shrug and move forward anyway, because they don't want to lose the house. In a market where they have three other listings to tour next weekend, that same vague answer is an easy reason to walk, and take their earnest money concerns with them.
A late or amended disclosure carries its own risk on top of that. If you deliver it after the contract is signed instead of during the option period, the buyer can get a fresh window to terminate based on what they just read, no matter how far along the deal already is. In a slower market, sellers can't count on buyer urgency to paper over a rushed disclosure the way they could three years ago.
What This Looks Like If You're Getting Ready to List
Foundation repair itself isn't rare here. Local contractors and cash-buyer services regularly cite something close to one in five San Antonio homes having foundation issues at some point, tied directly to the region's clay content. That number isn't tracked by any county office, so treat it as a widely repeated local estimate rather than a hard count, but it lines up with how often the topic comes up in this market. Repair costs run from around $1,500 for minor leveling work up to $40,000 or more for a full pier job on a slab with real, ongoing movement.
Before you sign a listing agreement, a few things are worth having in hand:
- Every invoice, engineering report, and warranty document tied to any foundation, drainage, or slab work, even if it happened under a previous owner and was disclosed to you when you bought the home.
- Written confirmation from the original repair company that the warranty is transferable and currently in good standing, sometimes called a warranty status letter, requested before you list rather than after a buyer asks for it during option period.
- An honest read on which side of the escarpment you're on, because it changes what a buyer's inspector or structural engineer is likely to flag and how much negotiating room to expect on repair credits.
- A completed disclosure form filled out with specific names, dates, and dollar amounts rather than general language like "some work was done."
None of this requires you to fix a foundation you'd rather sell as-is. It requires you to be specific about what you know, on the current version of the form, before a buyer's inspector finds it for you.
A Quick Note on Financing
Buyers using FHA or VA financing generally can't close on a home with unresolved foundation issues, which narrows your buyer pool if repairs are still outstanding at listing. Conventional buyers have more flexibility, particularly with a larger down payment, but most lenders still want documentation that any prior movement has been professionally addressed. Disclosing the repair with paperwork in hand tends to keep more of that buyer pool available than either silence or vague language does.
San Antonio's soil isn't going to stop moving, and the disclosure form isn't going to get simpler from here. What you can control is showing up with the paperwork already assembled, in a market where buyers have the time to notice if you don't.
If you're weighing whether to disclose, repair, or price around foundation history on a San Antonio listing, Marti Realty Group can walk through your specific documentation and pricing options. Get a free quote and see how much you can save.
