What a Florida seller actually pays at closing in 2026, with every figure read from the statute, the rule or the county fee schedule.
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Data updated: September 2026. Every statutory figure on this page was read from the 2026 Florida Statutes, the Florida Department of Revenue, the Florida Administrative Code or a Clerk of Court fee schedule on September 11, 2026, and each one carries its source.
A Florida seller pays, at minimum, documentary stamp tax on the deed at $0.70 per $100 of price, the owner's title insurance premium where the contract assigns it to them, recording fees, prorated property taxes, an HOA or condo estoppel fee capped at $299, and whatever real estate commission they negotiated. On a $750,000 sale the statutory and title items alone come to roughly $9,400 before commission.
That is the short answer. The rest of this page is the part that costs people money: the figures nearly every Florida closing-cost guide still gets wrong, and the four or five line items that only appear once you are already under contract.
1. The estoppel fee cap is not $250. Nearly every guide quotes the number printed in the statute. The statute also orders itself adjusted for inflation every five years and directs the Department of Business and Professional Regulation to publish the result. The operative cap today is $299, with up to $119 more for expedited delivery and $179 more if the account is delinquent.
2. Florida's flood disclosure law changed on October 1, 2025. The statute was created in 2024 and amended a year later. Most published guides, and a lot of disclosure forms still floating around, carry the 2024 version, which is missing an entire question. Details below.
3. A CDD bond is not paid off by the seller at closing. Under the standard Florida contract it is prorated like a tax and rides with the property to the buyer. This is the single most common CDD misunderstanding in the state, and it runs in the seller's favour.
We sell in Lee and Collier County every week and we read the closing statement line by line before our sellers ever see it. If you want yours checked, call Jesse McGreevy at (239) 898-6072.
This is the summary, and it is the whole page in one table. Every row carries the amount a Florida seller pays and the statute, rule or fee schedule it comes from, and every row is unpacked in its own section further down, so the figure and its authority are never separated. Commission is left out of the table deliberately, because it is negotiated and has no legal rate.
Cost | Amount | Who pays, and on what authority |
|---|---|---|
Documentary stamp tax on the deed | $0.70 per $100 of price, every county except Miami-Dade | Statute makes all parties liable; the contract assigns it to the seller. Fla. Stat. 201.02 |
Miami-Dade deed tax | $0.60 per $100, plus a $0.45 surtax on anything that is not a single-family dwelling | Seller by contract. Fla. Stat. 201.031, 125.0167 |
Owner's title insurance premium | Promulgated. $5.75 per $1,000 to $100,000, then $5.00 per $1,000 to $1M, then $2.50 per $1,000 to $5M | Contractual, not statutory. Rule 69O-186.003, F.A.C. |
HOA or condo estoppel fee | $299 cap, +$119 expedited, +$179 if delinquent. Worst case $597 | Seller by contract. Fla. Stat. 720.30851 and 718.116(8), as adjusted and published by DBPR |
Recording the deed | $10.00 first page, $8.50 each additional. A two-page deed is $18.50 | Seller. Fla. Stat. 28.24(13) |
Prorated property taxes | January 1 through the proration date, computed at the maximum allowable discount | Seller credits buyer. Fla. Stat. 197.333, 197.162, contract Standard K |
Municipal lien search | $42 to $200 depending on the city. No statute caps it | Seller or buyer, depending on which title option the contract checks |
Title search, examination, closing services | Unregulated, but must be itemised separately from the title premium | Each party bears its own closing services. Rule 69O-186.003(11) |
Real estate commission | Fully negotiable. There is no standard rate and no law setting one | Whatever the listing agreement says. See the NAR settlement section |
CDD or special district assessment | Prorated, not paid off, under the standard contract | Contract paragraph 9(f) carve-out, prorated under Standard K |
FIRPTA withholding | Applies only to foreign sellers | Seller by contract. IRC 1445 |
What is deliberately absent from that table. We have not printed a "typical closing fee" figure, a staging cost, or a home warranty price. Those are unregulated and unpublished, and every number circulating for them traces back to a lead-generation site. We would rather leave a cell empty than fill it with something we cannot stand behind.
Florida charges 70 cents per $100 of the sale price, or any part of $100, on the deed in every county except Miami-Dade. On a $750,000 sale that is $5,250. On a $2,500,000 sale it is $17,500. The rate is set by Fla. Stat. 201.02 and has not changed since 1992.
The statute rounds up. A $750,050 sale is taxed on 7,501 increments, not 7,500.5, because the law reads "on each $100 of the consideration therefor" and treats a fraction as a whole $100.
