The Story
Picture someone who changed banks in 2014, moved twice, and switched insurers after a bad renewal. Somewhere in there, a final escrow refund of a few hundred dollars was mailed to an address they'd already left.
The check was never cashed. The company held it, then — as Texas law requires — turned it over to the state.
It's still there. It doesn't expire. And they have no idea.
The Mechanism
Texas has an unclaimed property program run by the Comptroller. When a business holds money belonging to someone it can't locate — after a statutory dormancy period — it must hand that money to the state rather than keep it.
The state then holds it indefinitely, on your behalf, waiting for you to claim it.
Homeowners generate this constantly, because moving house is exactly the event that breaks the mail chain:
- Final escrow account refunds after a mortgage is paid off or refinanced
- Insurance premium refunds after switching carriers mid-term
- Utility and municipal deposits from a previous address
- Overpayments returned after a closing
- Old bank accounts, uncashed rebates, final paychecks
There is no deadline. There is no fee. It is your money and the state's job is to give it back.
The Opportunity That Comes To You
This is the single most literal example of the "opportunity that comes to you" idea in this entire series. It is free money, already yours, sitting in a database with your name on it, and the only reason you don't have it is that nobody told you where to look.
Go to claimit.texas.gov. Search your name. Search your spouse's name. Search your maiden name, every previous address, and any business you've owned.
It takes five minutes and costs nothing.
One warning worth more than the rest of this issue: you will occasionally get letters from "asset recovery" firms offering to reclaim these funds for you in exchange for a percentage. You do not need them. The state's process is free and you can do it yourself. Texas caps what such firms may charge, but the correct amount to pay is zero.
While you're at it, the federal equivalents are worth ten more minutes: unclaimed pensions, savings bonds that stopped earning interest, and old FHA mortgage insurance refunds — which specifically affect people who had an FHA loan and paid it off or refinanced early.
The Opportunity You Create
Here's the meta-lesson, and it's why this issue sits where it does in the series.
The money was always there. What was missing was a search.
Almost everything in this newsletter has that structure. The exemption was always available. The protest was always permitted. The PMI was always cancellable. The policy endorsement was always readable. In every case the value existed and the only missing ingredient was somebody looking on purpose.
Homeownership is not primarily a matter of luck or income. It's a matter of periodic, deliberate attention to a small number of documents — most of which you already have.
So here's a suggestion worth more than any single tip: put ninety minutes in your calendar, once a year, in the same week every year. Call it whatever you like. Read the escrow analysis, check the exemption, read the declarations page, check the mortgage statement for PMI, search the unclaimed property database.
Ninety minutes a year. That's the whole system.
Next issue: how to tell a legitimate contractor from a storm chaser — including the questions that make the bad ones leave on their own.
And the roof, which is the one item on that annual list you can't check from a kitchen table. Free HomFax inspection at your home: 45 minutes, timestamped and geotagged photo survey, NOAA hail history for your ZIP including June 1, 2025, written condition report emailed to you, permanently yours. No cost, no obligation, no claim handling.
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