Real Estate Lawyer in Miami

Miami-Dade has its own documentary stamp tax rate. In every other Florida county the tax on a deed is 70 cents per $100 of the price. In Miami-Dade it is 60 cents per $100, plus a surtax of 45 cents per $100 that does not apply to a deed transferring only a single-family dwelling (Florida Department of Revenue). A commercial building can therefore carry a higher deed tax than a single-family house at the same price. The purchase contract usually settles who pays which charge; see how closing costs are usually split.

Condos and HOAs add their own paperwork. Many Miami-Dade sales involve an association. Before closing, the association issues an estoppel certificate stating what the owner owes, and condominium buyers should ask about milestone inspections and the structural integrity reserve study, and about any pending special assessment. If you are financing a condo purchase, the lender reviews the building as well as you; see what makes a condo non-warrantable. The condo and HOA guides below cover each of these.

Sellers have disclosure duties too. A Florida home seller must tell the buyer about known facts that materially affect the value of the property and are not readily observable to the buyer, a duty the Florida Supreme Court set in Johnson v. Davis (1985). Since October 1, 2024, the seller of residential real property must also give the buyer a written flood disclosure at or before the time the sales contract is signed (Florida Statutes section 689.302). Putting every disclosure in writing, and keeping a signed copy, is what settles questions after closing. Our guide explains what a Florida seller must disclose.

Selling for less than you owe. If the price will not cover the mortgage, the lender has to approve a short sale, and the other liens still have to be paid or released at closing. Property taxes are a first lien from January 1 of the tax year (Florida Statutes section 197.122), and a condominium buyer becomes jointly liable with the seller for unpaid assessments (section 718.116(1)(a)), so the association’s estoppel certificate has to be settled as well. Read the lender’s approval letter for whether it keeps the right to collect a deficiency. Our page on short sales in Miami walks through the process.

Record the deed. An unrecorded deed is not good against the seller’s creditors or a later purchaser for value who had no notice of it (section 695.01(1)), so the deed is recorded in the Official Records right after closing. The same applies to a family transfer that involves no sale; see deed preparation and transfers in Miami.

A spouse who is not on the deed may still have to sign. A married owner can sell, mortgage, or give away a homestead only with the spouse joining, even when the deed names one owner (Florida Constitution, Article X, section 4(c)). This often comes up when one spouse bought the home before the marriage, or when a couple is separated but not yet divorced. A deed of a married owner’s homestead without the spouse’s signature can become a title defect that surfaces years later, when the property is sold. Tell us at the start whether you are married and whether you live in the property, so the right people are ready to sign at closing. Our guide covers adding or removing someone from a deed.

Selling a home after a death. Who can sign the deed depends on how the home was held and how it passes. A home that was the owner’s protected homestead is not an asset in the hands of the personal representative (Florida Statutes section 733.608(1)), so it passes to the heirs or devisees, who sign. For other estate property, a personal representative whose will gives a power of sale can sell without court approval, but one without that power needs the court to authorize or confirm the sale before title passes (section 733.613(1) and (2)). Title companies usually want to see how that question was answered, often through a court order determining homestead, before they will insure the buyer. Our pages on probate property sales in Miami and whether you can sell a house in probate walk through it.

A contractor’s lien can hold up a closing. If a contractor, subcontractor, or supplier says it was not paid for work on the property, its recorded claim of lien turns up in the title search, and the title company will usually want it released, discharged, or moved off the property before it insures the buyer. A construction lien does not last longer than 1 year after it is recorded unless the lienor files suit to enforce it within that time (Florida Statutes section 713.22(1)). An owner can shorten that window by recording a Notice of Contest of Lien: the clerk serves it on the lienor, and a lienor who does not sue within 60 days after service loses the lien automatically (section 713.22(2)). When the closing date is too close for either path, the lien can be transferred to a bond or a cash deposit with the clerk so the sale can go forward (section 713.24). Our guide to construction liens and how to remove them compares each option.

Buying a house in an HOA community. Many Miami-Dade houses, not only condos, are part of a homeowners’ association. For those sales, Florida law requires that the buyer be presented with a disclosure summary before signing the contract (Florida Statutes section 720.401(1)(a)). If the contract is signed first, the buyer may cancel it by written notice to the seller or the seller’s agent within 3 days after receiving the summary, or before closing, whichever comes first; the buyer cannot waive that right, and it ends at closing (section 720.401(1)(c)). The summary is a starting point, not the whole picture: before your inspection period ends, ask for the association’s rules on leasing, parking, and exterior changes, its current budget, and whether any special assessment has been voted, and expect the estoppel certificate before closing. Our pages on residential closings in Miami and what happens when HOA dues go unpaid cover the rest.

Selling one Florida home and buying another. The homestead exemption stays with the property, not the owner, so a buyer who moves into a new home has to apply for it again. The application goes to the property appraiser of the county where the new home is, by March 1, for a home you owned and made your permanent residence on January 1 (Florida Statutes section 196.011); for a Miami-Dade home that is the Miami-Dade Property Appraiser. The new owner does not start from zero, though. If you had a homestead exemption as of January 1 of any of the three preceding years, you can carry up to $500,000 of the Save Our Homes difference between your old home’s market value and assessed value to the new one, anywhere in Florida (section 193.155(8)). Neither step happens by itself, so keep the closing statements from both sales and plan the filing before the March 1 after you move. Our Deerfield Beach page walks through a move between counties, and our guide to deed transfers covers which deeds keep or reset the assessment cap.