Specific Performance + Money in Texas Real Estate Deals
When a Texas real estate deal implodes, clients often ask a blunt question: “Can I force the closing and get paid for the delay?” After June 13, 2025, the answer is clearer.
In White Knight Dev., LLC v. Simmons, the Supreme Court of Texas clarified that, while specific performance usually replaces legal damages, courts may award a narrow category of equitable monetary relief tied to delay in performance of a real property contract.
This is a quiet but meaningful upgrade in leverage for high-dollar buyers and sellers.
After White Knight, what carrying costs and delay dollars are now on the table?
High-end Texas real estate disputes used to revolve around an either/or choice:
specific performance (force the deal); or
damages (walk away and get paid).
That framework shifted last June, when the Supreme Court of Texas held that, in limited circumstances, a party seeking specific performance of a real estate contract may also recover equitable compensation for expenses caused by the other side’s delay.
This matters most when the transaction value is large enough that months or years of delay translate into six- or seven-figure carrying costs.
The case in plain English
In White Knight, a developer invoked a buy-back provision requiring the sellers to repurchase the property. The sellers refused. The trial court awarded specific performance plus a monetary amount for costs the developer said were caused by the delay. The court of appeals stripped the money award. The Texas Supreme Court reversed in part, holding that some delay-related expenses may be recoverable alongside specific performance when properly characterized and proven.
The new rule: narrow but powerful
The Court reaffirmed the general principle that specific performance and legal damages are generally alternatives—if you get one, you typically don’t get the other. But the Court recognized a narrow equitable exception designed to restore the nonbreaching party to the position it would have occupied had performance been timely.
To qualify, the expenses must be:
foreseeable at the time of contracting;
directly traceable to the delay in performance;
commercially reasonable; and
tethered to the subject property, not the claimant’s broader business problems.
The Court also emphasized that in purchaser-breach situations, recoverable items can include expenses incurred in connection with the seller’s care and custody of the property during the delay.
What “extra dollars” are now realistically in play?
Think of these damages as delay equalizers, not a second bite at full breach damages.
Depending on which side breached and what the contract contemplated, this decision strengthens arguments for:
Buyers seeking to compel a seller to close
Potentially recoverable equitable items may include property-related carrying costs incurred while the buyer was ready to perform but the seller refused to close—assuming the costs are tightly tied to the property and the delay.
Sellers seeking to compel a buyer to close
A seller may have a stronger footing to pursue reimbursement tied to holding and maintaining the property during the buyer’s delay, assuming the expenses meet the Court’s narrow requirements.
What’s not the point of this ruling?
The Court signaled skepticism toward costs that are too attenuated, such as interest or expenses tied to unrelated properties or general business survival narratives.
How does this decision change your litigation strategy in high-value deals?
In premium transactions, time is money in a literal way:
construction timelines,
rate environments,
tax periods,
carry on acquisition loans, and
lost capital efficiency.
Before White Knight, parties often treated specific performance as a binary remedy. Now, the right case can support a two-part recovery strategy:
force the deal; and
recover a carefully defined slice of delay-linked carrying costs.
That can materially change settlement posture.
The checklist your lawyer should start building on Day 1:
To position a White Knight-style recovery, sophisticated counsel will move early to document:
the exact breach-to-judgment delay window;
a clean timeline showing the client was ready, willing, and able to perform;
a narrow, property-centered damages model;
evidence that the expense category was foreseeable when the deal was signed; and
a clear accounting that separates property-tethered costs (recoverable) from business-wide fallout (unrecoverable).
This is where high-fee disputes are won: not in rhetoric, but in tight, admissible, economically coherent proof.
The takeaway
White Knight doesn’t open the floodgates; it opens a well-guarded door.
But in the right Texas real estate dispute—especially where delays have produced significant carrying costs—this clarification gives buyers and sellers a stronger path to argue that specific performance alone doesn’t make them whole, and equity requires a targeted reimbursement for the delay.
