It may seem odd to outsiders, but the Texas Legislature convenes only every other year. The next session starts January 13, 2009. The upper house is the Senate and there are 31 Texas Senators. The lower house, the House of Representatives, has 150 members.
Issues on the radar for the upcoming session that relate to real estate include:
- providing MLS data to mortgage fraud investigators
- disclosure requirements under the house bill passes in the 80th Legislature to combat mortgage fraud
- lender oversight
- water rights
- regulation of errors and ommissions insurance
- windstorm insurance
- eminent domain
- homeowners associations
- loopholes in the Private Real Property Rights Preservation Act
- remitting TREC funds to the state general revenue fund
- Sunset Committee review of the Texas Residential Construction Commission
- mandatory upgrades and retrofit for energy-efficiency prior to the sale of an existing home
- enforcing appraisal standards
- sales-price disclosure (Texas is currently a non-disclosure state)
- appraisal caps
- binding arbitration
- school taxes
The Texas constitution limits each regular session to 140 calendar days. Only the Governor may call the Legislature into special sessions and those are limited to 30 days each. Multiple special sessions may be called.
It sure looks like our elected representatives will have much to keep them busy. It will be interesting to observe the amount of bipartisianship.
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