For sale by owner in Florida: how does a sale close without a real estate agent?

Yes. Florida's real estate licensing law defines a broker as a person who acts "for another, and for a compensation" (Fla. Stat. § 475.01(1)(a)), and it exempts "Any individual, corporation, partnership, trust, joint venture, or other entity which sells, exchanges, or leases its own real property" (Fla. Stat. § 475.011(2)). The exemption has one limit: it is not available to an owner in the business of selling real property to the public, to the extent the owner employs someone paid by the transaction to make the sales.

So an owner may sell their own home, and a buyer may buy one for themselves, without either of them holding a license or hiring someone who does. What the absence of agents changes is who does the work an agent would otherwise have a hand in. The closing itself does not change.

The two of you, or your attorneys. A contract for the sale of land cannot be enforced in a Florida court unless the agreement, or a note or memorandum of it, is "in writing and signed by the party to be charged" (Fla. Stat. § 725.01). A title company closes on the written contract.

The contract matters more than any other document in the sale, because the closing follows it. Its deadlines are the deadlines that drive the file, the closing statement allocates each cost the way the contract allocates it, and what has to happen before money moves is what the contract requires. We read these things in it, in this order:

1. The parties and the property. Names exactly as they will appear on the deed, and a legal description that matches the record.
2. Price, deposit and who holds it. Whether we are the escrow agent, and when the deposit is due.
3. The closing date and how deadlines count. Business days or calendar days, and from what event.
4. Conditions to closing. Financing, inspections, an association's approval, and who decides each has been met.
5. Cost allocation. Who pays for the owner's title policy, the searches, the deed stamps and the recording.
6. Title and survey provisions. What the seller must deliver, and how long the buyer has to object.
7. Default. What happens to the deposit, and who directs its release.

The form this site sets out paragraph by paragraph is the Florida Realtors/Florida Bar residential contract: every deadline in it, and who pays what. It is a copyrighted form. A Florida real estate attorney can prepare the contract, on that form or on another. We do not write the contract, supply a form for it or advise on its terms; what we do is read all of it on the day the file opens. A contract on another form closes too, and the page on non-standard contracts says what that changes.

Several disclosures that a statute puts on the seller. In a sale without agents, nobody brings these forms to the table unless the seller or the seller's attorney does.

Three of these carry a consequence written into the statute, and each is the kind a home-made contract trips over.

• The association summary. If it was not given before the buyer signed, the buyer may cancel by written notice within 3 days of receiving it or before closing, whichever comes first, and that right cannot be waived (§ 720.401(1)(c)).
• The condominium documents. Unless the buyer had them more than 7 days, not counting Saturdays, Sundays and legal holidays, before signing, the buyer may cancel within 7 such days of signing and receiving them. The contract has to carry one of the statute's two clauses, and a contract that carries neither is voidable by the buyer before closing (§ 718.503(2)(d)).
• Lead-based paint. The federal statute applies to "target housing", which is housing "constructed prior to 1978" with exceptions for housing for the elderly or persons with disabilities and for dwellings with no bedroom (42 U.S.C. § 4851b(27)). The contract has to carry a Lead Warning Statement that the buyer signs, and a person who knowingly violates the section is liable to the buyer for three times the damages (§ 4852d(a)(2), (b)(3)).

One rule about advertising arrives in 2027. Beginning February 1, 2027, "the current owner's ad valorem taxes may not be included in any printed listing materials concerning a property" (§ 689.261(3)(c)), which reaches a flyer an owner prints as much as a broker's.

This table is the statutes this site's contract page sets out, and it is not a complete list for every property. The Florida Realtors/Florida Bar forms also have the seller state that they know of no facts materially affecting the value of the property that are not readily observable and have not been disclosed to the buyer (¶10(j)). What a seller has to disclose about a particular property's condition is a question for a real estate attorney, before the contract is signed.

The escrow agent the contract names. With no broker in the sale, that can be the title company: the Department of Financial Services' consumer page says that "A properly licensed title insurance agent may act as an escrow agent for the funds received from others" (Florida DFS, Title insurance overview).

A deposit a title agency receives is trust money, received in a fiduciary capacity and belonging to the people entitled to it. It must be placed immediately in a Florida institution insured by the FDIC or the NCUSIF, used only under the instructions it was accepted on, and it is never subject to the agency's own debts (Fla. Stat. § 626.8473(2)–(4)).

If the sale falls through, the same page says, "the money cannot be returned until the closing agent receives written approval from both parties; the seller and the buyer." What happens when the two do not agree is on the disputed deposit page.

Whoever pays for the title insurance has the first choice, and who pays is the county's custom and the contract's terms. The Department's page puts it this way: "The person paying the title insurance premium gets the first choice of closing/title agent. However, the lender must approve of the closing/title agent chosen. The buyer and seller should agree on the selected closing/title agent, but they may choose to do a split closing where the buyer uses one agency and the seller uses another." 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.

