The Texas Real Estate Commission will meet Nov. 9 in Austin and vote on reviving a rewrite of the state’s home inspection standards that it walked away from in August.
The rewrite would be the first substantial change in years to what a Texas home inspector must look at and report. Across eight sections of the inspector standards of practice it would tell inspectors to walk a roof when it is safe to do so, to report a missing carbon monoxide alarm in any bedroom with a fuel-burning appliance, and to keep finished reports for four years — the same window in which the commission can still investigate a complaint about one. It would also write the state’s first guidance on sewer line inspections by camera, a service buyers increasingly pay for and that no rule now covers.
The commission proposed all of this in May, took public comment, and then on Aug. 10 voted unanimously not to adopt it. Staff pulled the package out of the Texas Register the next day. Neither the withdrawal notice nor the minutes of that meeting gave a reason. What happened next is on the record: the commission’s inspector committee spent the fall reworking the draft around recommendations from the Texas Regulatory Efficiency Office, the governor’s deregulation shop, and sent a new version back on Oct. 19. Proposing it again would restart the clock and reopen a 30-day comment period.
The rest of the morning is housekeeping with one oddity in it. Members will close a four-year review of the chapter the inspection rules sit in, even as they reopen rulemaking inside that same chapter. They will also take up changes to the rule governing providers of pre-licensing courses, which they amended three months ago; the agreement setting how the commission shares staff and costs with the state appraiser board attached to it; the annual report from Texas A&M’s real estate research center; and nominations for vice chair and secretary, a November ritual that ends in a February election.
A workshop will follow at noon, and the commissioners set its agenda themselves back in August. Chair Mark Woodroof asked for a discussion of the audit of REALM, the agency’s licensing portal; Commissioner Chance Brown asked for a preview of the legislative session that convenes in January. Neither item is noticed for a vote.
Meeting at a glance
- When
- 10:00 AM, Monday, November 9, 2026. TRD 2026006483 was filed October 30 at 4:10 p.m. A separate workshop, TRD 2026006485, follows at noon or on adjournment, whichever is later.
- Where
- Stephen F. Austin Building, 1700 N. Congress Ave., Room 170, Austin. The workshop is in Room 400a.
- Governing body & chair
- Texas Real Estate Commission — nine governor-appointed members serving six-year terms, six licensed brokers and three public members. Mark Woodroof, chair. Chelsea Buchholtz is executive director.
- Format
- In person, 25 numbered items. Public comment is item 14; speakers file a request form with the agency’s designated agent. One closed session is noticed for legal advice.
- Live video
- The notice carries no stream link. Past commission meetings have been carried on AdminMonitor.
- Full agenda
- Secretary of State Open Meeting Viewer · commission meeting page
Commission members
- Mark Woodroof — chair; Houston; broker member.
- Chance Brown — vice chair; Cypress; broker member.
- Kristi L. Davis — secretary; Carrollton; broker member.
- Leslie Lerner — Houston; broker member.
- Renee Harvey Lowe — Clarksville; broker member.
- J.B. Goodwin — Austin; broker member.
- Benjamin Peña — Bayview; public member.
- Stuart Bernstein — Austin; public member.
- Scott Olguin — Horseshoe Bay; public member.
All nine seats are filled. Names and officer roles are from the commission’s membership page, checked November 2; that page gives no cities, so hometowns come from the governor’s appointment announcements. Officers were elected at the February 9, 2026 meeting. Peña’s hometown is given as Bayview by the governor’s office and as Brownsville in an earlier commission announcement. Abby Lee is general counsel. Meeting contact: Amber Hinton, (512) 936-3000.