Buying a Florida home from another state: how do you close without coming to Florida?

Yes. We hold closings three ways, and two of them come to you.

• Online, by remote online notarization. You appear on camera before a Florida online notary, prove who you are and sign electronically. The notary has to be in Florida; you do not. Under Fla. Stat. § 117.209(3), an online notary physically located in Florida may perform an online notarization "regardless of whether the principal or any witnesses are physically located in this state", and § 117.209(4) makes Florida law the measure of the act wherever you were.
• On paper, before a notary we send to you. We arrange a signing anywhere in the United States with three business days' notice, at your kitchen table or your office. The file is prepared and the documents reviewed here, as they are for any closing, and the closer who prepared it is reachable during the signing.
• In our office, at 3301 N University Drive in Coral Springs, if you are in Florida for the closing and would rather sit across a table.

Everyone on a file can usually sign a different way. Mobile and remote signings sets the three side by side, and Remote online notarization closings in Florida has the online route in full.

Whoever pays for the title insurance, in the first instance, and who pays is the county's custom and the contract's terms. The Department of Financial Services' consumer page says the person paying the title insurance premium gets the first choice of closing agent, and that the lender has to approve the one chosen (Florida DFS, Title insurance overview). Who customarily pays in each county is on who pays for title insurance in Florida, and who customarily chooses on who chooses the title company.

If the purchase is financed with a federally related mortgage loan, federal law adds one rule. A seller may not require, as a condition of selling, that the buyer buy title insurance from a particular title company, and a seller who does is liable to the buyer for three times the title insurance charges (12 U.S.C. § 2608). It does not reach a cash purchase.

Two acceptances, and neither is up to you. Your lender has to accept remotely notarized documents, and the underwriter has to accept the platform the session runs on. We get both in writing before the session is booked, not after.

The notarization itself has to be performed by a Florida notary who is separately registered with the Department of State as an online notary public (Fla. Stat. § 117.225). Nobody at Bayit Title holds that registration, so a Florida-registered online notary performs it, under that notary's own registration, on a platform our underwriter accepts. The file is still prepared and reviewed here.

To sign online you need a computer or phone with a camera and a microphone, a connection that will hold for the session, and government-issued photo identification. Unless the notary knows you personally, your identity is established three ways: you present the identification over the video link, the platform analyzes it, and you pass identity proofing, by a short set of timed questions drawn from public and proprietary data or another method the chapter allows (Fla. Stat. § 117.265). The session is recorded.

If you are borrowing, the lender's Closing Disclosure has to reach you three business days before closing, and a changed APR or loan product restarts the three days (12 C.F.R. § 1026.19(f)). For an online signing we send you the documents to read ahead of the session, and the closer who prepared them is reachable while it runs. How long does a Florida title search and closing take? sets out every deadline before a closing and who holds each one.

By wire, and only on instructions you have confirmed by phone. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau describes how closing wire fraud works: criminals compromise a real estate professional's email, watch the conversation until a closing is near, then send the buyer a spoofed message with last-minute changes to the wiring instructions (CFPB, Mortgage closing scams).

• Call before you wire, on a number you already had: the one you wrote down at the start, or the one on this website, 754.253.2270. Never the number in the email.
• Treat a change as fraud. Our wiring instructions are sent once, in writing, at the start of the file, and they do not change.
• Call after you wire, to confirm the money landed.

If a wire goes to the wrong place, call your bank at once and ask for a recall, then file at ic3.gov. How to verify a Florida title company, and keep your closing money safe has the rest, including how to check our license on the state's record.

The homestead exemption, if the home will be your permanent residence. It is not part of the closing, and nothing we record creates it. You apply to the county Property Appraiser "on or before March 1 of each year", for the home you live in on 1 January, and missing the date "shall constitute a waiver of the exemption privilege for that year" (Fla. Stat. § 196.011(1)(a)), subject to the late-filing provision in subsection (9). A buyer who closes in 2027 and lives in the home on 1 January 2028 applies by 1 March 2028. The seller's exemption ends with the sale. What does Florida's Amendment 3 do to the homestead exemption, and what changes at a closing? has the rest.

Where someone is signing under a power of attorney, where a signer's capacity is in question, or where you want advice on the documents themselves rather than an explanation of what they are. We can tell you what a document does in the transaction; we are not lawyers and we do not advise on whether to sign it. And if money has gone to the wrong place and the bank will not recall it, that is a claim, and claims are for lawyers.