Selling in Florida without losing the closing in the last week.

In Florida, selling a home while sitting on a defect you know about is not shrewd. It is how you get sued after closing. The state Supreme Court settled it in *Johnson v. Davis* (480 So. 2d 625, 1985): a seller must disclose facts they know of, that materially affect the value of the property, and that the buyer cannot see and does not know. All three at once.

The surprising part is what does not switch that duty off. Selling "as is" moves who pays for repairs onto the buyer. It does not erase your obligation to say what you know. Two different things, signed in the same contract.

The tax almost nobody works out correctly

The deed carries documentary stamp tax: 70 cents per $100 of total consideration, in every county but one. Miami-Dade is its own case, and it is the one people get wrong. There the rate is 60 cents, plus a 45-cent surtax. But that surtax does not apply to a document transferring only a single-family dwelling.

Which means a single-family home in Miami-Dade pays less than it would anywhere else in Florida, and anything that is not one pays $1.05 per $100, half a point more. On a half-million-dollar sale, the gap between those two figures is $1,750.

The savings that move with you, if you ask in time

This is the part that leaves the most money on the table and gets explained the least. If your home has homestead, the Save Our Homes cap has been freezing its assessed value year after year: the gap between what it is worth and what you are assessed on is an accumulated benefit that can run into six figures. When you sell, that benefit is not lost. [Statute 193.155(8)](http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&URL=0100-0199/0193/Sections/0193.155.html) lets you carry it to your next Florida homestead.

There are three conditions, and all three get missed through inattention more than anything else. There is a $500,000 ceiling. You must have held the homestead exemption as of January 1 in one of the three preceding years, so moving and waiting is not free. And you have to apply: the county property appraiser considers applications filed on or before March 1. It does not happen just because you moved.

Why getting three title quotes gets you nowhere

Almost everywhere else you shop title insurers on price. Not in Florida, and it is worth knowing before you lose an afternoon: [statute 627.782](http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&URL=0600-0699/0627/Sections/0627.782.html) requires the commission to adopt by rule the premium charged in this state. It is not a guideline rate. It is the rate, and the law adds that rates may not be excessive, inadequate or unfairly discriminatory.

What does vary from one office to another are the closing costs that are not the premium: the settlement fee, the searches, the couriers. Comparing those makes sense. Comparing the premium does not.

What comes after the contract — the association estoppel, the mortgage payoff, the condo paperwork — is what actually decides whether you close on the agreed date. Each has its own guide below, with its own deadlines.