Texas HOA Assessment Lien & Foreclosure Calculator

What this calculator does

Texas homeowners-association enforcement is governed by Texas Property Code Title 11 — the Texas Residential Property Owners Protection Act, Chapter 209. The chapter sets out the procedural ladder an HOA must walk before it can foreclose on an assessment lien, the path it must use (judicial in almost every case), the attorney-fee recovery available to it, and — uniquely in Texas — the post-sale redemption right granted to the prior owner.

This calculator walks a Texas HOA assessment-lien file through four checkpoints:

1. Effective service date of the § 209.0091 pre-foreclosure notice. Either the signed certified-mail return-receipt date, or the dispatch date plus a 5-day common-law presumption of receipt where no return receipt is in hand.
2. Earliest foreclosure-eligible date. Effective service plus 30 calendar days.
3. 180-day redemption status (if a foreclosure sale has occurred). Sale date + 180 calendar days, with a days-remaining countdown that opens up the redemption pathway under § 209.011.
4. Attorney-fee preservation under § 209.008. Whether the recovery of fees is preserved by the proper advance notice and 30-day cure window.

Anyone walking a Florida HOA file into Texas — or vice versa — needs to internalize one fact before reading further: Texas is structurally different. The notice count is different (one 30-day notice, not two 45-day notices), the foreclosure path is different (judicial in almost every case, with a narrow non-judicial residual that requires both declaration authority and a court order), and Texas grants a 180-day post-sale redemption right that Florida does not. Applying Florida assumptions to a Texas file produces voidable sales, forfeited fees, and wrongful-foreclosure exposure.

The statutes — Chapter 209 of the Texas Property Code

§ 209.0091 — pre-foreclosure notice. Before an HOA may record a notice of sale or file a judicial-foreclosure complaint, it must deliver written notice to the owner by certified mail at least 30 calendar days in advance. The notice must specify (a) the amount of the delinquency, (b) that the lien may be foreclosed judicially (or, where § 209.0092 conditions are met, non-judicially), and (c) the owner's right to cure the delinquency. The 30-day clock starts at effective service — the signed return-receipt date if available, or dispatch + 5 days under the common-law mailbox presumption.

§ 209.0092 — judicial foreclosure required. The 2011 amendments to Chapter 209 effectively collapsed the historical non-judicial path. Today, an HOA may proceed non-judicially only if (a) the declaration expressly authorizes non-judicial foreclosure AND (b) the association has obtained a court order authorizing the sale. Both conditions are gating; neither one alone is sufficient. The practical effect is that virtually every Texas HOA assessment-lien foreclosure today is a judicial-foreclosure suit filed in the district court of the county where the property sits.

§ 209.0094 — priority of the assessment lien. The Texas HOA assessment lien is subordinate to a first-mortgage lien recorded earlier (which, on owner-occupied parcels, is the original purchase-money mortgage) but superior to most other encumbrances. Texas does not have a Florida-style safe-harbor cap on first-mortgage take-out; the HOA either collects from the owner or absorbs the loss when the first-mortgage lender forecloses first.

§ 209.008 — attorney-fee recovery. The HOA may recover reasonable attorney fees from a delinquent owner if (a) the owner received advance written notice that fees may be assessed AND (b) the owner had an opportunity to cure before the fees were incurred. The cap is the "reasonable amount" standard. An HOA that incurs counsel fees before sending the advance notice forfeits those pre-notice fees regardless of reasonableness; the statute is gating, not just capping.

§ 209.011 — 180-day right of redemption. After a foreclosure sale, the prior owner has 180 calendar days to redeem the property by paying (a) the foreclosure sale price, (b) documented foreclosure costs and reasonable attorney fees, and (c) 10% statutory interest from the sale date. The redemption right runs against the foreclosure-sale purchaser, who must accept a proper tender and execute a deed back to the prior owner (or their assignee).

The 30-day clock — when it starts and what it costs to mishandle

The 30-day clock does not start on the day the underlying assessment became delinquent, and it does not start on the day the certified-mail envelope was dispatched. It starts on the effective service date, computed two ways:

• If a signed return-receipt card is in hand: the date on the signed card controls.
• If no signed receipt has come back: dispatch + 5 calendar days under the common-law mailbox presumption. Texas collection counsel apply the same 5-day rule that Florida counsel apply for the same reason — the statute is silent on what to do when certified mail is dispatched but not signed for, and the 5-day rule is the federal Mailbox Presumption in practice.