Miami-Dade is the one county with its own rate: 60 cents per $100, plus a 45 cent surtax per $100. But the surtax has a carve-out that most guides omit, and it is the part that matters.
Fla. Stat. 201.031 says there is no surtax where the interest conveyed "involves only a single-family residence," and it defines that to include a condominium unit and a detached dwelling. So in Miami-Dade:
That is the Department of Revenue's own worked example. A Miami-Dade land seller who budgeted at the residential rate is short by 75 percent on that line.
Legally, everyone. The Department of Revenue's position is that all parties to the document are liable regardless of which party agrees to pay. As a practical matter the standard Florida contract lists "documentary stamp taxes and surtax on deed, if any" under costs to be paid by seller, so the seller pays it. Understand the distinction: if the tax is somehow not paid, the state can look to either party, whatever your contract says between you.
Florida is a promulgated rate state, which means the premium is set by regulation and every underwriter charges the same for the same coverage. The schedule lives in Rule 69O-186.003, Florida Administrative Code, and the rates have been unamended since they took effect on July 1, 2002.
Liability band | Premium per $1,000 |
|---|---|
$0 to $100,000 | $5.75 |
$100,000 to $1 million, add | $5.00 |
Over $1 million to $5 million, add | $2.50 |
Over $5 million to $10 million, add | $2.25 |
Over $10 million, add | $2.00 |
The minimum premium is $100. The policy must be written for the full insurable value of the property. Worked out, that gives:
If the property was insured by a prior owner's policy and the new policy is issued less than three years after that one, the rate drops to $3.30 per $1,000 to $100,000 and $3.00 per $1,000 above it. On a $750,000 resale inside three years that is $2,280 instead of $3,825, a saving of over $1,500.
The catch is procedural: both the agent and the underwriter must retain a copy of the prior policy. If you bought within the last three years, find your owner's policy before you list and hand it to the closing agent. Nobody will chase you for it, and if it does not surface you simply pay the full rate.
No Florida statute or rule assigns the owner's policy to either party. It is purely a term of the contract. For years the standard contract carried a county-by-county allocation, and that list is still recited all over the internet as though it were law.
It was never law, and as of the December 2024 revision the standard contract no longer contains it. Paragraph 9(c) is now a three-way choice: seller designates the closing agent and pays for the owner's policy; or buyer designates and pays; or, in the one surviving regional provision, a Miami-Dade and Broward option where the buyer pays the premiums and the seller pays actual costs for the title search, tax search and municipal lien search, defaulting to a $200 cap if the blank is left empty.
So the honest answer to "who pays for title in my county" is: whoever your contract says, and it is negotiable. Local custom still exerts real pressure on that negotiation, and in Southwest Florida the seller commonly pays. But if a page tells you your county's allocation as a matter of law, it is wrong twice over.
Rule 69O-186.003(11) requires that title search, examination and closing charges be shown separately on the closing statement from the risk premium. The premium is fixed by regulation; the service charges are not. Keeping them on separate lines is what lets you see which is which.
When we review a seller's closing statement, this is the first thing we look at. A bundled "title charges" line is not a violation on its own, but it is the place where an unexamined few hundred dollars tends to sit.
The cap is $299 for preparation and delivery, plus up to $119 if you need it inside three business days, plus up to $179 if the account is delinquent. Worst case on a single parcel is $597. These are the figures published by the Department of Business and Professional Regulation, and they are the operative ceilings.
Because $250 is the number printed in the statute, and people stop reading there. Fla. Stat. 720.30851(9) and 718.116(8)(i) both provide that the fees "shall be adjusted every 5 years in an amount equal to the total of the annual increases for that 5-year period in the Consumer Price Index," and direct DBPR to calculate and publish the adjusted amounts.
So the statute's own text tells you the statute's numbers are stale. The base figures are $250, $100 and $150; the published, inflation-adjusted, currently enforceable figures are $299, $119 and $179. DBPR has said the next adjustment will be released by July 1, 2027.
Parcels requested together | Aggregate cap |
|---|---|
25 or fewer | $896 |
26 to 50 | $1,194 |
51 to 100 | $1,791 |
Over 100 | $2,985 |
Each of these is in the statute, and each one is regularly billed anyway.
1. Late delivery makes it free. The association has 10 business days from a written or electronic request. If it misses that, "a fee may not be charged for the preparation and delivery of that estoppel certificate." Not reduced. Free.
2. An amended certificate is free. If figures change and a corrected certificate is needed, "a fee may not be charged for an amended estoppel certificate."
3. Collection-attorney contact information is free. Where the account is delinquent and has gone to an attorney, the certificate must give that attorney's name and contact details, and the statute states in terms that no fee may be charged for that information.
