TREC Form 20-19: The One to Four Family Residential Contract (Resale)

TREC 20-19, formally the One to Four Family Residential Contract (Resale), is the Texas Real Estate Commission's promulgated contract for buying and selling existing residential property — houses, duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes that are already built and occupied or previously owned. It is the contract most Texas agents will use more than any other, and because TREC promulgates it, licensees cannot alter its substantive terms without risking an unauthorized practice of law issue.

The current revision is dated 2026-05-04. You can view the full current form at /resources/forms/trec-20-19. Texas REALTORS® also publishes a reprint of this exact contract as TXR 1601 (rev 2024-11-04, at /resources/forms/txr-1601) — but the TREC original is the promulgated, authoritative, current version. When the two appear to differ on revision date, always confirm you're working from the current TREC-promulgated text.

This form is specifically for resale residential property. TREC publishes separate promulgated contracts for other deal types: TREC 9-18 for vacant land (/resources/forms/trec-9-18), TREC 23-20 and TREC 24-20 for new construction that's incomplete or completed (/resources/forms/trec-23-20 and /resources/forms/trec-24-20), TREC 25-17 for farm and ranch property (/resources/forms/trec-25-17), and TREC 30-18 for resale condominiums (/resources/forms/trec-30-18). Using the wrong contract for the wrong property type is one of the most common — and most avoidable — mistakes newer agents make.

TREC 20-19 is organized into numbered paragraphs covering the parties and property description, sales price and financing terms, the option period and earnest money, title commitment and survey, the closing date, possession terms, and provisions for casualty loss and default. There's also a Special Provisions section for deal-specific language that doesn't fit elsewhere in the form.

Because it's a promulgated form, agents generally aren't permitted to draft new substantive contract language into it — that's the boundary between real estate practice and the unauthorized practice of law. Where a transaction needs terms beyond what the form and its standard addenda cover, that's the moment to loop in a real estate attorney rather than free-hand language into Special Provisions.

This guide is educational and doesn't substitute for legal advice on any specific transaction. If you or your client have questions about how a particular clause applies, TREC's own guidance and a licensed Texas real estate attorney are the right resources.

TREC 20-19 rarely stands alone. Depending on financing, property condition, and negotiated terms, agents typically attach one or more TREC-promulgated addenda to fit the specific deal — always pulling the current, TREC-promulgated version rather than an outdated copy from an old file.

If your buyer or seller is instead dealing with vacant land, farm and ranch acreage, new construction, or a resale condo, remember the contract itself changes: TREC 9-18, TREC 25-17, TREC 23-20/24-20, and TREC 30-18 respectively are the correct promulgated starting points, not 20-19 with substitutions.

Manually retyping buyer, seller, and property details into a PDF — then chasing signatures across email — is where a lot of transaction time disappears. RaiderX's EZDocs (currently in beta) lets sponsored agents fill current TREC and TXR forms in-app from a guided questionnaire, then send them out for e-signature directly from the platform. Every current TREC form, including 20-19, and a growing library of TXR forms are instant-fill, with no per-signature fee.

Once a form is signed, EZDocs files the completed, signed copy into the deal automatically — so you're not hunting through email threads or a separate e-sign tool to find the final executed contract when a title company or your broker asks for it.

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