Buying a Home in Florida: What California Buyers Get Wrong

Buying a home in Florida is a different transaction from buying one in California, and the difference has nothing to do with the property. It has to do with who is standing next to you, and whether anybody is.

I am Paula Aragone. 23 years, more than 900 transactions, $900M in sales across Southern California, and a certified relocation specialist who moves California families out of state. I want to tell you how I learned this, because I learned it the hard way, on my own purchase, with two decades of experience already in the room.

Spring 2020, and the obvious thing

We decided we wanted something in Miami. You remember what travel was that spring. So we found the property remotely, off video walkthroughs and a long run of phone calls. All the things you would do now without thinking twice about it, except that back then almost nobody was doing it.

When we were ready to make an offer, I did the obvious thing. I called the agent on the listing and asked her to submit the offer on our behalf.

In California I know exactly what that means and exactly what protections come with it. I have been on the other side of that table 900 times.

Is a transaction broker legal in Florida?

Yes. More than that, it is the default.

Florida Statute 475.278, the section that governs authorized brokerage relationships, settles it in a single sentence: "It shall be presumed that all licensees are operating as transaction brokers unless a single agent or no brokerage relationship is established, in writing, with a customer." The same statute forbids dual agency in Florida outright, which catches Californians off guard in the opposite direction.

A transaction broker provides what the law calls a limited form of representation, and one transaction broker is allowed to assist both sides of the same deal.

Read that back. No loyalty. No obedience. No full disclosure. Confidentiality only in the narrower form the statute defines.

That is not a scandal and nobody did anything wrong. It is a Florida default. Enormous numbers of transactions close under it every year and close well. It simply was not what I thought I was walking into, and nobody told me, because nobody had to.

What are the differences between a single agent and a transaction broker in Florida?

A single agent owes you the full set of duties. That is the relationship most California buyers assume they already have, because in California that assumption is usually safe.

Here is what the statute actually assigns to each one, side by side.

The practical difference is not really a legal one. It is that a single agent is allowed to tell you what to do and a transaction broker is not.

That distinction sounds abstract until you are the person on the buyer's side of the table deciding whether to push on price, whether an inspection finding is normal for that building, whether a deposit schedule is standard or aggressive, and whether the assessment history you were handed is the whole assessment history. Then it stops being abstract very quickly.

What are the duties of a transaction broker in Florida?

They are real duties and they are honestly performed. Which is exactly why this is so easy to miss.

Nobody in my transaction behaved badly. Nobody misled me. The property was fine and the purchase was fine.

So what did it actually cost me? I got no guidance. Not bad guidance. None. Nobody telling me what to ask for, what to push on, what was normal in that building, what I should have been worried about.

I was on my own and I did not know I was on my own.

That is the part that still bothers me. I spent 23 years telling clients that the value was never in opening a door. It is having somebody at the table who is on your side and who tells you how to negotiate. Then I went and bought a property without one.

What saved me is what most buyers do not have

I caught it, and I knew what to do about it. 23 years in, with nobody guiding me, I guided myself. I knew what to ask for and I knew what was normal. I stepped into the empty chair and ran my own negotiation, and I advocated for myself hard, because being the person on the buyer's side of that table is what I have done every day for two decades.

Which is the whole reason I am writing this.

I could fix it because fixing it is my job. A buyer without a real estate background has nothing to fall back on. You do not know what you do not know, and you cannot catch what I caught, because catching it takes hundreds of transactions to learn.

The one thing that saved me is the one thing most buyers do not have.

Is buying a house in Florida a good idea?

It is a very good idea, done correctly. Florida is not the problem. Walking in with California assumptions about who is looking after you is the problem.

So here is what changed for me. It is a method now, rather than a lesson.

1. Decide what the property is for before anybody looks at anything. Live in it or rent it out. Plenty of people want both, at different times of the year, and not every building permits that. In Florida the answer sits in the condominium documents rather than the brochure, and it eliminates entire buildings before you have the chance to fall in love with one.
2. Establish who represents whom in writing before an offer exists. Upfront, on paper, so that nobody discovers their own position at the closing table. Under 475.278 a single agent relationship has to be established in writing anyway, and that disclosure has to come before or at the time you sign an agreement for representation, or before you are shown property, whichever happens first.
3. Bring a licensed Florida agent in from day one. My California license does not authorize me to practice in Florida and I will not pretend otherwise. Through our brokerage and our Luxury Portfolio network we have trusted agents across the Miami areas and the rest of the state. I choose them and brief them, and I stay in the negotiation with you.

My job is to make sure you walk in already knowing what you want and who is beside you. Most agents let their clients learn by trial and error. I would rather build on prediction. Trial and error is an expensive way to buy a second home 2,700 miles from where you live.

Three mistakes I keep catching

One. Falling for the building before deciding what it is for.

The answer is not in the brochure. It is in the condominium documents, and by the time most people open those they are emotionally committed and already in escrow. This is the single most common error I see with California clients buying in Miami, because the buildings there are genuinely beautiful and the sales galleries are genuinely good at their jobs.

Worth knowing about those galleries: Florida's disclosure rules carve out exactly that setting. Section 475.278(5)(b) says the licensee disclosure requirements do not apply when an owner is selling new residential units built by the owner and the circumstances should reasonably inform the buyer that the person helping them is acting on the owner's behalf. Standing in a developer's sales gallery, the person walking you through the model unit is not required to hand you a brokerage relationship notice at all.

If you want to know what an area feels like on an ordinary Saturday rather than in a sales brochure, that is why I wrote up what living in Coconut Grove actually looks like.

Two. Budgeting the purchase and not the ownership.

What it costs to buy is one number. What it costs to hold is a completely different number, and it is the one that decides whether you still love the place in year three.

Florida put something into that second number that Orange County has no equivalent for. Under Florida Statute 553.899, condominium and cooperative buildings of three habitable stories or more must have a milestone structural inspection by the end of the year the building turns 30, and every ten years after that. A local enforcement agency may move that to 25 years where local conditions warrant it, and the statute specifically names proximity to salt water as one of those conditions. If a phase two inspection identifies substantial structural deterioration, repairs have to be commenced within 365 days.

So I want the inspection history before the offer goes in. The association is required to distribute the inspector's summary to every unit owner within 45 days of receiving it, which means the document exists and somebody in that building already has a copy. If you own in Laguna Beach you know perfectly well that an ocean-adjacent HOA is no rounding error. A Florida oceanfront association sitting on a phase two finding is a different order of magnitude, and the special assessment can land after you close.

Three. Not asking who is actually on your side.

Which is the whole point of everything above.

None of these are exotic mistakes. They are just expensive ones.

Who this keeps happening to

The buyers I do this for usually already own something here. A house in Corona del Mar bought before the schools got competitive. A place up in Newport Coast that has quietly done all the work for them. They are not first-time buyers and they are not naive people.

They are running on twenty years of California muscle memory. In Florida, California muscle memory is the thing that gets you.

Ask before you are emotionally committed

I will say it once more, because it is the only reason I wrote this. I have been doing this for 23 years and I did not know to ask. If I did not, most buyers do not, and most will not find out until it no longer matters.

So if you are looking at Florida right now, ask who represents you, and ask for it in writing. Ask before you are emotionally committed to a property, because after that you will agree to almost anything.

Paula Aragone

Paula Aragone leads Aragone & Associates in Newport Beach, California. Over 23 years she has closed more than 900 transactions and $900M in sales, and she holds CPRES, SRES, Certified Luxury, Certified REO and Certified Relocation designations, with a legal background behind all of it. She works with sellers, buyers, luxury clients and out-of-state relocations across Orange County.

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