A § 209.0091 notice sent by first-class mail is voidable. A notice that omits the amount owed, the foreclosure pathway, or the cure right is voidable. A notice sent to a stale address — where the owner has provided an updated address that the association ignored — is voidable. A voidable notice produces a voidable foreclosure sale and, under § 209.008, forfeits the attorney-fee recovery for the entire collection arc. On a typical Texas HOA file with $5,000–$15,000 of recoverable counsel fees, the forfeiture is the single most expensive procedural mistake the association can make.

The 180-day redemption — the most important practical fact in Texas HOA enforcement

If there is one thing to remember from this page, it is the 180-day post-sale redemption window under § 209.011.

After the foreclosure sale closes, the prior owner — or anyone claiming through the prior owner, typically a lienholder or family member — has 180 calendar days to redeem the property. The redemption price is the foreclosure sale price, plus documented foreclosure costs and reasonable attorney fees, plus 10% per annum statutory interest from the sale date to the date of redemption. Tender is by cashier's check or certified funds; the foreclosure-sale purchaser must accept a proper tender and execute a deed back to the prior owner. If the purchaser refuses to accept proper tender, the prior owner has a specific-performance cause of action and the redemption is treated as effective on the tender date.

The redemption right is unique to Texas in the HOA context. Florida has no equivalent for assessment-lien foreclosure. Most other states either have no post-sale redemption window or provide a much shorter one (typically 30–90 days). The practical consequence is that the majority of Texas HOA foreclosures are redeemed inside the 180-day window. Buyers at foreclosure sales price the redemption risk into their bids; associations structure their post-sale payoff accounting to accept redemption tenders.

Worked example — pre-sale: Austin file, $5,000 delinquent, notice sent January 10

A Travis County HOA has a $5,000 delinquency on a parcel. The owner's last full payment was received on 2025-11-30. Collection counsel mails the § 209.0091 pre-foreclosure notice on January 10, 2026. No signed return-receipt card has come back as of the analysis date.

Apply the calculator:

• Effective service date: 2026-01-10 + 5 days = 2026-01-15.
• Earliest foreclosure-eligible date: 2026-01-15 + 30 days = 2026-02-14.
• Days remaining (asOfDate = 2026-02-01): 13.
• Status: within window — must wait.
• Attorney-fee shift preserved: Not yet — the cure window is still running.
• Judicial path note: § 209.0092 requires judicial foreclosure absent declaration authority + court order, so the default next step after February 14 is to file the foreclosure complaint in Travis County district court.

The board, having seen the calculator, waits until February 16, 2026 to direct counsel to file the foreclosure complaint. The complaint is filed in Travis County district court. Texas judicial-foreclosure dockets typically run 6–12 months from complaint to sale. The board projects a sale date in late summer 2026.

Worked example — post-sale: redemption window math

The same Austin file proceeds through judicial foreclosure. The foreclosure sale closes on April 15, 2026. The HOA's collection counsel was the high bidder at $42,000 (covering the delinquency, accrued interest, recoverable costs, and counsel fees).

Apply the calculator with the foreclosure sale date filled in:

• Redemption deadline: 2026-04-15 + 180 days = 2026-10-12.
• Days remaining to redeem (asOfDate = 2026-06-01): 133.
• Status: redemption window open.

The prior owner, having retained counsel during the foreclosure suit, secures financing and tenders the redemption payoff on August 1, 2026. The redemption price is: $42,000 sale price + $850 documented foreclosure costs + 10% interest on $42,000 for 108 days (April 15 to August 1) = $42,000 + $850 + $1,243 = $44,093. The HOA accepts the tender and executes a deed back to the prior owner. The HOA's collection file closes with full recovery; the prior owner retains the property.

Now run the same calculator on a different file with sale date 2025-10-01 and asOfDate 2026-05-15 (a file where the prior owner is consulting counsel six and a half months after sale). The 180-day window closed on 2026-03-30, 46 days ago. The redemption right has lapsed — the prior owner has no statutory pathway to recover the property, even with full payment. This is the most common factual setup for the calculator's "redemption window closed" output, and the most important fact to surface for an owner facing a § 209.011 question late in the year following a sale.

Priority of the assessment lien — and why Texas has no safe-harbor cap

Under § 209.0094, the Texas HOA assessment lien is subordinate to a first-mortgage lien recorded earlier. On the typical Texas HOA parcel — a single-family home bought with a purchase-money mortgage — the assessment lien is therefore subordinate to the first mortgage. If the first-mortgage lender forecloses, the assessment lien is extinguished to the extent of the first mortgage; the lender takes title free of the assessment lien (subject to the prior owner's separate redemption rights under the Tax Code, which run only against tax foreclosures, not against the lender's foreclosure).

