Selling Your San Antonio Home and Reserving the Mineral Rights: The TREC Addendum, Eagle Ford, and What Title Actually Shows

In Texas the mineral estate is a separate property right from the surface estate, and either can be sold, leased, or reserved on its own. That means a San Antonio seller can, in theory, sign a deed to the buyer, keep the minerals, and walk away with the right to lease those minerals for a bonus and royalties later. In practice, most Bexar County homeowners do not actually own the minerals under their lot — the developer reserved them decades ago — and the ones who do own them run into two problems: the TREC addendum has to be attached before the contract is executed, and the buyer's lender will almost always require a surface-use waiver before it funds.

Here is how this actually works when you sell a home in San Antonio, Converse, Boerne, or anywhere else on the northern edge of the Eagle Ford Shale.

First: do you even own the minerals

Most residential sellers assume the mineral estate travels with the deed unless someone says otherwise. That is the default rule, but it is almost never what happened on a platted subdivision lot. When the master developer bought the acreage and platted it, the reservation was usually made once, in the deed to the first buyer, and it runs with the land forever after.

To find out what you actually own:

• Pull your title commitment from the last time you bought or refinanced. Schedule B will list any prior mineral reservations by volume and page in the Bexar County Real Property Records.
• If you do not have that, order a current title commitment from the title company you plan to close with. It costs nothing until you close.
• Look at your original general warranty deed. If it says "SAVE AND EXCEPT all oil, gas, and other minerals previously reserved," the minerals are gone.
• Search Bexar County Clerk records online by legal description for the original subdivision dedication and the developer's first out-conveyance.

If every prior deed conveyed the minerals without reservation, you own them. If any deed in the chain reserved them — even one from 1962 — you do not, and there is nothing to reserve at closing.

Why Bexar County is not Karnes County

The productive Eagle Ford Shale sits south and southeast of San Antonio — Atascosa, McMullen, Karnes, La Salle, DeWitt, Dimmit. Bexar County sits on the far northern edge. There is some production in the far south of the county, but the vast majority of residential lots inside Loop 1604 are not producing and have no active lease.

That matters because:

• If minerals are producing, they are separately assessed on the BCAD roll and taxed. You keep the tax bill after the sale.
• If minerals are non-producing, reserving them is essentially a lottery ticket — you might get a lease bonus in the future, you might not.
• Buyers will still ask for a surface waiver either way, because lenders do.

Do not oversell the value of a reservation to yourself. On a Stone Oak (78258) lot or an Alamo Heights (78209) teardown, the odds that anyone drills your quarter-acre in your lifetime are effectively zero. On a five-acre tract in far south Bexar, the calculation is different.

The TREC addendum: form 44-3

The form you need is the Addendum for Reservation of Oil, Gas and Other Minerals, currently TREC No. 44-3. It attaches to the TREC 20-17 One to Four Family Residential Contract (Resale) and gets signed at the same time as the contract.

The addendum has three moving parts a seller has to actually think about:

1. What is reserved. All of the mineral estate, or a fractional interest (for example, one-half). Reserving a fraction is common when you already own only part.
2. Existing leases. If the minerals are already under an oil and gas lease, the addendum says the reservation is subject to that lease and the seller keeps the royalty. Attach the lease.
3. Surface waiver. The seller waives the right to use the surface — the drill site, roads, pipelines, tank batteries — to produce the reserved minerals. This is the checkbox that keeps the deal alive.

If the addendum is not attached before the contract is signed, the minerals convey. You cannot bolt it on at closing with the title company; that is a material change and requires a TREC 39-9 Amendment and the buyer's signature, and the buyer's lender will re-underwrite.

The surface-use waiver is not optional

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, FHA, and VA all have guidelines that severely restrict surface use of the mineral estate on residential loans. In practice, a conventional or government-backed lender in Texas will not fund a purchase where the seller reserves minerals without a full surface waiver. The title company will not insure it clean either — you will see an exception on Schedule B that the buyer's lender rejects.

So the working version of a residential mineral reservation in San Antonio is:

• Seller reserves 100% (or a fraction) of the mineral estate.
• Seller waives all right to use the surface, including the subsurface down to some depth — 500 feet below the surface is common language.
• Seller retains the right to produce by pooling with adjacent tracts or by directional drilling from an off-site location.

That structure lets the deal close. Without it, the buyer's loan officer kills the contract during underwriting and you are back on market with a story to explain.

Taxes, HOA, and the ongoing hassle after closing

Reserving minerals is not a one-time paperwork event. You are creating a separate property interest that you now own forever, or until you sell or lease it.

• BCAD: producing minerals are appraised separately. If a lease starts producing, expect a mineral tax bill in your name at your forwarding address.
• Estate planning: mineral interests pass through probate like any other real property. Add them to your will or a transfer-on-death deed.
• HOA restrictions: many north-side subdivisions prohibit drilling anywhere in the community regardless of who owns the minerals. Reserving the interest does not override the deed restrictions.
• Leasing landmen: if the Eagle Ford ever pushes north, you will get letters. Do not sign the first offer.

What most people get wrong

• Assuming they own the minerals because no one ever told them otherwise. Ninety-plus percent of the time on a platted San Antonio subdivision lot, the developer or a predecessor already reserved them. Pull the title commitment before you write the addendum. Reserving an interest you do not own is a misrepresentation that gets caught at title.
• Trying to add the reservation after the contract is signed. The 44-3 has to be attached at execution. Retro-fitting it through a TREC 39-9 Amendment is a material change and the buyer can walk during the option period without penalty.
• Reserving without a surface waiver. The buyer's lender rejects it in underwriting and the deal falls apart in week three. Always waive the surface on a residential sale.
• Confusing minerals with water rights. Groundwater in Texas is a separate estate again, governed by different law (rule of capture, Edwards Aquifer Authority permits in this region). The 44-3 does not address water.
• Reserving on a home that has an active oil and gas lease without disclosing it. The lease is a title matter and shows up on the commitment. Give the buyer a copy. Failure to disclose an active lease is a Property Code § 5.008 seller's disclosure problem and a fraud problem at the same time.
• Assuming the reservation is worth real money on a suburban lot. On a 6,000-square-foot lot inside Loop 410, the reserved fraction is almost certainly worth less than the cost of tracking it through probate later. Sometimes the right answer is to let the minerals convey and simplify your estate.

Before you list

Order the title commitment first, read Schedule B, and decide whether you have anything to reserve. If you do, have your listing agent attach the TREC 44-3 to every offer packet with the surface waiver already checked, and price the home the same as if minerals were conveying — because to the buyer's lender, functionally, they are.

When you are ready to line up a listing, compare San Antonio agents who have actually closed transactions with mineral reservations at /agents, or if you would rather run the sale yourself, list your home free at /list-your-home and browse more seller resources at /resources.