The contract isn't the standard form. What does that change at closing?
A non-standard contract changes the closing because the closing follows the contract. Deadlines, who pays which cost, what happens on default, and which conditions must be met before funds move are all read from the document in front of us — so a bespoke contract has to be read line by line rather than assumed.
Why does the contract form matter to the title agency?
Because the settlement agent does what the contract says. The closing statement allocates costs the way the contract allocates them. The deadlines that drive the file are the contract's deadlines. What has to happen before funds are disbursed is what the contract requires.
With a familiar form, most of that is known before it is read. With a bespoke one, none of it is — and the assumptions that make a standard file move quickly are exactly what causes errors on a non-standard one.
What gets read differently?
In order:
- The parties and the property. Names exactly as they will appear on the deed, capacity, and a legal description that matches the commitment.
- Price, deposit and who holds it. Whether we are the escrow agent, when the deposit is due, and what the escrow instructions actually say.
- The closing date and how deadlines count. Business days or calendar days, from what event, and what happens if a date falls on a weekend or holiday.
- Conditions to closing. What has to be satisfied before funds move, and who decides it has been.
- Cost allocation. Every line that will appear on the closing statement, read against what the contract says rather than against local custom.
- Title and survey provisions. What the seller must deliver, the objection period, and the cure period.
- Default and remedies. What happens to the deposit and who directs its release — the clause most likely to matter and least likely to have been read.
- Every addendum, in date order. A later addendum that contradicts the base contract is the most common source of a real conflict.
The recurring categories are:
- Who pays for what. Local custom is a default, not a rule, and a bespoke contract often departs from it deliberately.
- Deadlines and how they are counted. Business days or calendar days, and from what event.
- Conditions to closing. What has to be satisfied, and who decides that it has been.
- Default and remedies. What happens to the deposit, and who directs its release.
- Escrow terms. Who holds the deposit, on what conditions, and what instructions govern its release.
Our practice
How Bayit Title handles this
We read the whole contract, including every addendum, when the file opens rather than when the closing statement is being prepared. Where a term is ambiguous about who pays or when something is due, we ask both sides to confirm in writing before we build the statement around our reading of it. We do not interpret a disputed term for the parties — that is their lawyers' work — but we will say plainly that it needs resolving, while there is still time to resolve it.
When should an attorney be involved?
Whenever the parties read a term differently, and generally whenever a contract departs materially from a standard form. Interpreting contract language is legal work. We can tell you that two provisions conflict; we cannot tell you which one governs.
Common questions
Will you close on any contract form?
We close on what the parties have agreed, provided we can carry out the settlement terms and the file is insurable. Where a term is unworkable as written, we say so early.
Does a non-standard contract slow the closing?
It adds reading time at the front. It slows things later only when a term is ambiguous and nobody raised it until the end.
Can you tell us what a clause means?
No. We can tell you how it affects what we are being asked to do, and where it conflicts with something else. Interpretation is for a lawyer.
Does an out-of-state form work in Florida?
The parties can contract as they like, but the deed, execution and recording requirements are Florida's regardless of what form the contract took.
Four Florida requirements catch out-of-state forms often enough to be worth naming.
Execution formalities. Fla. Stat. § 689.01(1) requires the deed to be signed in the presence of two subscribing witnesses, and § 695.03 separately requires an acknowledgment before it can be recorded. The two are cumulative rather than alternative: a properly witnessed deed still has to be acknowledged. Most states require neither, and a form drafted elsewhere will prompt for neither. This is caught at signing, but only because someone is looking for it.
Spousal joinder on homestead. Article X, section 4(c) of the Florida Constitution requires the owner's spouse to join in a conveyance or mortgage of homestead property even where the spouse is not on title. What follows from a deed that lacks that joinder is a legal question for the seller's counsel rather than one this page should answer. What is not in doubt is that the joinder is a requirement, and that it is not something waived at the closing table. Out-of-state forms routinely have no marital status question and no place for a joining spouse to sign, which is why marital status is asked when the file opens rather than at signing.
Documentary stamp tax. Under Fla. Stat. § 201.02 the tax on a deed is 70 cents per $100 of consideration, or fraction of it. Miami-Dade is the exception, and it is two separate things rather than one. The deed rate there is 60 cents, because § 201.0205 disapplies the ten-cent increase made by ch. 92-317 in any county that implemented ch. 83-220 — the statute names no county, and it is the Department of Revenue that publishes which one it describes. Sitting on top of that is a discretionary surtax, which comes from § 201.031 and § 125.0167 rather than from § 201.02, and which is capped at 45 cents per $100 rather than fixed at it. There is no surtax at all on a document conveying only a single-family residence. A contract drafted in a state with no transfer tax, or a flat one, tends to be silent on who pays any of it, and silence on a Florida closing statement is a conversation nobody wants on closing day.
Closing custom. Who selects and pays for the owner's policy is customary in Florida and varies by county — and custom is a default, not a rule. An out-of-state form that simply does not address it leaves the allocation to be agreed, and it is better agreed at contract than at settlement.