4. A dead closing gets a refund. If the sale does not close, a non-owner who paid the fee can request a refund within 30 days of the intended closing date with reasonable documentation, and it must be refunded within 30 days. The statute adds that the right to reimbursement "may not be waived or modified by any contract or agreement."
An association "waives the right to collect any moneys owed in excess of the amounts specified in the estoppel certificate from any person who in good faith relies upon" it. The certificate is good for 30 days if delivered by hand or electronically, and 35 days if sent by regular mail.
That is why the delivery date matters as much as the number on it. An estoppel that expires before your closing date is worth nothing, and a re-issued one restarts the clock.
These get conflated constantly. The standard contract puts estoppel fees on the seller and association application and transfer fees on the buyer. The transfer fee has its own statutory cap of $150 per applicant. If your closing statement shows the seller paying a transfer fee, ask why.
Since August 17, 2024, offers of compensation to a buyer's broker cannot appear in the MLS at all. Commission remains fully negotiable, as it always legally was, and a seller may still choose to offer buyer-broker compensation. What changed is where that offer can be communicated and how it gets documented.
Cannot: place compensation information of any kind in the MLS. Florida Realtors puts it flatly: compensation may appear "nowhere, at all," including in notes, remarks or any other MLS field. MLSs were required to remove the compensation fields entirely.
Can: offer buyer-broker compensation in any amount, off-MLS. A listing brokerage may advertise it on its own website for its own listings. A buyer may negotiate it into the offer as a term, in the same way concessions have always been negotiated.
Unchanged: Florida brokerage relationship law. Single agent, transaction broker and no brokerage relationship all work exactly as before.
A buyer's agent must now have a signed written agreement before touring a home, and the compensation in it must be "objectively ascertainable and not open-ended." An agreement that says compensation will be "whatever the seller is offering" is specifically prohibited.
For a seller this is mostly invisible, with one practical consequence: the buyer walking through your house has already committed in writing to paying their agent something. If you are not offering compensation, that buyer is covering it themselves, and it comes out of the same pocket they are buying your house with.
Effective January 5, 2026, Florida Realtors consolidated the compensation forms. CASSB-1 "Compensation Agreement, Seller or Seller's Broker to Buyer's Broker" replaced the two older forms, and MCSB-1 replaced the two older modification forms. The superseded versions were removed from Form Simplicity. If someone hands you a CASB-1 or a CABB-1 in 2026, it is a retired form.
Separately from the settlement, NAR's Multiple Listing Options for Sellers policy took effect March 25, 2025 and had to be implemented by September 30, 2025. It creates a formal delayed marketing exempt listing alongside the office exclusive.
The seller-protection piece is the disclosure requirement. If you choose to delay public marketing, your agent must obtain your signed, informed consent documenting that you are waiving the benefits of immediate exposure through IDX and syndication. Each MLS sets its own delayed-marketing period.
Our view, and we will say it plainly to any seller who asks: delaying public marketing narrows your buyer pool, and a narrower pool is how you find out what your house is worth to fewer people. There are legitimate reasons to do it. Getting a better price is rarely one of them.
Three separate duties stack on a Florida seller: the common-law duty from Johnson v. Davis, the HOA disclosure summary under Fla. Stat. 720.401, and the flood disclosure under Fla. Stat. 689.302, which was amended effective October 1, 2025. Condominium sellers carry a fourth under Fla. Stat. 718.503(2). None of them is waived by selling "as is."
The Florida Supreme Court held in 1985 that "where the seller of a home knows of facts materially affecting the value of the property which are not readily observable and are not known to the buyer, the seller is under a duty to disclose them to the buyer."
Three elements, all required: you know it, it materially affects value, and it is not readily observable and not known to the buyer. An "as is" contract shifts the burden of inspection. It does not license concealment of a known, hidden, material defect.
Fla. Stat. 689.302 was created by the 2024 legislature effective October 1, 2024, then amended by chapter 2025-166, effective October 1, 2025. The amendment did two things:
It added a whole new question. The current form asks first whether the seller "has knowledge of any flooding that has damaged the property during Seller's ownership." The 2024 version had no such item. It asked only about insurance claims and federal assistance. Flooding you knew about, never claimed on, and never got help for is now squarely inside the disclosure.
It broadened the assistance question from federal assistance to assistance from any source, "including, but not limited to" FEMA.
The statute also defines "flooding" for this purpose, and the definition is wider than most people expect. It covers overflow of inland or tidal waters, the unusual and rapid accumulation of runoff or surface water from any established source such as a river, stream or drainage ditch, and sustained periods of standing water resulting from rainfall. That last one catches yards and low driveways in ordinary Southwest Florida summer storms.
