The house is in Texas. You are not.
Maybe your parents died and left it to you and your brother. Maybe you moved for work in 2014 and kept it as a rental until the last tenant left. Either way there is a property sitting a long drive or a plane ride away, costing you taxes and insurance every month, and every time you think about dealing with it the logistics stop you.
The logistics are the easy part. Texas has been unusually practical about this. Here is what you actually have to do and what you can stop worrying about.
You do not have to come to the closing
This is the fear that keeps most out of state owners stuck, and it has not been true for years.
Texas allows online notarization. Under Tex. Gov’t Code § 406.0091(d)(2), personal appearance before a notary is satisfied when the person appears “by an interactive two-way video and audio conference technology that meets the standards adopted.” And § 406.110(a) permits an online notarization “regardless of whether the principal is physically located in this state at the time of the online notarization.”
So you can sign and notarize from your kitchen table in Denver or Seattle at nine in the evening. Your identity gets verified either by the notary’s personal knowledge of you or, under § 406.110(b), by remote presentation of a government issued photo ID with credential analysis and identity proofing. That means a scan of your license and a few knowledge questions, not a trip anywhere.
Ask the title company early whether they use an online notary. Most Texas title companies do now. Some still want a wet signature on the deed, and that is a mobile notary where you live rather than a flight.
If you cannot sign at all, there is a power of attorney
Sometimes remote signing is not enough. You are deployed, or travelling, or there are four heirs in three time zones and coordinating them is the actual problem. Then one person signs for the others.
Under Tex. Est. Code § 751.0021(a) a durable power of attorney has to be signed by the principal, or by another adult in the principal’s conscious presence at their direction, and acknowledged before an officer authorized to take acknowledgments to deeds of conveyance.
Here is the part people miss, and it is the one that delays closings. Tex. Est. Code § 751.151 says that where the power of attorney is used for a real property transaction requiring an instrument that is to be recorded, the power of attorney itself “must be recorded in the office of the county clerk of the county in which the property is located not later than the 30th day after the date the instrument is filed for recording.”
So the power of attorney becomes a public record in that county. Not a copy, not a reference. Give it to the title company well before closing rather than the morning of, because they will want to approve the form first, and a power of attorney that your bank drafted for a different purpose may not do what a title company needs.
The disclosure form you think you cannot fill in
Out of state sellers get stuck here constantly. You never lived in the house. You have no idea when the water heater was replaced or whether the roof ever leaked. So how can you sign a form swearing to its condition?
You do not have to know. Tex. Prop. Code § 5.008(d) says the notice “shall be completed to the best of seller’s belief and knowledge as of the date the notice is completed and signed by the seller,” and that “if the information required by the notice is unknown to the seller, the seller shall indicate that fact on the notice, and by that act is in compliance with this section.”
Marking something unknown is compliance. It is not an admission and it is not a dodge. What is not allowed is guessing, or writing down what you hope is true.
There is no blanket exemption just because you never occupied the place, so you still complete the notice. Section 5.008(b) also asks you to state whether you are occupying the property and, if not, how long since you were. Answer that one honestly too, because a long vacancy is something a buyer will discover anyway.
What actually costs you money is the waiting
None of the paperwork above is expensive. The expensive part is the months before you start.
A vacant house out of state accrues taxes, insurance at a vacancy rate which is higher than an occupied policy, utilities you keep on so the pipes do not freeze, and somebody local you pay to mow it so the city does not cite you. Then there is the slower damage. A roof leak nobody sees for a season. A water line that goes in January while the power is off. Copper taken out of a house that visibly nobody is watching.
Every month of deciding costs more than the month before, and the house gets harder to sell while it happens.
Why Panhandle property ends up in this situation
This pattern is not evenly spread across Texas, and around Amarillo it is close to the default.
Families left the Panhandle for Dallas, Houston, Denver and Phoenix across two generations, and the house stayed. Parents aged in it, then it passed to children who built lives five hundred miles away. The result is a lot of structurally sound, perfectly ordinary houses owned by people who have not stood in them in years and have no practical way to manage a listing from where they live.
A traditional sale asks that owner to coordinate repairs, staging, showings and an inspection response from another state, usually through a relative who did not volunteer for the job. That is why so many of these houses sit. If that describes yours, this is what selling a house fast in Amarillo looks like when the owner is not in Texas.
What to line up before you call anyone
Find the deed and confirm exactly whose names are on it. If a parent has died, the names on the deed are probably still theirs, and that is a separate problem to solve before a sale rather than during one.
Get the current tax statement from the county appraisal district so you know what is owed and whether anything is delinquent. Check whether the insurance is still in force and whether it is written as vacant, because a lapsed policy on an empty house is a real exposure while you decide.
Then get someone to physically look at it and send you photographs. Not a relative being kind about it. Someone who will tell you the roof is at the end of its life.
If the house came to you through a death and title has not been cleared yet, start there, because it governs everything else. Here is more on selling an inherited house in Texas.
The short version
You do not need to be in Texas to sell a Texas house. Online notarization satisfies personal appearance under Tex. Gov’t Code § 406.0091(d)(2) and works whether or not you are in the state. If you cannot sign at all, a durable power of attorney under Tex. Est. Code § 751.0021 covers it, but § 751.151 requires it to be recorded in the county where the property sits within 30 days of the instrument being filed, so hand it to the title company early. You can mark unknown on the seller’s disclosure and § 5.008(d) says that is compliance. The paperwork is solvable. The carrying cost of another six months of deciding is the part that is not.
This is general information about Texas law, not legal advice for your situation. Title, probate and powers of attorney all turn on your specific documents. Talk to a Texas real estate attorney before you sign anything.