1 in 3 Austin Houses Is Old Enough for a Lead Paint Notice

The Travis Central Appraisal District's 2026 roll lists 117,958 single-family houses with an Austin address and a year built. Of those, 37,255 were built before 1978. That is 31.6 percent, nearly one house in three, and it is the group of houses for which a Texas contract carries a separate federal paper: the lead-based paint addendum.

This piece is about that form, the 10-day clock attached to it, and how many of Austin's houses it can touch. It is general education about a rule, not a statement about any house or any street.

How many Austin houses are on the pre-1978 side of the line

We took the appraisal district's one-family dwellings (state class A1) with an Austin situs, kept one record per property, and grouped them by the year built the district has on file.

The line is sharp on a calendar and blurry on the ground. In the same roll, 1,684 houses carry 1977 as the year built and 2,178 carry 1978. A house built across the turn of a year, or recorded by a district appraiser decades later, can sit on either side. The year built in the appraisal record is a place to start, not a determination, and the contract rule turns on when the dwelling was built, not on what a county database says.

The roll also holds a second year for each house, the effective year, which appraisers adjust for renovation. For 2,683 houses built before 1978, the effective year is 1978 or later. That is an appraisal adjustment for value. It is not evidence that any paint was tested, removed or covered.

What the federal rule and the TREC form say

Federal law requires sellers of most housing built before 1978 to give buyers a pamphlet, disclose what they know about lead-based paint and lead-based paint hazards, hand over any records or reports, and allow a window for the buyer to test. The EPA's real estate disclosure page sets out the seller's duties: the pamphlet "Protect Your Family From Lead In Your Home," a lead warning statement, available records, and a period of 10 days for a paint inspection or risk assessment. The parties can agree in writing to a different period, and a buyer can waive it. Sellers' signed copies are kept for three years.

In Texas, that duty is carried by a form approved by the Texas Real Estate Commission. The current version, TREC No. 56-0, is dated May 4, 2026 and carries the Texas Real Estate Commission's approval. We read the form for this piece. In plain terms it has four parts a buyer will notice:

• The seller's disclosure. The seller checks one box: either known lead-based paint or hazards are present (with an explanation), or the seller has no actual knowledge of any.
• Records. The seller checks one box: either all available records and reports have been given to the buyer, with the documents listed, or there are none.
• The buyer's rights. The buyer checks one box. Box 1 waives the inspection. Box 2 gives the buyer 10 days after the effective date of the contract to have the property inspected, and says that if lead-based paint or hazards are present the buyer may end the contract by written notice within 14 days of the effective date, with the earnest money refunded.
• The acknowledgments. The buyer confirms receipt of the pamphlet and of the seller's information, and the brokers confirm they told the seller about the federal duties. The form notes that the inspector must be properly certified under federal law.

Two details are easy to miss. The clock in box 2 starts on the contract's effective date, not on the day you first see the house, so it can overlap the option period you negotiate for other inspections. And a disclosure of "no actual knowledge" is a statement about what the seller knows, which is not the same as a finding that the house has no lead paint.

What age tells you, and what it does not

EPA says paint in good condition is usually not a problem. The hazard comes when painted surfaces deteriorate, peel, chip or crack, or when renovation work disturbs them and makes dust. EPA's page on sources of lead notes that the federal government banned the sale of lead-based paint for use in homes in 1978, and gives national estimates of how likely older homes are to have it:

Those percentages are national estimates, not a count for Austin and not a prediction for any house. We include them to show the shape of the question: the youngest group on the pre-1978 side is also Austin's largest, and the odds for it are lower than for the oldest houses, though not zero.

The same EPA program also covers work done after you own the house. Under the Renovation, Repair and Painting rule, anyone paid to do work that disturbs paint in a home built before 1978 must be certified in lead-safe work practices, and that includes sole proprietors. If a remodel is in your plans, it is a fair question to ask a contractor, and a fair line to put in a bid. Our reporting on remodel and addition permits shows how many of those jobs the City issues each year, and our piece on house demolition permits shows the other end of an older house's life.

What this means if you're buying, selling or owning here

If you are buying a house built before 1978: expect the addendum in your contract package, read the seller's two checked boxes, and decide before you sign which box you check in the buyer's rights section. If you choose the inspection, put the 10-day window on your calendar from the contract's effective date and line it up with your option period. Ask for any prior reports or records the seller has. The federal pamphlet is free from the EPA.

If you are selling a house built before 1978: the seller completes the disclosure and keeps a signed copy. Gather any records you have, such as past test results or contractor paperwork, before you list. Answer from what you actually know. Your agent can walk you through the form, and a licensed attorney can answer questions about your own obligations.

If you own one now: the same advice applies before a repaint, a window replacement or a kitchen remodel. Check the work plan with a certified contractor first. For a health question about a specific house, the EPA's lead pages and your doctor are the right sources. Our seller page explains how we work with owners who are thinking of listing.

If a house on your list was built near 1978, check the year with the county record and the permit history, and ask the listing agent to confirm the build date. A local agent can pull that record while you are still deciding.

How we counted

Austin Local Team analysis of Travis Central Appraisal District 2026 roll records, loaded into our research database on October 7, 2026. We kept one record per property classified by TCAD as a one-family dwelling (state class A1, "1 FAM DWELLING") with Austin as the situs city and a year built after 1800, and used the earliest improvement year where a property had more than one. That gives 117,958 houses. Shares are rounded to one decimal and the median living area is the median of the main improvement's recorded living area. The 1940 to 1959 and 1960 to 1977 rows are sums of our decade counts (3,186 plus 7,494, and 10,325 plus 13,567). The roll does not tell us paint, renovation or inspection history, and TCAD's year built can differ from the year on a seller's records. EPA percentages are quoted from EPA's published chart.

Sources: EPA, Real Estate Disclosure; EPA, Protect Your Family from Sources of Lead; EPA, Renovation, Repair and Painting Program; TREC No. 56-0, Addendum for Seller's Disclosure of Information on Lead-Based Paint and Lead-Based Paint Hazards.