The timing is pre-contract. The disclosure must be completed and provided "at or before the time the sales contract is executed." Not during the inspection period. Before signing.
Under Fla. Stat. 720.401, a buyer in an HOA community must be given a disclosure summary before executing the contract, and on a resale the seller supplies it. The contract must carry a conspicuous clause making it voidable by the buyer within 3 days of receiving the summary, or before closing, whichever comes first. Any purported waiver of that right has no effect.
Item 4 of the mandated summary is the one sellers gloss over: "you may be obligated to pay special assessments to the respective municipality, county, or special district." In Southwest Florida that line is doing real work. It is how a CDD reaches a resale buyer.
Note the scope: 720.401 does not apply to condominiums, cooperatives, timeshares or mobile home parks, which are governed by their own chapters.
Under Fla. Stat. 718.503(2) a condo seller must furnish the declaration, articles, bylaws and rules, the most recent annual financial statement and budget, the statutory FAQ document, the inspector-prepared summary of the milestone inspection report, and the structural integrity reserve study or a statement that none has been completed.
In a post-Surfside building the reserve study is frequently the document that reprices the deal. If yours shows a large underfunded reserve, that will surface. It is better handled in your pricing strategy than discovered by a buyer's attorney in week two.
The seller credits the buyer for taxes from January 1 through the proration date, computed at the maximum allowable discount. For any closing between January and October there is no current-year tax bill in existence, so the closing agent prorates on an estimate, and either party can demand a readjustment when the real bill arrives.
Under Fla. Stat. 197.333, taxes are due November 1 and become delinquent April 1 of the following year. The assessment is fixed as of January 1. The TRIM notice arrives in August. The certified roll reaches the tax collector in the autumn.
So a July closing is prorating a bill that will not exist for four more months, against an assessment set six months earlier.
Fla. Stat. 197.162 gives a discount for early payment: 4 percent in November, 3 percent in December, 2 percent in January, 1 percent in February, and zero in March.
The standard contract requires that "in all cases, due allowance shall be made for the maximum allowable discounts and applicable homestead and other exemptions." That means your proration is computed at the November 4 percent level, so the credit you give the buyer is slightly smaller than a naive day-count would produce. It is a modest number, and it is in your favour, and almost no seller notices it.
The contract's proration standard says a tax proration based on an estimate "shall, at either party's request, be readjusted upon receipt of current year's tax bill," and that the provision survives closing.
This matters most where the property carried a long-standing homestead cap. The January 1 after your sale resets that cap to market value for the new owner, and the real bill can land far above the estimate the closing was prorated on. If you sold mid-year out of a heavily capped homestead, you may get a request months later, and it is a legitimate one. Budget for it rather than being surprised by it.
$10.00 for the first page and $8.50 for each additional page. A standard two-page warranty deed costs $18.50 to record. Add $1.00 per name beyond the first four. Plats and oversize condominium exhibits are $30.00 first page and $15.00 thereafter.
Because Fla. Stat. 28.24 builds the fee out of four separate subsections, and guides that quote one of them are quoting a quarter of the answer.
Statutory component | First page | Each additional |
|---|---|---|
Recording, indexing, filing | $5.00 | $4.00 |
Public Records Modernization Trust Fund | $1.00 | $0.50 |
Court technology service charge | $4.00 | $4.00 |
Effective total | $10.00 | $8.50 |
The Lee County Clerk, the Collier County Clerk and clerks across the state all publish exactly $10.00 and $8.50, which is the statute assembled. The statute itself caps what a clerk may charge: "these charges may not exceed those specified in this section."
There is no statutory or promulgated cap on the closing or settlement fee. What the rules do require is that it be itemised separately from the title premium, and that at least actual cost be charged for related title services. The standard contract now carries explicit "seller's closing services" and "buyer's closing services" line items, with each party bearing its own.
Every specific dollar figure we could find for a Florida settlement fee came from a lead-generation site rather than a published or regulated source, so there is no number in this section. Ask your closing agent for theirs in writing before you sign, and compare it against the itemisation rule above.
These five costs are where Florida sellers get surprised at closing, and four of the five are absent from every competing guide we examined. Each one is a real line on a real settlement statement, each is sourced to the contract form or the statute that creates it, and the first of them is the one sellers most often expect to be worse than it actually is.
Sellers in Southwest Florida ask this constantly, usually braced for bad news: do I have to pay off the CDD bond when I sell?
