Damage to the Remaining Property in Texas

What remainder damages are

They are the difference between what the remainder was worth as part of the whole tract, and what it is worth standing alone with the project built. Texas folds them into the before and after calculation rather than treating them as a separate award.

What causes them

• A tract severed into pieces that cannot be worked together.
• Pasture separated from its water, or cropland from its irrigation.
• Access relocated, narrowed or removed.
• A remainder too small, too narrow or too irregular for its former use.
• Proximity to a new roadway, transmission line, pump station or compressor.
• Drainage altered, so water now stands where it did not before.
• A building site or development envelope foreclosed by the corridor.

Disclosure under HB 2730

House Bill 2730, passed in 2021, added plain language disclosure obligations about damage to the remainder. The offer material an entity provides should address what the project does to the land you keep, not only what it pays for the part acquired.

Proving the loss

Appraisal evidence carries it, supported by engineering drawings and by records of how the land is used. Photographs taken before construction, aerial imagery, grazing and cropping records, and the plan sheets showing the finished condition are all useful and all easier to gather early.

What can offset them

Where a project confers a genuine benefit on the remainder, that benefit can bear on the after value. How a benefit is defined and measured is contested, because a generous view of benefits can erase a real loss on paper.