What the option period actually is
The standard Texas resale contract is a promulgated form. The current one is TREC No. 20-18, One to Four Family Residential Contract (Resale), effective 3 January 2025, adopted by rule at 22 TAC §537.28. Almost every ordinary DFW resale runs on it.
Inside it sits the termination option, and the operative language is worth reading rather than paraphrasing. In the current form family it reads:
“For nominal consideration, the receipt of which Seller acknowledges, and Buyer’s agreement to pay the Option Fee within the time required, Seller grants Buyer the unrestricted right to terminate this contract by giving notice of termination to Seller within ____ days after the Effective Date of this contract (Option Period).”
Three things in that sentence do all the work.
Unrestricted. During the option period the buyer may terminate for any reason or no reason — no defect to prove, no justification, no need to point at anything in a report. This is why the option period, not the inspection, is the mechanism that protects you.
The blank. The number of days is a blank on the form. It is negotiated between the parties, deal by deal. There is no statutory length, no default, and no standard figure this site is going to invent for you — anyone quoting a “typical” number without citing a brokerage or market-data source is guessing. What matters is not what is typical but whether the number you negotiated is long enough for the specific house you are buying.
After the Effective Date. The clock does not start when you get the keys to look around, when your agent sends the inspection request, or when you pay the option fee. It runs from the effective date of the contract. If you spend the first two days deciding which inspector to use, you have spent them.
The form also addresses how the option fee is handled and how notice of termination must be delivered. Those mechanics have changed across revisions, so read the paragraph in the contract in front of you rather than relying on any article, including this one.
It is not Paragraph 23 anymore
This is the most durable piece of stale advice in Texas real estate, and it is repeated in blog posts, agent scripts and printed handouts every day.
In older versions of the contract, the termination option was Paragraph 23. It no longer is. In the current form family it sits in Paragraph 5, “Earnest Money and Termination Option” — specifically Paragraph 5.B. The option provisions were folded in with earnest money when the form was restructured, and everything that still says “Paragraph 23” dates from before that change.
Be precise about what has been verified here, because precision is the point. The location at 5.B is confirmed against TREC form 20-15, and the structure carried forward into 20-18. Before acting on a paragraph number, do the ten-second check: find the form number and revision date in the bottom corner, then find the heading “Earnest Money and Termination Option.” The heading is stable even when numbering moves.
Why this matters beyond pedantry: a buyer told “you have until the end of Paragraph 23” who then looks at a current contract finds Paragraph 23 is about something else entirely, loses confidence in whoever told them, and sometimes concludes the protection is not there. It is there. It moved.
The general caution: when any source tells you what your contract says, check it against your contract. Promulgated forms are revised on a cycle, and the revision date printed on your page beats any article.
Paragraph 7.A: access, inspections, and utilities
The option period gives you the right to walk. Another paragraph gives you the means to find out whether you should. Paragraph 7.A, “Access, Inspections and Utilities,” provides:
“Seller shall permit Buyer and Buyer’s agents access to the Property at reasonable times. Buyer may have the Property inspected by inspectors selected by Buyer and licensed by TREC or otherwise permitted by law to make inspections.”
Two provisions with practical teeth.
You choose the inspector. The contract says inspectors selected by Buyer — not by the seller, not by the listing agent. A recommendation from your agent may be a good one, but it is a recommendation, and the choice is contractually yours.
The seller must keep the utilities on. Paragraph 7.A places that obligation on the seller, and it exists because the inspection is meaningless without it. It is also the provision most often quietly broken on a vacant house.
Utilities off is the most expensive scheduling mistake there is
Consider what an inspector cannot do at a house with the power, gas or water shut off.
- No HVAC evaluation. The system cannot be operated, so cooling and heating performance, condensate handling, the float switch and the temperature differential all go unreported. On a North Texas house in July, an unevaluated air conditioner is not a small gap.
- No water heater evaluation. Nothing about operation, recovery, venting behaviour or the relief valve arrangement can be observed on a cold, drained unit.
- No plumbing evaluation. No supply pressure, no drainage behaviour, no way to see which fixtures leak — and leaks are found by running water, not by looking at pipes.
- No electrical evaluation of any consequence. Receptacle testing, GFCI and AFCI function, and much of what a panel inspection is for all require the service to be live.
That is most of the mechanical value of the inspection, and the cost is not just the gap: it is the full fee, a lost day or more of the option period, and having to re-inspect on a clock already running.
The fix is unglamorous and it works. Confirm in writing, two days before the inspection, that electricity, gas and water are on and that gas pilots are lit. Confirm access — lockbox and gate codes, garage remote, and whether the attic hatch and electrical panel are reachable. On a vacant house, ask specifically whether utilities were transferred out of the seller’s name.
Ancillary services stack days, and that is the real constraint
The general inspection is one appointment. The findings that make you want a specialist are, by definition, discovered at the end of it — and every specialist is a separate scheduling problem with a separate lead time.
The services that most often follow a North Texas inspection:
- Sewer camera scope — on older stock with cast iron drain lines, the highest-value add-on. Cast iron failure and slab movement drive each other, so the sewer and the foundation are one question, not two.