Under the standard Florida contract, no. Paragraph 9(f) makes the seller responsible for special assessment liens certified before closing, but then carves out exactly this case: the paragraph "shall not apply to a special benefit tax lien imposed by a community development district pursuant to Chapter 190," which instead "shall be prorated pursuant to Standard K."
Prorated means treated like a property tax. You pay your share to the closing date, the buyer takes the rest, and the bond rides with the property. You are not writing a cheque for the outstanding principal.
You can agree otherwise, and on a slow listing a seller sometimes offers a payoff as a concession. But it is a negotiated concession, not an obligation, and a seller who does not know that starts the negotiation having already given it away.
Fla. Stat. 190.048 is cited everywhere as "the CDD disclosure law." Read its trigger: it applies to "each contract for the initial sale of a parcel" and "each contract for the initial sale of a residential unit within the district."
It does not reach resales. On a resale the obligation comes from the HOA disclosure summary's special-district line and from Johnson v. Davis. The practical effect is the same, disclose it, but the legal route is different, and a seller relying on "the builder disclosed it originally" is relying on a statute that stopped applying the day the first buyer closed.
The standard contract now defines a municipal lien search as the search needed for the owner's policy to issue without exception for unrecorded liens in favour of a governmental body. Who pays depends on which title option the contract checks.
No statute caps the fee, and cities set their own. Published municipal rates we verified range from $42 in Edgewater to $200 in the City of Miami, with Winter Springs at $80, Sarasota at $87.50, Hialeah at $75 and Davie at $170 per folio. A property inside a city and a special district can need more than one search.
The standard contract obliges the seller to disclose in writing any open permits or unpermitted improvements within their knowledge or control. The municipal lien search is usually what finds them, which means it lands in the middle of the transaction rather than before listing.
Closing an open permit can require re-inspection, engineering, retroactive permitting, or removing the work. The cost is entirely property-specific and we will not quote a range. The controllable part is timing. A permit history check before you list turns a deal-threatening surprise into a scheduling problem.
Three separate charges attach to the buyer's financing, and none of them is your deed tax. Bad guides fold them into the seller's column.
Charge | Rate | Cap |
|---|---|---|
Doc stamp on the note | 35 cents per $100 | Capped at $2,450 |
Doc stamp on the recorded mortgage | 35 cents per $100 secured | No cap |
Nonrecurring intangible tax | 2 mills of the obligation secured | None |
The standard contract puts "taxes and recording fees on notes and mortgages" squarely on the buyer. A seller pays these only where the seller is the borrower on something being recorded, or where a purchase-money note runs back to the seller.
If you are a foreign person disposing of a U.S. real property interest, withholding applies under IRC 1445, and the standard contract lists FIRPTA withholding and reporting charges under costs to be paid by seller. We are not publishing a withholding rate here because we have not verified the current percentage and exemption thresholds against IRS primary sources, and this is precisely the wrong place to be approximately right. If FIRPTA touches your sale, that is a conversation with a CPA before you list, not at the closing table.
Most seller guides file inspections under optional costs beside staging and cleaning. In Florida that is a category error. A 4-point inspection and a wind mitigation inspection are not cosmetic, they decide whether your buyer can obtain a policy at all, and an uninsurable house is an unsellable house.
Citizens Property Insurance, the state-backed insurer of last resort and therefore the floor of the Florida market, requires a four-point inspection for every property more than 20 years old. The inspector reports the age, type and condition of the wiring, heating, plumbing and roof.
The roof rule is the one that kills deals. Citizens requires roofs older than 25 years for shingle, or 50 years for tile, slate, clay, concrete or metal, to carry documentation of at least five years of remaining useful life. Where a roof has less than five years left, proof of full replacement must be provided before any policy is written.
Read that as a seller. If your house was built before 2006 and your buyer is heading to Citizens, the roof either clears or the sale stops. The argument for a pre-listing 4-point is not saving money, it is not discovering this on day 12 of the inspection period with your next purchase already under contract.
Fla. Stat. 627.711 requires insurers to notify applicants and policyholders of the availability and range of every premium discount available for windstorm loss mitigation, on a form prescribed by the Office of Insurance Regulation. The uniform mitigation verification form must be completed by a qualified inspector who has personally inspected the structure.
Here is the part worth knowing. My Safe Florida Home, run by the Department of Financial Services under Fla. Stat. 215.5586, offers a free, no-obligation hurricane mitigation inspection to homeowners who meet three conditions: the home is a single-family detached property or townhouse, it is site-built and owner-occupied, and a homestead exemption has been granted on it.
