Texas is about to rewrite what a home inspector has to look at

The Texas Real Estate Commission votes Monday on a rewrite of the rules that tell a licensed home inspector what to check in a house — including, for the first time, a written standard for running a camera down the sewer line.

The proposed package would make an inspector walk the roof rather than look at it from the ground, so long as that is safe and does not damage the covering. It would require reporting a missing carbon monoxide alarm in any bedroom that holds a fuel-burning appliance, and any equipment service receptacle within 25 feet of the equipment it serves that lacks ground-fault shock protection. It would also require inspectors to keep finished reports for four years — the same window the agency has to investigate a complaint about one.

The sewer camera is the largest addition. Inspectors are not obliged to offer the service, but if they agree to it, the rule tells them to run the camera from the cleanout to the city connection or the septic tank, and to flag blockages, cracks, root intrusion, sagging pipe, bad slope, leaks and separated joints. They would not have to work from a roof vent, go past 100 feet, or push through an obstruction that could damage their equipment. The agency wrote that it wanted clearer guidance for inspectors and clearer results for consumers. The inspector committee recommended the changes, and the comment period closed June 21.

The rest of the list is lighter. Commissioners take up a change that swaps two broker seats on the broker responsibility advisory committee for public members, four education-rule cleanups tied to the agency’s new licensing portal, a draft budget for the year starting in September, three internal-audit items and a report on three denied claims against the fund that repays people cheated by an agent.

One contested case is on the agenda. Commissioners are set to act on an administrative law judge’s proposal for decision in a case the agency’s enforcement staff brought against a licensed broker, Arthur Atick Pongtaratik. That proposal sits inside a 145-page meeting packet this preview could not open, so what it recommends, and what it rests on, are not described here. No findings have been made against the license, and the agency’s public list of disciplinary actions shows none. The commission’s next meeting is a workshop in Austin on November 9.

Meeting at a glance

Commission members

• Mark Woodroof, Houston — chair; broker member. Term to 2027.
• Chance Brown, Cypress — vice chair; broker member. Term to 2029.
• Kristi L. Davis, Carrollton — secretary; broker member. Term to 2031.
• Leslie Lerner, Houston — broker member. Term to 2027.
• Renee Harvey Lowe, Clarksville — broker member. Term to 2029.
• J.B. Goodwin, Austin — broker member. Term to 2031.
• Benjamin Peña, Bayview — public member. Term to 2027.
• Stuart Bernstein, Austin — public member. Term to 2029.
• Scott Olguin, Horseshoe Bay — public member. Term to 2031.

Roster: cities and terms from the Governor’s appointment announcements and the commission’s own membership page. Officers are those elected at the February 9, 2026 meeting; the agency’s page was still serving a cached version naming a prior chair at drafting, so the officer line comes from the February announcement and minutes rather than the roster page. Peña’s hometown is given as Bayview by the Governor’s office and as Brownsville in an earlier commission announcement. Staff: Chelsea Buchholtz, executive director; Abby Lee, general counsel.