1 in 4 Travis County Houses Sits Outside Any City Limits

Of the 289,594 one-family houses on the Travis County appraisal roll that we could place on a map, 72,260 sit outside the limits of every city. That is 25.0 percent, one house in four. Among houses built since 2020 it is two in five. The Texas resale contract has a paragraph written for exactly these addresses, and most buyers initial past it. Here is what it says, what else changes when a house has no city, and how to check an address before you make an offer.

What we counted

We took the Travis Central Appraisal District's 2026 roll and kept one record per property that the district classes as a one-family house (state class A1) with living area on record, the same 289,594 houses we used for our flood map count. Then we placed each parcel's center point against the regional city limits layer kept by the Capital Area Council of Governments for 911 addressing.

Shares and totals are our arithmetic. Three limits. A parcel is counted by its center point. The layer carries one boundary per city, so we did not separate areas a city has annexed for limited purposes from the rest of its limits. And the boundaries are a September snapshot; cities annex and release land during the year. Our research database has no sync entry for these layers, so we cite their source and load dates.

A mailing address will not tell you which row a house is in. On the appraisal roll, 13,047 of the houses outside every city carry the ZIP code 78660, which the mail calls Pflugerville. Another 6,159 are in 78653, 4,970 in 78732, 4,857 in 78738 and 4,041 in 78728. A ZIP code is a mail route. City limits are a legal line, and the two often disagree.

The newer the house, the more likely it has no city

The appraisal roll also carries a year built for nearly every one of these houses.

Of the 29,898 houses built in 2020 or later, 12,157 are outside every city. If you are shopping new construction in Travis County, the odds that the house has no city are much higher than one in four.

The paragraph in the contract

The Texas Real Estate Commission's One to Four Family Residential Contract (Resale) is form 20-19; TREC's forms page lists the current version with an effective date of July 1, 2026. Paragraph 6.E is a list of notices. Number five reads:

"ANNEXATION: If the Property is located outside the limits of a municipality, Seller notifies Buyer under §5.011, Texas Property Code, that the Property may now or later be included in the extraterritorial jurisdiction of a municipality and may now or later be subject to annexation by the municipality. Each municipality maintains a map that depicts its boundaries and extraterritorial jurisdiction."

It goes on to tell the buyer to contact every municipality near the property. The wording comes from Section 5.011 of the Property Code, in effect since January 1, 2000. The statute says the seller delivers the notice before the contract binds the buyer, and that once it is delivered the seller "has no duty to provide additional information regarding the possible annexation." If a contract is signed without it, the buyer may terminate for any reason within seven days of receiving the notice or by the date of the transfer, whichever comes first. The section does not apply to property wholly inside a city's boundaries.

The notice says a thing might be true and tells you to go find out. The contract does not say whether this house is in a city, in a city's extraterritorial jurisdiction, or in neither. That part is your homework.

What "extraterritorial jurisdiction" means

The extraterritorial jurisdiction, or ETJ, is a band of unincorporated land around a city. Section 42.021 of the Local Government Code sets its reach by the city's population: half a mile from the limits for a city under 5,000 people, one mile up to 24,999, two miles up to 49,999, three and a half miles up to 99,999, and five miles for a city of 100,000 or more. Austin is in the last group. A City of Austin policy document dated October 2, 2007 describes the ETJ as "the unincorporated land within five miles of Austin's full purpose city limit that is not within the city limits or ETJ of another city," and says ETJ regulations "help to ensure that subdivisions that may be annexed by Austin in the future meet minimum standards for road access, water quality, and other factors."

Two newer pieces of state law changed how fixed that band is. Under a 2023 law, Senate Bill 2038, residents or the owners of a majority in value of an area can petition to be released from a city's ETJ (Section 42.102). If the petition has the required signatures the city "shall immediately release the area," and if the city does not act in time the area is released by operation of law (Section 42.105). Since that law, an annexation begun after January 1, 2023 does not push a city's ETJ outward unless the owners of the newly covered land ask for it. And on annexation itself, Section 43.0671, added in 2017, lets a city annex an area "if each owner of land in the area requests the annexation"; the neighboring subchapters set out routes that run through petitions and elections.

So "may now or later be subject to annexation" is accurate, and it is also not a forecast. Whether a particular street is in an ETJ today, or was released from one, is a question for that city's map.

Who sends the water bill

The next notice in the contract, 6.E(6), is about utilities. Quoting Section 13.257 of the Water Code, it warns that the property "may be located in a certificated water or sewer service area," that "there may be special costs or charges that you will be required to pay before you can receive water or sewer service," and that "there may be a period required to construct lines or other facilities." A certificated area is one where a provider holds a state certificate, called a CCN, to serve.

We placed the same 72,260 houses against the Public Utility Commission of Texas's water service area file.

A little over half, 55.5 percent, are inside a certificated water area. The other 32,127 are not houses without water. A certificate is one way a provider gets the right to serve; water districts and cities also serve land that is not in any certificate, and a house can be on a private well. The boundaries in the file are digitized and approximate, so treat a match as a pointer and not a legal description. What the table does show is variety: a house outside the city can get its water from a city, a district, a member-owned supply corporation or an investor-owned utility, each with its own rates and rules. Sewer is a separate question with a separate provider, or a septic system.

Districts are the other half of this. By the same center-point method, about 33,100 of the 72,260 houses, 46 percent, sit inside the boundary of an active municipal utility district or water control and improvement district in the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality's district file (dated September 30, 2026). That is the subject of notice 6.E(3), which requires a separate signed notice of the district's tax rate and bonded debt before the contract is final. We covered what those rates run in our MUD piece.

What changes when a house has no city

• The tax bill has no city line. The City of Austin's 2026 rate is $0.579948 per $100 of taxable value, the second-largest line in the Austin tax stack. A house outside every city does not carry a city rate. It may carry a utility district or emergency services district rate that a house in the city does not, so compare the whole list of taxing units, not one line.
• The rules come from different places. A city's zoning applies inside the city. Outside it, what an owner or a neighbor can build is shaped by recorded deed restrictions, a property owners association if there is one, county rules, and a city's subdivision rules where the land is in an ETJ.
• Permits go through the county. Travis County's development services office handles development permits in the unincorporated county, and its page lists driveways and on-site sewage facilities, meaning septic systems, among the work that needs one. It also handles floodplain management there.

What this means if you're buying or selling here

If you are buying: before the option period ends, get five answers in writing for the address. Is it inside a city, and which one? If not, is it in a city's ETJ? Call the planning office of the nearest cities, as the notice says; they keep the map. Who provides water and who provides sewer, and is there any fee or wait to connect? Is it in a utility district, and what is the rate and debt on the notice? Which taxing units are on the appraisal record? The appraisal district lists every unit that taxes a property, and a missing city is the quickest tell. Our property tax analyzer reads that record for an address.

If you are selling: know your own answers before you list. The annexation notice is built into the contract form, but a utility district notice is a separate document with current figures that the buyer has to sign. Have it, your last water and sewer bills and any septic permit ready.

This is general education, not legal or tax advice. For what a notice means for your contract, talk to a real estate attorney; for a specific address, the city, the county and the utility are the sources. If you want a second set of eyes on an address in the unincorporated county, a local agent on our team can walk the list with you.