A Sunday-signed order and a $300,000 sale still didn't get his home back
A homeowner who sued his HOA to reclaim his foreclosed house lost his appeal - because his mortgage lender, not the association, did the foreclosing.
On August 20, 2026, the Ninth District Court of Appeals in Beaumont, Texas, upheld a trial court's refusal to force Cedar Woods Community Association, Inc. to return a residence to the homeowner while he litigates a separate suit to clear title.
The homeowner, representing himself, wanted a mandatory injunction - a court order making the association hand back possession right away. His case rested on knocking out a 2022 order that had let the association foreclose over unpaid assessments. He argued that order was void several times over: a judge signed it on a Sunday, the paperwork was filed days before that signature, he never agreed to it, and he was never properly served.
The court did not resolve any of that, and it did not have to. It pointed to the association's threshold defense that the homeowner had sued the wrong party. In court papers, the association said it filed "an Application for Expedited Foreclosure Pursuant to Rule 736 due to the Plaintiff's failure to pay [his] assessments," but "did not foreclose on the Plaintiff's property." The entity that did, it said, was "the Plaintiff's lender, Guild Mortgage Company."
The mortgage paperwork tracked that account. The borrower financed the home through Guild Mortgage in 2018 under a deed of trust. After he defaulted, the lender pursued a non-judicial foreclosure - a sale run under the deed of trust's power of sale, with no court judgment behind it. A substitute trustee sold the property to the highest bidder on December 6, 2022, and a Substitute Trustee's Deed passed it to Guild Mortgage Company, LLC. The homeowner alleged the home later changed hands for about $300,000 and now sits in an LLC's name. Guild Mortgage was not a party to the appeal.
The court found no abuse of discretion. It noted the homeowner had conceded in his own filings that the association no longer held or controlled the house, so it could not be ordered to return what it did not have. Even assuming his other allegations were true, the court said, he had not shown a probable right to the relief he sought.
The panel disposed of the rest briefly. The rule the homeowner cited to demand a hearing applies only when a court grants a restraining order, not when it denies one, and the Sunday signature did not void the 2022 order.
The ruling is narrow. The court reviewed only the injunction denial, not whether the foreclosure was proper. The homeowner's quiet-title and wrongful-foreclosure claims remain pending in the trial court.
