Posts from September 2026

Selling your own home in Florida without a listing agent is legal, and plenty of Volusia and Flagler County owners do it every year. What surprises most of them is how much of the process is not optional. Florida law requires specific written disclosures before a buyer signs a contract, whether or not anyone in the deal has a broker, and skipping one of them can unwind a sale months after closing.

This guide walks through what for sale by owner, or FSBO, actually requires in Florida: the disclosures the law puts on every seller, what a title or closing agent does at the closing table, how buyer's agents get paid since the 2024 industry changes, and the advertising rules that apply to your listing even though you are not a licensed agent. This is the paperwork that comes with doi...

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Every home sale in Florida carries a set of charges that have nothing to do with your lender, your agent or the seller's asking price. The state taxes the deed at $0.70 for every $100 of the sale price. If you're financing, the state taxes the mortgage too, separately, at a different rate. The Volusia County Clerk of Court charges a fee just to put the deed on the public record. None of these numbers are negotiable. They come from Florida statute and from a state insurance rule, and they apply the same way whether the closing table is in DeLand, Daytona Beach or New Smyrna Beach.

What is negotiable is who pays which of these charges, and that gets decided in the purchase contract, not by law. This guide walks through each cost buyers and sellers actually see on a Florida closing...

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A Florida home does not get insured on the strength of its list price. Three documents usually decide whether it gets insured at all, and at what cost: a 4-point inspection that checks the roof, the wiring, the plumbing and the HVAC system, a wind mitigation inspection that documents the features that can earn a premium discount, and, if the private market passes, an application to Citizens Property Insurance, the state-created insurer of last resort. None of that is optional in most Florida home purchases, and all of it needs to happen inside your inspection period, not after you have already waived your financing contingency.

Buyers moving into Volusia and Flagler County hear these terms from their lender, their agent and their insurance agent almost interchangeably, as if the...

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A community cannot become "55+" just because a sign at the entrance says so. Federal law sets a specific test, at least 80% of occupied homes must have a resident 55 or older, and Florida law adopts that same test for its own fair housing statute. Everything else, the age rules for a spouse or a visiting grandchild, the fees, whether you own the land under your home or just rent the lot, comes from the individual community's own documents, not from the age-restriction itself.

Volusia County has 55+ communities built two different ways: deed-restricted neighborhoods governed by a homeowners association, and manufactured-home communities where residents own the home but lease the lot. Both kinds are legal, both kinds are real estate you can buy today, and both come with paperwork...

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Florida rewrote the rules for condo buildings after the Champlain Towers South collapse in Surfside in 2021, and the law keeps changing. If you are shopping for a condo anywhere in Volusia County right now, from a high-rise on the Daytona Beach Shores oceanfront to a mid-rise in New Smyrna Beach or a low-rise along the Halifax River, two documents matter more than the view from the balcony: the building's milestone inspection report and its structural integrity reserve study. Florida law entitles you to both before you close, and reading them tells you more about what you are actually buying than the listing photos do.

This guide walks through what the current statutes require, what the 2025 legislative update, House Bill 913, changed, what a resale seller has to hand you before...

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A pool changes three things about owning a Florida home: what an inspector needs to look at, what your insurance agent needs to ask, and what your tax bill can do the year after you close. None of those three things are optional, and none of them are reasons to walk away from a pool home. They are just facts a buyer in Volusia County should know before making an offer, whether the house sits on the mainland in DeLand or a block from the water in New Smyrna Beach.

Pool homes turn up across the county, from Daytona Beach to Deltona, and buyers search for them constantly. What those searches usually land on is a page of current listings, not an explanation of what a pool actually means for a closing, an insurance policy, or next November's tax bill. This guide fills that gap. It wa...

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