No income tax sounds great until the property tax bill shows up
Texas doesn't take a state income tax, and the trade is that homeowners carry the load instead. On a typical home here you're paying over $5,000 a year in property taxes, and that bill comes whether you just got laid off, just got divorced, or just buried a parent who left you the house. Fall behind and the county hands your account to a collections law firm, and those attorneys tack their fees on top of penalties and interest that were already stacking. A two-year-old tax bill can more than double once those fees compound. It doesn't fix itself.
Foreclosure here takes about two months. Not a typo.
Most states make a lender go through the courts to foreclose, which buys you a year or more. Texas doesn't. Your lender mails you a 20-day notice, then a 21-day notice of sale, and then your house goes to auction on the first Tuesday of the next month on the courthouse steps. No judge, no hearing. And once it sells, that's it. Texas has no redemption period, no way to buy it back, no appeal. Homeowners who assume they have a year to figure things out can have as little as nine weeks.
The county can take the house even if the mortgage is current
This one catches people off guard. Your property taxes get collected by a whole stack of entities (city, county, school district, hospital district, sometimes a community college too), and after two years of delinquency they can foreclose on the tax lien themselves. Separate process, separate clock, nothing to do with your mortgage company. So you can be working things out with your lender and still lose the house over back taxes. The good news, if there is some: Texas has no transfer tax, and a cash deal through a title company can close in about a week.
Why selling fast actually matters in this state
Look, in a slow-foreclosure state you can afford to think it over for six months. In Texas you can't. Two-month foreclosures, no redemption, an auction every single month that doesn't care about your story. Cash sales close for folks in Fifth Ward, Stop Six, the East Side of San Antonio, Rundberg in Austin — people an agent simply could not help in the time they had left. A cash offer isn't the answer for everyone, and I'll tell you straight when it isn't. But deciding early is what keeps your options open. Wait too long here and the auction decides for you.