A homesteaded owner-occupant planning to list in six to twelve months can get a state-paid wind mitigation inspection, use the completed form to reduce their own premium immediately, and hand the same form to the buyer as a marketing asset. There is a separate grant tier as well, matching $2 of state funds for every $1 of homeowner money up to $10,000, for insured values of $700,000 or less on homes first permitted before January 1, 2008. Individual condominium units are excluded from both.
Item | Figure | How solid is this number |
|---|---|---|
4-point inspection | roughly $75 to $175 | Market estimate. Vendor pricing, not a published or regulated figure |
Wind mitigation inspection | roughly $75 to $175, or $0 if you qualify for My Safe Florida Home | Estimate for the paid route; the free route is sourced to the state programme |
Both bundled | roughly $125 to $325 | Market estimate |
Pre-listing full home inspection | no figure published here | Not verified. No acceptable Florida source |
Home warranty, staging, professional cleaning | no figures published here | Not verified. Every available number came from a lead-generation site |
On the home warranty specifically, there is a sourceable mechanic even without a price: the standard contract handles it as a checkbox with a dollar cap written on the face of the contract, naming who pays, the provider, and a not-to-exceed figure. So it is negotiated and bounded in the contract itself rather than being a fixed market cost.
A Florida condominium resale carries a document package the statute now defines, and the buyer's right to cancel does not start running until the seller delivers it. Fla. Stat. 718.503(2) gives a resale buyer 7 days, excluding Saturdays, Sundays and legal holidays, after both signing and receiving the package, so a seller who assembles it late is extending the buyer's exit rather than the closing date. The package costs money and time, and both belong on the net sheet.
The statutory legend names a current copy of the declaration of condominium, the articles of incorporation, the bylaws and rules of the association, a copy of the most recent annual financial statement and annual budget, and the frequently asked questions and answers document if the buyer requested it in writing. The section's own history note records amendments in 2024 and 2025, and the current package also reaches the milestone inspection summary and the structural integrity reserve study where the building is subject to them. The seller pays the association's charge for producing copies of its official records under Fla. Stat. 718.111, in addition to the estoppel fee covered above.
The 25 years within three miles of the coast formulation is repeated all over Florida condominium commentary. It came from the original 2022 legislation and was superseded. Current Fla. Stat. 553.899 sets the milestone inspection at 30 years, with 25 available only as a local option where the local enforcement agency determines that circumstances such as proximity to salt water warrant it. Fla. Stat. 718.112(2)(g) requires the structural integrity reserve study and removes the association's ability to waive those reserves, which is why the study, not the unit, is frequently what reprices a post-Surfside transaction.
Order the package from the association at listing rather than at contract. The 10 business day estoppel clock, the copy charge for official records and the 7 business day cancellation window all run in sequence, and a seller who starts them on the day of contract has handed the buyer roughly three weeks of open exit. We request the package the week the listing goes live and hold it with the estoppel, which is one of the reasons our condominium closings tend to hold their dates. Call Jesse direct at (239) 898-6072 if your condominium building has a milestone or reserve study pending, because that document changes the pricing conversation before it changes anything else.
This worked example prices a single-family home outside Miami-Dade, inside an HOA community, with the seller paying the owner's title policy, which is the most common Florida allocation. Commission is deliberately left as a variable, because it is fully negotiable and there is no standard rate. Every other line is the statutory or promulgated figure, and each carries its basis in the third column.
Line item | Amount | Basis |
|---|---|---|
Sale price | $750,000 | |
Documentary stamp tax on deed | $5,250.00 | 7,500 × $0.70 |
Owner's title insurance premium | $3,825.00 | $575 + (650 × $5.00) |
HOA estoppel certificate | $299.00 | DBPR cap, standard delivery, account current |
Recording the deed, 2 pages | $18.50 | $10.00 + $8.50 |
Municipal lien search | $42 to $200 | Set by the city, uncapped by statute |
Statutory and title subtotal | about $9,435 to $9,593 | Everything above |
Title search, examination, closing services | varies, itemised separately | Unregulated; must not be bundled into the premium |
Prorated property taxes | depends on closing date | Jan 1 to proration date, at the maximum discount |
Real estate commission | negotiable | No standard rate, no law sets one |
Mortgage payoff | your balance plus per-diem interest | From your lender's payoff letter |
The reissue lever on this sale. If you bought this house within the last three years and can produce your owner's policy, the title premium drops from $3,825 to about $2,280. That single piece of paper is worth roughly $1,545.
This second example keeps the same assumptions and moves the price to $2,500,000, the point at which the promulgated owner's title premium steps down into its third rate band and the documentary stamp tax becomes the largest single statutory line by a wide margin. Commission is again left as a variable. Read it against the $750,000 sheet above to see which costs scale with price and which do not.
