Relating to fees charged by county clerks for certain property records.

Contracts

• Client Engagement Letters: Revise "Estimated Costs" sections in engagement letters for title searches and abstracting. Remove references to "statutory recording fees" and replace them with "actual county costs."
• Vendor MSAs: If you purchase bulk data from third-party aggregators, review Master Service Agreements immediately. Ensure provisions allow for price adjustments if their acquisition costs spike due to county-level fee changes.

Hiring/Training

• Accounts Payable: Train AP staff to stop flagging invoices that deviate from the historical $1.00 rate. They must now validate invoices against specific county fee schedules.
• Estimators/Sales: Staff providing Good Faith Estimates (GFEs) or project bids must be trained to check specific county websites for current electronic copy fees rather than applying a statewide default.

Reporting & Record-Keeping

• Client Reimbursement: You must retain exact receipts from County Clerks to justify pass-through costs to clients. The "standard fee" defense will no longer apply in a billing audit.
• Cost Tracking: Implement a tracking log for fees paid to major counties (Harris, Dallas, Tarrant, Bexar). This data will be essential if a county's fees become exorbitant and a formal complaint to the Attorney General is necessary.

Fees & Costs

• Budgeting: Remove the $1.00/document hard cap from financial forecasting models.
• Variable Pricing: Anticipate fees calculated under Gov. Code 552.262. While standard PDFs may remain nominal, requests requiring data manipulation or bulk extraction may now incur "labor" and "overhead" charges previously barred by the statutory cap.