A New Ulm seller who has drawn water from the same well for thirty years usually describes it one way: exempt. No permit, no fee, no meter reading from the district, nothing to report. That word has done a lot of quiet work for a long time. As of July 1, 2026, it stopped covering what most people think it covers.
Texas real estate contracts now include a form that didn't exist a year ago. It doesn't ask whether your well works. It asks whether you can prove you were ever supposed to tell anyone it exists.
The paperwork that showed up mid-2026
On May 4, 2026, the Texas Real Estate Commission adopted a standalone disclosure form, Water Notice: Seller's Disclosure About Groundwater and Surface Water Rights, known as TREC Form 61-0. It became mandatory on every applicable contract signed on or after July 1, 2026. The trigger sits in Paragraph 7(I) of the standard residential contract, and in the Farm and Ranch Contract specifically, that same trigger lives in Paragraph 7.K, the contract form most New Ulm acreage sales actually use.
The form asks the seller to state what they know about wells on the property, whether groundwater or surface water rights have ever been sold or leased separately from the land, and whether the property sits inside a groundwater conservation district. For a New Ulm property, the answer to that last question is not optional. It's already Bluebonnet.
Why "exempt" was never the whole story
Austin County has belonged to the Bluebonnet Groundwater Conservation District since a confirmation election in November 2002, alongside Grimes and Walker Counties, with Waller County annexed in 2007. Every well on every acre in New Ulm sits inside that boundary whether the owner has ever heard the district's name or not.
Bluebonnet's rules split wells into two categories. Domestic and agricultural wells are exempt from permitting and production fees. That's the part everyone remembers. The part that gets lost is that exempt wells still had to be registered with the district, at no charge, and the original rules gave existing well owners a deadline of July 1, 2005 to do it. Anyone who drilled after that date owed the district a registration within 60 days of completion, filed alongside the standard state well report.
None of that happens automatically at resale. A well that has quietly produced clean water for two decades can still be a well the district has no record of, because the owner who drilled it in the 1990s never filed the form, or the current owner bought the place in 2011 and never checked. "Exempt" told them they were off the fee schedule. It didn't tell them they were off the district's books, and the new form is the first document that forces the distinction into the open.
Three ways the contract can go
| The situation | What the contract does |
|---|---|
| Seller completes Form 61-0 with what they actually know | Buyer gets the disclosure, reviews it, and the deal moves on the agreed schedule |
| Seller has no well, no pond or tank, no severed water rights, and gets water only from a utility | Seller can claim the narrow exemption and skip the form entirely |
| Seller doesn't provide the disclosure at all | The buyer gains a right to terminate the contract and recover earnest money |
Most rural New Ulm listings won't qualify for that middle row. A property with a stock tank, a pond, or a working well fails the exemption the moment any one of those features exists, regardless of how long it's been there or how well it performs.
Why closing week is the wrong time to find this out
The form carries real consequences, not just a box to initial. If a seller fails to deliver it on the timeline the contract requires, the buyer can terminate and walk away with earnest money intact. Once the buyer does receive it, they generally get a window, seven days or before closing, whichever comes first, to review it and terminate for any reason.
That window exists to protect buyers making a decision about water they can't fully evaluate from a listing photo. For sellers, it means a disclosure assembled in a hurry during the option period reads differently than one prepared before the property ever hit the market. A seller who has to call Bluebonnet's office for the first time after already being under contract is negotiating from a weaker position than one who called before signing a listing agreement.
A pre-listing sequence that avoids the scramble
- Call the Bluebonnet Groundwater Conservation District office and ask directly whether your well has a registration on file. The district's number and registration forms are posted on its site, and there's no fee to check or to register a well that was drilled before registration was required.
- Locate the original driller's log if one exists. It documents depth, casing, and completion date, and it's the fastest way to answer half the questions on Form 61-0 without guessing.
- Decide, in writing, whether your property has any pond, tank, or surface water feature beyond the well itself. Each one changes what has to be disclosed.
- Check whether groundwater or surface water rights were ever severed, sold, or leased separately from the surface in a prior deed. That history sometimes surfaces in title work that hasn't been pulled yet.
- Draft the 61-0 form before you list, not after an offer arrives. A completed disclosure sitting in the listing file is a different conversation than a blank one requested mid-option-period.
Why this matters more in a market like this one
Rural land in the broader Gulf Coast-Brazos Bottom region, the corridor that includes Austin County, was trading around $11,423 per acre through the end of 2025, a 13.6 percent increase from 2024 according to Texas Farm Credit's land pricing analysis. Prices have held up statewide even as the Texas Real Estate Research Center notes that many sellers remain anchored to peak 2022-23 pricing, a mismatch that has lengthened days on market for properties that don't distinguish themselves on quality or preparation.
In that kind of standoff, a clean water file is one of the few things a seller fully controls. A buyer weighing two comparable properties, one with a documented well registration and driller's log ready at listing, one where the seller is still figuring out whether Bluebonnet has ever heard of the property, has an easy reason to push harder on price or timeline with the second. The paperwork doesn't raise the value of the land. It removes a reason for a 2026 buyer to hesitate, and hesitation is what a resilient but selective market punishes.
A short FAQ
Does this apply if my New Ulm property is only on city or co-op water, with no well or pond? If there's genuinely no well, no pond, lake, or tank, and no history of severed water rights, the property can generally claim the narrow exemption and skip the full disclosure. Most acreage in and around New Ulm has at least one of those features, so confirm carefully before assuming you qualify.
My well was drilled in the 1980s, long before Bluebonnet existed. Does the district still care? Yes. The district's rules covered existing wells too, with an original registration deadline of July 1, 2005. An older well doesn't get grandfathered out of registration, it just means the registration may be decades overdue rather than never filed at all.
Is this the same paperwork as a septic or OSSF disclosure? No. Septic and on-site sewage facility disclosures run through a separate process. Form 61-0 is specifically about groundwater, surface water, and wells, and it's a new standalone document that didn't exist before mid-2026.
Do I need an attorney to fill this out? The form asks for what you know, not a legal opinion, but if a title search turns up severed mineral or water rights in the property's history, that's a good moment to get a real estate attorney involved before you sign anything.
If you're getting a New Ulm property ready to list, or trying to make sense of a well you inherited along with the land, this is exactly the kind of paperwork problem worth sorting out months before a buyer ever walks the property. Talk to a local land expert today at Bill Johnson Real Estate, and let's get your water file in order before it becomes a contract deadline.