Line item | Amount | Basis |
|---|---|---|
Sale price | $2,500,000 | |
Documentary stamp tax on deed | $17,500.00 | 25,000 × $0.70 |
Owner's title insurance premium | $8,825.00 | $575 + (900 × $5.00) + (1,500 × $2.50) |
HOA or condo estoppel certificate | $299.00 | DBPR cap |
Recording the deed, 2 pages | $18.50 | $10.00 + $8.50 |
Municipal lien search | $42 to $200 | Set by the city |
Statutory and title subtotal | about $26,685 to $26,843 | Everything above |
Notice what did not scale. The price rose 3.3 times but the title premium rose only 2.3 times, because the rate steps down from $5.00 to $2.50 per thousand above $1 million. The estoppel fee and the recording cost did not move at all. Statutory closing costs are not a flat percentage of price, and a seller told "budget two percent" at this price point is being over-quoted on the parts that are actually fixed.
Both do, on different line items, and the split is contractual rather than statutory. The seller customarily pays the deed documentary stamp tax, the estoppel fee, recording of the deed and prorated taxes. The buyer customarily pays financing charges, doc stamps and intangible tax on the mortgage, and association transfer fees. Title insurance is the negotiated one.
Asking for a percentage is the wrong frame, because the fixed items do not scale. On a $750,000 sale the statutory and title items run about $9,435, roughly 1.26 percent. On a $2,500,000 sale the same items run about $26,685, roughly 1.07 percent. Commission, which is negotiable, dwarfs all of it.
No. Every county charges $0.70 per $100 except Miami-Dade, which charges $0.60 per $100 plus a $0.45 surtax. The surtax does not apply to a single-family residence, which the statute defines to include a condominium unit and a detached dwelling.
Yes. The statute taxes each $100 of consideration "or portion thereof," so any fraction of $100 is treated as a full $100. A $750,050 sale is taxed on 7,501 increments.
Yes, it is negotiable, and it happens. Be aware that all parties to the document remain liable to the state for the tax regardless of who agreed to pay it. Your contract binds the parties to each other; it does not bind the Department of Revenue.
The risk premium is not. It is promulgated by rule and identical across underwriters. The related service charges for search, examination and closing are not promulgated, and those are where price differences between closing agents actually live.
No. The promulgated rates took effect on July 1, 2002 under a rule adopted in January 2002, and the rule has not been amended since. A 2007 attempt to amend it was held invalid.
It is a discounted premium of $3.30 per $1,000 to $100,000 and $3.00 per $1,000 above it. The most common qualifying route is a new policy issued less than three years after the prior owner's policy. Both the agent and the underwriter must retain a copy of that prior policy, so find yours before you list.
Whoever the contract says. There is no law on it. The old county-by-county list that circulates online was never law, and the December 2024 revision of the standard contract removed it entirely, leaving a three-way choice with only a Miami-Dade and Broward regional option named. In Southwest Florida the seller commonly pays, by custom, not by rule.
$299 for preparation and delivery, plus up to $119 if delivered within three business days of the request, plus up to $179 if the account is delinquent. The worst case on a single parcel is $597. These are the inflation-adjusted figures published by DBPR, not the $250 printed in the statute.
Because they quote the statute and stop. The same statute requires the fees to be adjusted every five years for CPI and directs DBPR to publish the adjusted amounts. The published figures are the operative ceilings; the statutory ones are the base they are adjusted from.
Ten business days from a written or electronic request. If it misses that deadline it may not charge a fee at all for that certificate.
Yes. The statute states that a fee may not be charged for an amended estoppel certificate.
Thirty days if it was hand delivered or sent electronically, and thirty-five days if it was sent by regular mail. An estoppel that expires before your closing date has to be re-issued.
A non-owner who paid the fee can request a refund within thirty days of the intended closing date, with reasonable documentation, and it must be refunded within thirty days. The statute says the right to reimbursement may not be waived or modified by any contract.
No, and they are constantly confused. The estoppel fee is the seller's and is capped at $299. The transfer or application fee is the buyer's and is capped separately at $150 per applicant.
Not under the standard Florida contract. Paragraph 9(f) expressly carves community development district liens out of the seller's special-assessment obligation and directs that they be prorated instead. The bond rides with the property to the buyer. You can agree to pay it off as a concession, but you are not required to.
No. Fla. Stat. 190.048 applies to the initial sale of a parcel or unit within the district, not to resales. On a resale your disclosure obligation comes from the HOA disclosure summary's special-district item and from the common-law duty in Johnson v. Davis.
A seller must complete and give the buyer a flood disclosure at or before the time the sales contract is executed. It asks whether the seller knows of flooding that damaged the property during their ownership, whether they filed a flood insurance claim, and whether they received flood damage assistance from any source.