- Static or hydrostatic plumbing test — the test that separates a leaking under-slab line from soil-driven movement, and it needs to happen before anyone prices foundation work.
- Structural engineer — where the inspection reports indicators that warrant it. This is the longest lead time of the group.
- WDI report — a separate licence and a separate appointment, whether or not your inspector also holds the termite licence.
- Pool, spa and chimney specialists where applicable.
Now put that against a clock that started at the effective date. If the general inspection happens late, you are choosing between an unresolved question and an extension you have to negotiate. If it happens on the first or second day, the specialists still fit.
So book the general inspection before you need it, and let it happen as early in the option period as access allows. Many buyers reverse this — they spend the first days comparing inspectors and waiting on the seller’s schedule, then discover on day four that they needed an engineer.
One thing not to do: ordering the full menu up front, before the general inspection has told you which services the house justifies. A sewer scope earns its fee on a 1960s cast iron house; on a recent build with PVC drain lines it is a much lower-yield test. Buying every specialist on every property is how buyers get oversold.
What buyers get wrong about the sequence
Treating the option period as a repair-negotiation window
The unrestricted right the contract grants is the right to terminate. It is not a right to demand repairs, and the seller has no obligation to agree to anything. Repair negotiations happen inside the option period because that is when your leverage exists, but the underlying right is binary. Buyers who spend the last two days waiting on a seller’s response to a repair request are betting their exit on someone else’s replies.
Thinking the inspection is the deadline
The inspection is not the deadline. The decision is the deadline, and the decision needs the report, the specialist follow-ups, and at least one conversation with the inspector about which findings actually matter. Work backwards from the last day of the option period, not forwards from the effective date.
Not being there
You do not have to attend, and a good report stands on its own. But the last half hour of an inspection, walking the house with the person who just looked at it, is the highest-value half hour in the transaction and it costs nothing. Arrive near the end rather than the beginning.
Assuming a longer option period is always better
It is not free. The period is negotiated, and in a competitive situation a shorter one is a concession sellers value. The honest calculation is not “ask for as many days as possible” but “how many days does this house need” — which depends on its age, its systems and how many specialists the answer is likely to require.
Extending on a handshake
If you need more time, the extension is a matter of agreement with the seller and it belongs in writing, executed before the original period expires. An expired unrestricted right does not come back because someone said it was fine.
A working sequence
Expressed relative to the effective date rather than in fixed days, because the length is negotiated:
- Before the effective date. Identify and provisionally book the inspector. Verify the licence. Ask which ancillary services they perform themselves and which they refer out.
- Immediately at the effective date. Confirm the inspection appointment. Confirm access. Confirm utilities in writing.
- Earliest possible day. General inspection, with you present for the last part of it.
- Same day or next. Read the report — not-inspected items first, then the deficiencies with their comments — and call the inspector to ask which three findings matter.
- Immediately after. Order only the specialists the report actually justifies, and tell each of them the date your option period ends when you book.
- Well before the last day. Decide. Terminate, proceed, or negotiate — with enough margin that a delayed reply from anyone does not decide it for you.
For a plain-language secondary explainer, the Texas Real Estate Research Center at Texas A&M publishes Option Period Basics. The form itself, with its current revision date, is on TREC’s form page — that is the version that governs, not any summary of it.
Common questions
Which paragraph is the termination option in the TREC contract?
Paragraph 5, headed Earnest Money and Termination Option — specifically Paragraph 5.B. It is not Paragraph 23, which is where it appeared in older versions of the form and where a great deal of out-of-date advice still points. The 5.B location is confirmed in TREC form 20-15 and carried forward into the current form, TREC No. 20-18, effective 3 January 2025. Check the form number and revision date printed on your own contract, and look for the paragraph heading rather than the number.
How many days is the option period in Texas?
However many the parties write into the blank. The option period is a negotiated term, not a statutory one — the contract grants the buyer the right to terminate within a stated number of days after the effective date, and that number is filled in deal by deal. Anyone quoting a standard length without citing market data is estimating. The useful question is whether your number is long enough for this house, given how many specialist follow-ups its age and construction are likely to require.
Do I have to have the inspection during the option period?
Nothing requires it, but the option period is when the inspection is worth having. During that window the contract grants an unrestricted right to terminate — no reason required, no defect to prove. Once it expires, that right expires with it, and whatever the inspection finds afterwards has to be dealt with under other provisions or not at all. Schedule the general inspection as early in the period as access allows so that specialist follow-ups still fit inside it.
What happens if the utilities are off when the inspector arrives?
Most of the mechanical inspection cannot be performed. Without power, gas and water there is no HVAC evaluation, no water heater evaluation, no meaningful plumbing evaluation and no receptacle or GFCI testing — and those items will be marked not inspected. You lose the fee, you lose option-period days, and you have to re-inspect on a clock that is already running. Paragraph 7.A obliges the seller to keep utilities on, so confirm it in writing two days before the appointment.
Can I extend the option period if the inspection finds something serious?
Only by agreement with the seller, in writing, executed before the original period expires. There is no automatic extension because a report raised a question, and the unrestricted right to terminate does not survive its own deadline. This is the practical argument for front-loading the inspection: an extension is a negotiation you may lose, whereas starting three days earlier costs nothing.