Texas Option Period: Calendar Days or Business Days?

Calendar days. The Texas option period is counted in calendar days — Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays all count, the period ends at 5:00 p.m. local time on its last day, and it does not extend for anything. But the question in the title has a second, sneakier answer: the deadline for delivering the option fee works differently, and it’s the difference between those two rules that catches people. If you coordinate Texas files, this is the counting math you need cold.

The rule: every day counts

The TREC One to Four Family Residential Contract gives the buyer an unrestricted right to terminate “within ___ days after the Effective Date.” Days, in TREC contracts, means calendar days. There’s no clause anywhere in the form that converts them to business days, and the Texas Real Estate Commission has never interpreted it any other way.

So a 7-day option period includes the weekend inside it. A 5-day option period negotiated on a Thursday burns both Saturday and Sunday. Agents sometimes promise buyers “a week to get the inspection done” and then write 5 in the blank — that’s a five-calendar-day week with maybe three usable business days in it, and the inspector’s next opening is Tuesday. As the TC, you’re the one who catches that at intake, or nobody does.

Counting from day zero

The effective date — the date the last party signed and the broker filled in the final acceptance date — is day zero. Counting starts the next day.

Contract effective Tuesday the 4th with a 7-day option period:

• Day 1: Wednesday the 5th
• Day 2: Thursday the 6th
• Day 3: Friday the 7th
• Days 4-5: the weekend (yes, they count)
• Day 6: Monday the 10th
• Day 7: Tuesday the 11th — option period ends at 5:00 p.m.

The most common counting error we see is starting on the effective date itself, which ends the period a day early. Annoying but harmless — you terminated with time to spare. The error in the other direction, treating the effective date as day one of a count that someone else starts at day zero, is how a buyer’s agent sends a termination notice one day after the right to terminate expired. That one isn’t harmless at all.

The 5:00 p.m. rule

Since the 2021 contract revisions, Paragraph 5 is explicit: the seller must receive written notice of termination by 5:00 p.m. local time where the property is located, on the last day of the option period. Received, not sent. Local to the property, not to the buyer — a Houston buyer relocating from California doesn’t get until 5:00 Pacific.

Paragraph 5 also carries a “time is of the essence” clause, which is contract language for: the deadline is the deadline, courts will not rescue you, and neither will an apologetic phone call at 5:15. If the buyer is waffling on inspection findings at 3:30 on the last day, the safe play is to have the signed termination ready to deliver and release it the moment the decision lands — not to draft it at 4:55.

The weekend trap: no extension at the end

Here’s where the calendar-day rule gets teeth. If the last day of the option period falls on a Saturday, it ends that Saturday at 5:00 p.m. Not Monday. The TREC contract extends nothing about the option period’s end date for weekends or holidays.

This surprises people because plenty of other states do roll deadlines. Florida’s FR/BAR contract, for instance, extends any deadline landing on a weekend or national legal holiday to the next business day — and computes short time periods without counting weekends at all. A TC who runs files in multiple states has to hold both rules in their head at once, which is why we built state-specific date rules into TC Track rather than trusting anyone’s memory, ours included.

In Texas: the option period ends when it ends. A 10-day option period signed on a Wednesday ends on a Saturday, and the buyer who assumed they had until Monday owns a house they may not want.

The exception: delivering the fee and earnest money

Now the second answer to the title question. The buyer must deliver the earnest money and the option fee to the escrow agent within 3 days after the effective date — and for this deadline, Paragraph 5 does grant an extension. If day 3 falls on a Saturday, Sunday, or legal holiday, delivery extends to the end of the next day that isn’t one.

So on a contract effective Thursday, the fee is due Sunday — which rolls to Monday. Same contract, same paragraph, two different counting rules:

• Option fee / earnest money delivery: 3 days, extends past weekends and holidays
• Option period termination right: stated days, ends at 5:00 p.m., extends for nothing

Miss the fee delivery and the consequence is severe: no timely option fee means no unrestricted right to terminate, no matter how many days were written in the blank. The option period a buyer paid nothing for is an option period they don’t have. On every Texas intake, the fee-delivery deadline belongs on the checklist as its own line item with its own date — not as a footnote to the option period.

What this means for your intake checklist

Every Texas contract that crosses your desk should generate these entries within the first hour:

1. Effective date confirmed — final acceptance date filled in, legible, matching the signature dates’ story
2. Option fee + earnest money due date — 3 days, rolled forward if it lands on a weekend or holiday
3. Delivery confirmed — receipt from the escrow agent, not the buyer’s word
4. Option period end — counted from day zero, calendar days, with the 5:00 p.m. time attached
5. A reminder 24 hours before the option ends — so “are we terminating?” gets asked while there’s still time to act on the answer

If you’re building files by hand, that’s five entries with two different counting rules and one time-of-day flag, repeated on every file — the kind of repetitive date math that belongs in a reusable checklist template rather than in anyone’s head. When a contract amendment moves the effective date (it happens — backdated acceptance, corrected signatures), every one of those dates moves with it, which is the cascade problem that sinks spreadsheet tracking on exactly the files that are already complicated.

The option period is the shortest fuse in a Texas file and the only major deadline with no safety net on its back end. Count it in calendar days, start from day zero, respect the 5:00 p.m. cutoff, and treat the fee delivery as its own deadline with its own rule. Get those four things right and the scariest week of the escrow runs itself.

Related guides

• How to calculate contract deadlines that never slip
• What happens when closing falls on a federal holiday?
• The contract-to-close checklist TCs actually use
• Running TC work on spreadsheets: what it really costs