Texas has no statutory safe-harbor cap on first-mortgage take-out. This is a meaningful difference from Florida and several other states that have legislated a "lesser of 1% of original mortgage or 12 months of unpaid assessments" cap on the first-mortgage lender's payoff to the HOA at lender foreclosure. In Texas, the HOA either (a) forecloses first and collects through the judicial-foreclosure track (with the 180-day redemption window risk), or (b) waits for the lender's foreclosure and absorbs the loss on the assessment receivable. The strategic question on every meaningful Texas HOA delinquency is therefore: foreclose first, or wait for the lender?

Attorney-fee recovery under § 209.008 — discipline matters

§ 209.008 permits the HOA to recover reasonable attorney fees from a delinquent owner. Two conditions are gating:

1. Advance notice. The owner must have received written notice that attorney fees may be assessed if the delinquency is not cured. Most Texas HOA-collection counsel send the advance notice as a separate letter (or as a clearly identified section of the § 209.0091 notice itself) at the start of the collection arc.
2. Cure opportunity. The owner must have had a documented opportunity to cure the delinquency before the fees were incurred. The 30-day cure window under § 209.0091 satisfies this requirement for fees incurred AFTER the notice; fees incurred BEFORE the notice are not recoverable regardless of reasonableness.

The cap is the "reasonable amount" standard. Texas courts scrutinize billing records, hourly rates, and the proportionality of the fees to the underlying delinquency. An association that incurs $20,000 in counsel fees to collect a $3,000 delinquency will face a serious reasonableness challenge regardless of the procedural correctness of the notice. Discipline: keep counsel fees proportionate to the file, document every step in the collection ledger, and resolve borderline cases through the cure window rather than litigation.

DTPA exposure on Texas HOA collection

The Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act (Bus. & Com. Code Ch. 17) applies to HOA collection in narrow circumstances. The Texas Supreme Court has generally held that HOA assessments themselves are not "consumer transactions" under the DTPA, but specific collection practices — false statements of the amount owed, threats of consequences not legally available (e.g., threatening non-judicial foreclosure without § 209.0092 authority), misapplied payments — can trigger DTPA exposure. The most common DTPA-exposed mistake in Texas HOA collection is mishandling the § 209.0091 notice: overstating the amount owed, threatening foreclosure paths the association is not authorized to use, or representing that the owner has no cure right when the statute expressly grants one. Compliance discipline: state only what the statute and declaration permit, document everything, and resolve disputes through the cure window rather than escalating to litigation when the calculus is borderline.

Common errors a Florida-trained practitioner makes in Texas

Three patterns recur often enough to warrant naming:

Sending two 45-day notices. A practitioner trained on Florida sends a pre-lien notice followed by a pre-foreclosure notice, expecting the Texas association to walk the same two-step ladder. The Texas regime collapses the ladder into a single 30-day notice under § 209.0091. The first notice has no statutory basis and the second is procedurally indistinguishable from a freshly-issued single notice — but the file has burned 45 days and confused the cure timeline.

Assuming sale finality. A practitioner trained on Florida assumes the foreclosure sale extinguishes the prior owner's interest. The Texas regime grants a 180-day redemption right under § 209.011. A purchaser who treats the sale as final and re-conveys the property within the 180-day window may face a redemption tender against the new buyer, with all the contractual complexity that implies.

Skipping the advance-fee notice. A practitioner trained on Florida assumes the prevailing-party fee shift attaches automatically. The Texas regime under § 209.008 requires advance written notice that fees may be assessed PLUS a documented cure opportunity. Without both, fees incurred before the notice are not recoverable.

The cost of each of these mistakes is measured in five-figure increments of forfeited fees, voidable sales, and post-sale litigation. Use this calculator, walk the statutes, and document every step.

How this page is maintained

Chapter 209 of the Texas Property Code has been stable in its core procedural provisions since the 2011 amendments that collapsed the non-judicial path under § 209.0092. The 30-day pre-foreclosure notice under § 209.0091 and the 180-day redemption right under § 209.011 are durable. We monitor each biennial Texas legislative session and re-stamp this page within the quarter after any substantive change to Chapter 209.

Last reviewed: 2026-05-15 against Tex. Prop. Code § 209.0091, § 209.0092, § 209.0094, § 209.008, § 209.011, and § 209.0051.