You hear it in every Miami office: "foreign buyers get 15% withheld." It is false, and it is the most expensive misunderstanding in the international market. FIRPTA withholds nothing from the buyer. It is withholding on the proceeds a foreign seller receives, and the person who must execute it, and who answers if it is not executed, is the buyer. Everything else in this guide follows from that.
The full name is the Foreign Investment in Real Property Tax Act, a 1980 law with a simple purpose: when someone who does not live in the United States sells property here and leaves, the IRS wants whatever tax may be owed on the gain collected up front. The withholding is not the tax. It is a deposit. If less turns out to be owed, the difference is claimed on a return.
Who buys from abroad, with numbers
Florida remains the top destination for international buyers in the United States, with 20% of all transactions, ahead of California (19%) and Texas (12%), according to the international transactions report NAR published on July 29, 2026.
The volume, though, shrank. Between April 2025 and March 2026, foreign buyers purchased 67,100 homes worth $45.3 billion: 14% fewer transactions and 19.1% fewer dollars than the year before. The median price was $465,000 and 48% paid all cash. And a detail that rarely gets told: 56% of those buyers live in the United States (residents or visa holders); only 44% were buying from abroad. Canada led by transaction count at 16%, Mexico followed at 14%, and China, third by count, was first by dollars at $7.6 billion.
A smaller, more competitive market means the closings that do happen cannot be lost to a badly explained formality. Where people moving to Florida come from, and what they are looking for, is a separate story: who is moving to Florida.
FIRPTA in one human paragraph
When the seller of U.S. real property is a foreign person, the buyer must withhold a percentage of the amount realized and send it to the IRS. The IRS page on FIRPTA withholding puts it plainly: the rate is generally 15%, and in most cases the buyer is the withholding agent. That second half is the part nobody hears: if withholding was required and did not happen, the IRS can come after the buyer.
The operative word is "foreign" in the tax sense, not the immigration sense. A U.S. tax resident is not a foreign person no matter what passport they hold, and the person who establishes that is the seller, through a certification of non-foreign status. That single document, signed early and verified by whoever closes, resolves half of these cases.
The exceptions that really exist
The one used most in Florida is the $300,000 residence exception. If the amount realized is not more than $300,000 and the buyer (or a family member) will use the property as a residence, occupying it at least half the days in each of the first two twelve-month periods after the transfer, no withholding is required. It is listed among the IRS exceptions from FIRPTA withholding, and the use condition is real: it is a commitment, not a checkbox.
There is also a middle tier many people have never heard of: when the buyer acquires the property for use as a residence and the amount realized is more than $300,000 but not more than $1,000,000, withholding drops from 15% to 10%, per the instructions for Form 8288. On a $700,000 deal that is a $35,000 difference in the check that leaves closing.
And there is the formal route to withholding less: the withholding certificate. The seller applies to the IRS on Form 8288-B for withholding based on the actual gain rather than a flat percentage of the price. It has to be filed before closing, and it has to be built into the calendar.
The calendar, which is where this breaks
The hard rule: Form 8288, with Form 8288-A and the money withheld, must reach the IRS by the 20th day after the date of transfer. If an application for a withholding certificate was filed before closing and is still pending, the amount is still withheld but is not remitted until the 20th day after the IRS mails its decision, with an explicit warning in the instructions: if the principal purpose of the application was to delay payment, interest and penalties run from the 21st day after the transfer.
Twenty days is not much. In practice this is administered by closing: the title attorney or title company withholds, prepares the forms and remits. Your job as the agent is to make sure it was discussed on day one, not on closing day.
The three mistakes that delay these closings
- Finding out at the closing table that the seller is a foreign person. That is a day-one question, and it gets asked the same way of everyone: asking it only when a name sounds foreign is bad practice and precisely the kind of unequal treatment fair housing law prohibits.
- Leaving tax identification numbers to the end. A foreign seller needs tax identification for this process, and getting one is not instant. The right question for the CPA, at the start, is who files for it and how long it takes.
- Promising the withholding will be reduced. An IRS certificate is applied for; it is not guaranteed and it is not resolved in a week. Promising an outcome a federal agency decides is the fastest way to lose the trust your business runs on.
None of this is tax or legal advice, and here less than anywhere: the figures and deadlines in this guide are verified against IRS pages as of the review date above, but every deal has its wrinkle and the leads in that conversation are the seller’s CPA and the title attorney who closes. Your part is simpler and more valuable: ask early, ask in every deal, and get the right people at the table before there is any hurry.
