The listing agreement ran out sometime in the last few weeks. Nobody called. The sign is still in the yard, or it is in the garage now, and the lockbox is somewhere.
If your house went on the market in April or May and the agreement was a standard six-month term, this is the season it quietly ends. It happens to a lot of Texas houses every September, and it happens to more of them in a market with rising inventory than in one without.
The instinct is to immediately either relist or list with somebody new. Both can be right. But there are five real options and they have very different costs, and the first thing worth doing is understanding what you are still bound by — because that part is not optional and most sellers get it wrong.
We are not a brokerage and we do not list houses. We buy them directly. So take the sections below as the math from the other side of the table, and take anything about your specific listing agreement to the broker who wrote it or to a Texas real-estate attorney.
First: what you are still bound by
An expired listing agreement is over. You are not obligated to relist with the same broker, and you can sign with anyone or with nobody.
The one thing that survives is the protection period. In the Texas REALTORS® Residential Real Estate Listing Agreement (TXR-1101), it is Paragraph 5E. The mechanics:
- The clock starts the day after the listing ends and runs for a number of days written into the blank on your agreement. 180 days is common. It is negotiable, and it is not the same on every listing — go read yours rather than assuming.
- It applies only to buyers whose attention the broker called to the property during the listing term.
- The broker generally must give you written notice naming those people, within 10 days after the listing ends. That notice is what gives the protection period something to attach to.
- If you then sell to a named person — or a relative of one — during the window, the commission is owed at closing as though the listing were still running.
Two practical consequences. First, if that notice never arrived, ask for it, and note the date it did arrive. Second, a buyer with no connection to the old listing is normally clear of the whole thing. The protection period is a narrow anti-circumvention clause, not a lien on your house.
Also worth knowing: expired, withdrawn, and cancelled are three different statuses and they carry different implications for the protection period and for what shows in the listing history. Ask which one yours actually is.
Second: be honest about why it did not sell
There are only three reasons a house does not sell, and the third is rare.
Price. Statewide, Texas homes that closed in April 2026 had been on the market an average of 70 days, and unsold inventory was sitting at around 90, per the Texas Real Estate Research Center at Texas A&M. Sellers who cut their price cut by a median of $12,500 — about 3.6% of the original list price. In DFW that median cut was also $12,500, roughly 3%; in Austin it ran $19,000, about 5.4%. Statewide inventory sat near 5.2 months, and median prices were down 0.9% year over year, an eleven-month trend at that point.
Read that as one sentence: buyers had options, and the houses that moved were the ones priced against the other options rather than against last year.
Condition. This is the second cause and it is under-diagnosed, because feedback about condition arrives politely. “They loved it but went another direction” frequently means the kitchen is original and there were four other houses in the search that were not. When inventory is thin, buyers negotiate for a house that needs work. When inventory is ample, they skip it.
Access. Occupied houses with restricted showing windows, tenants, pets, or a seller who needs 24 hours’ notice lose a real percentage of showings. If your house was hard to see, it was hard to sell. Our guide to selling a Texas house with tenants covers that specific version of the problem.
If you got showings but no offers, it is price or condition. If you got no showings at all, it is price or photos. If you got offers that died in the option period, it is condition — and the inspection report from the buyer who walked is the most valuable document you own right now. Ask for it.
The five options, and what each costs
1. Relist with the same broker at a new price
The lowest-friction path, and it is genuinely the right answer when the only problem was the number and the broker did competent work.
What it costs: the price cut itself, plus another 60–90 days of carrying costs, plus whatever fresh marketing is agreed to. Insist on new photography if the originals are more than a few months old — a listing carrying spring photos in October reads as stale to every buyer who scrolls past it.
When it is right: the house is in good condition, showings were steady, and you have time and no deadline.
2. Relist with a different broker
Reasonable, and sometimes the honest answer. But be careful about the failure mode: sellers frequently switch brokers to find someone who will agree to a higher price, which reproduces the original problem with a different name on the sign.
What it costs: the same as above, plus a new listing term. Confirm in writing how the previous broker’s protection period interacts with the new agreement before you sign anything.
When it is right: thin marketing, poor photography, weak communication, or a genuine strategy disagreement about price.
3. Take it off the market and wait for spring
Legitimate — if the house is not costing you anything meaningful to hold.