Custom is a default, and the contract decides. On the Florida Realtors/Florida Bar form the choice is three check-boxes in ¶9(c), and the form supplies no default among them:

• 9(c)(i). The seller chooses the closing agent and pays for the owner's policy and the search; the buyer pays for any lender's policy.
• 9(c)(ii). The buyer chooses the closing agent and pays for the owner's policy, the search and any lender's policy.
• 9(c)(iii), the Miami-Dade/Broward provision. The buyer chooses the closing agent and pays both premiums; the seller pays for the title search, the tax search and the municipal lien search.

With no agents in the sale, the two of you tick the box. If the buyer is financing the purchase 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).

Everything between the signed contract and the recorded deed. Florida's title insurance law names the work: closing services are "preparing documents necessary to close the transaction, conducting the closing, or handling the disbursing of funds related to the closing" (Fla. Stat. § 627.7711(1)(a)), and the title work is the search, the determination of insurability, the commitment and the policy (§ 627.7711(1)(b)).

For a buyer dealing with an owner directly, the search answers the first question a buyer has: whether the seller owns the home and what is recorded against it. It covers the chain of title, mortgages and their releases, judgments and liens against the owners, easements and restrictions, and taxes. A municipal lien search adds what the county's record does not show: open permits, code violations and unpaid utility charges. An insurer may not issue a commitment or a policy until it has determined insurability from "a reasonable search" of the records (Fla. Stat. § 627.7845(1)).

For a seller, the commitment lists what has to be cleared before the sale can close: a mortgage to be paid off, a judgment to be satisfied, a permit to be closed. The seller's lender has 10 days from a written request to send the payoff figure (Fla. Stat. § 701.04(1)(a)), and an association has 10 business days to issue its estoppel certificate (Fla. Stat. § 718.116(8); § 720.30851). The mortgage is paid from the seller's proceeds at the closing. How long does a Florida title search and closing take? sets out every deadline before a closing and who holds it.

The same as any other closing, line for line. The title insurance premium is set by rule for the whole state (Fla. Admin. Code R. 69O-186.003), and the documentary stamp tax on the deed is 70 cents on each $100 of the price outside Miami-Dade (Fla. Stat. § 201.02). Neither depends on whether an agent is in the sale.

Deed stamps outside Miami-Dade come to $2,100 on a $300,000 sale, $3,500 on a $500,000 sale and $7,000 on a $1,000,000 sale; the Florida doc stamp tax calculator works it out for any price and for Miami-Dade.

On the Florida Realtors/Florida Bar form, ¶9 puts the deed stamps, the association's estoppel fees and the charges to cure title on the seller, and recording the deed, the lender's policy, the survey and the loan's own taxes and costs on the buyer. A contract on another form has to say who pays each, because the closing statement follows the contract. The full bill, line by line, is on seller closing costs and buyer closing costs, and every figure a rule or a statute sets is on one page with its citation.

What a sale without agents changes on the closing statement is the commission, which comes from a listing agreement and not from any rule. The seller net sheet works a seller's net from the price down, with the commission as a figure the seller types in. A buyer may still have a broker of their own: the Florida Realtors/Florida Bar form lists a rider for the buyer's broker's compensation among its check-boxes (¶19, Rider GG), and what the contract says about it is what the closing statement follows.

Our own charges for closing services and searches are quoted on the file: request a quote.

Before two witnesses and a notary. A deed has to be signed in the presence of two subscribing witnesses (Fla. Stat. § 689.01(1)), and to be recorded its execution has to be acknowledged before a notary or another officer the statute names (Fla. Stat. § 695.03). The clerk will not record it unless each signer's and each witness's name and post-office address are printed on it, with the name and address of the person who prepared it (Fla. Stat. § 695.26(1)).

One requirement surprises sellers. Article X, section 4(c) of the Florida Constitution requires the owner's spouse to join in a conveyance of homestead property even where the spouse is not on title. That is why we ask a seller's marital status when the file opens and not at the signing.

The signing can be in our office, wherever the signer is, or online; buyer and seller do not have to sign at the same time or in the same place. Mobile and remote signings sets the three side by side.

Through the title company's trust account, and by wire on instructions confirmed by phone. The buyer's money and any loan come in, the seller's mortgage, the taxes and the closing costs are paid, and the seller's proceeds go out, each line as the closing statement shows it.

A buyer and a seller dealing directly have no agent passing messages between them, and nobody else to notice an email that is not what it seems. Our wiring instructions are sent once, in writing, at the start of the file, and they do not change. Call before you wire, on 754.253.2270 or a number you already had, never the number in an email. How to verify a Florida title company, and keep your closing money safe has the rest, including how to check a title agency's license on the state's record.

The buyer has a federal duty that the closing carries out. Where the seller is a foreign person, the buyer withholds 15% of the amount realized at the closing, unless an exception applies, and must report and pay it over within 20 days of the transfer. The figures are on the FIRPTA withholding page, and FIRPTA closings in Florida describes how the closing handles it. With no agent to ask it, it is a question for the buyer and the seller to settle at contract, not in the week of closing.

Before the contract is signed, if either of you wants it drafted, negotiated or explained. Interpreting contract language is legal work: we can tell you that two provisions conflict, and we cannot tell you which one governs. An attorney is also the person to ask what a seller must disclose about a particular property, what to do when the two of you read a term differently, and what follows when a deadline is missed or a deposit is claimed by both sides.