What it costs: carrying costs, which people consistently underestimate. On a $350,000 Texas house, mortgage principal and interest, property taxes, insurance, utilities, and basic maintenance commonly run $2,300–$3,200 a month. Six months to reach the spring market is $14,000–$19,000. That is more than the median Texas price cut, spent to avoid making one.
And it is not a free option in a rising-inventory market: the spring you are waiting for may bring more competing listings, not fewer.
When it is right: you live in the house, the payment is comfortable, and there is no deadline behind any of this.
4. Fix the condition problem, then relist
If the house is losing buyers on condition, this can genuinely work — and it is the only option on this list that raises the ceiling instead of lowering the ask.
What it costs: the repair budget, plus the time (in Texas, most meaningful pre-list work runs 3–8 weeks with contractor scheduling), plus the carrying costs during it. The risk is that renovation budgets are systematically underestimated and the work lands in December, which is not the month you want to relist.
When it is right: one or two specific, well-defined problems — a roof, a failed HVAC, a kitchen — and cash on hand to do them without borrowing against the outcome.
5. Sell it as-is to a direct buyer
No listing, no showings, no repairs, no commission, no option period, and a closing date you pick.
What it costs: the discount. There is one, we do not pretend otherwise, and our math is public: ARV × 75–80%, minus repairs — 85–92% for a clean house needing only light work.
When it is right: the house is empty, inherited, tenant-occupied, or needs work; or there is a deadline — a payoff, a probate timeline, a job that already started somewhere else — that a 90-day retail process cannot meet.
The comparison sellers usually skip
Everyone compares the offer to the old list price. That is the wrong comparison, and it is the reason people stay in this loop for a year.
The right comparison is offer versus net proceeds on a realistic second attempt:
| Line | Relist at a corrected price | Direct as-is sale |
|---|---|---|
| Sale price | $335,000 | $286,000 |
| Commissions (~5–6%) | −$18,400 | $0 |
| Buyer concessions / repair credits | −$6,000 | $0 |
| Pre-list repairs and cleanout | −$8,000 | $0 |
| Carrying costs (3 more months) | −$8,100 | −$900 |
| Seller-side closing costs | −$3,400 | $0 |
| Estimated net | $291,100 | $285,100 |
Those numbers are illustrative, not a quote — your repair line and your carrying costs are the two that move the answer most. But the shape is the point, and it surprises people: on a house that needs real work, the paths often land within a few percent of each other, and then the question stops being which is more money and becomes which is more certain, and how many more months am I doing this.
If the house is in genuinely good shape and just needed a price correction, relisting nets you more. That is the honest answer and it is frequently the right one. Our cash offer vs. listing breakdown runs the full version of this comparison, and how your cash offer is calculated shows exactly where our number comes from.
One note on timing, if you are going to relist
You have roughly sixteen weeks before the holidays, and the practical Texas selling calendar closes down somewhere around the second week of December.
Working backward from a December 31 closing: a 30–45 day financed close means under contract by mid-November, which means listed and priced correctly by early-to-mid October at the latest given current days on market. That is a real deadline, and it is closer than it feels on the first weekend of September.
If a year-end close is something you actually need — for the tax year, for a probate timeline, or because the January 31 property tax bill lands on a house you did not intend to still own — count the weeks now rather than in November.
What to do this week
- Read Paragraph 5E of your listing agreement and find the actual number of days in the blank. Then check whether you received the broker’s written notice, and when.
- Ask your former broker for the showing feedback and any buyer inspection reports. You paid for that information in time; it tells you whether this was price or condition.
- Pick the constraint before you pick the path. Deadline, or dollars? They lead to different options on the list above, and trying to optimize both is what produces a second expired listing in March.
- Add up your monthly carrying cost, honestly. Payment, taxes, insurance, utilities, lawn, maintenance. That number is what every “just wait” option actually costs, and it is the one most sellers have never written down.
An expired listing is information, not a verdict. The house did not sell at that price, in that condition, in that season — that is all it establishes. What it does not tell you is which of the five paths above is right, and that comes down to your deadline and your carrying cost, not to the listing history.
If it turns out you would rather be done than do this again in the spring, tell us about the house and we will give you a real number to put next to the relist math. No obligation, and if relisting nets you more, we will tell you that too.