Yes, and recently. The statute was created effective October 1, 2024 and amended effective October 1, 2025. The amendment added the seller's own knowledge of flooding as a separate question and broadened the assistance question beyond federal assistance. Guides and forms still showing the 2024 version are missing an entire item.
Overflow of inland or tidal waters, unusual and rapid accumulation of runoff or surface water from an established source such as a river, stream or drainage ditch, and sustained periods of standing water resulting from rainfall. That last category catches ordinary summer storm ponding in Southwest Florida.
At or before the time the sales contract is executed. It is a pre-contract obligation, not something handled during the inspection period.
No. An as-is contract shifts the burden of inspection but does not erase the duty under Johnson v. Davis to disclose known facts that materially affect value and are not readily observable and not known to the buyer. The statutory flood and HOA disclosures are unaffected by as-is language.
A summary that must be given to a buyer in an HOA community before the contract is executed. On a resale the seller supplies it. The contract must contain a conspicuous clause making it voidable by the buyer within three days of receiving the summary, or before closing, whichever is first, and that right cannot be waived.
The governing documents, the most recent annual financial statement and budget, the statutory FAQ document, the inspector-prepared summary of the milestone inspection report, and the structural integrity reserve study or a statement that none has been completed. In a post-Surfside building the reserve study frequently reprices the deal.
The seller credits the buyer for taxes from January 1 through the proration date. The credit is computed at the maximum allowable discount, which is the November 4 percent level, so it is slightly smaller than a straight day-count.
Because for any closing between January and October there is no current-year tax bill in existence. Taxes are due November 1 and the assessment is fixed the previous January 1. The closing agent prorates on the current assessment with the prior year's millage, or on the prior year's tax outright.
Yes. The standard contract says a proration based on an estimate shall, at either party's request, be readjusted when the current year's bill arrives, and that this provision survives closing. It matters most where a long-standing homestead cap resets the January after the sale.
Four percent in November, three percent in December, two percent in January, one percent in February, and zero in March. Taxes are due November 1 and become delinquent April 1.
Ten dollars for the first page and $8.50 for each additional page, so a two-page warranty deed costs $18.50. Add one dollar per name beyond the first four. Plats are $30 for the first page and $15 thereafter.
Because the fee is assembled from four subsections. The base recording charge is $5.00, the Public Records Modernization Trust Fund adds $1.00, and the court technology service charge adds $4.00, reaching $10.00 for the first page.
There is no statutory or promulgated cap, and no published source for a typical figure that we are willing to cite. We deliberately publish no number. Ask your closing agent for theirs in writing before you sign.
Yes. The rule requires that charges for title search, examination and closing be shown separately from the risk premium on the closing statement, and that at least actual cost be charged for those services. A single bundled title line is where unexamined dollars tend to sit.
A search of the records needed for the owner's title policy to issue without exception for unrecorded governmental liens. Who pays depends on which title option the contract checks. No statute caps the fee and cities set their own, from about $42 to $200.
The standard contract obliges you to disclose open permits or unpermitted improvements within your knowledge or control. Resolving one can require re-inspection, engineering, retroactive permitting or removal. The cost is entirely property-specific, which is why a permit history check before listing is worth more than any estimate.
No. Doc stamps on the note and mortgage, and the nonrecurring intangible tax, are the buyer's charges under the standard contract. A seller pays them only where the seller is the borrower on something being recorded, or where a purchase-money note runs back to the seller.
There is a $2,450 cap on the tax on the note itself, and no cap at all on the tax on the recorded mortgage securing the debt. Both are charged at 35 cents per $100.
No. Commission is fully negotiable and there is no law requiring any particular rate, or requiring that a seller offer compensation to a buyer's broker at all. Any page quoting a standard Florida rate is quoting a custom, not a rule.
Yes, in any amount you choose. What changed in August 2024 is that the offer cannot appear anywhere in the MLS. It can be communicated off-MLS, negotiated into the buyer's offer as a term, or advertised by the listing brokerage on its own website for its own listings.
A listing where public marketing through IDX and syndication is deliberately delayed. Under a policy effective March 2025 your agent must obtain your signed, informed consent documenting that you are waiving the benefits of immediate public exposure. Each MLS sets its own delay period.
Not legally, but it frequently decides your buyer's premium and sometimes their insurability. If you are a homesteaded owner-occupant of a site-built single-family home or townhouse, My Safe Florida Home offers the inspection free.
Citizens Property Insurance requires one for every property more than 20 years old, covering wiring, heating, plumbing and roof. Roofs over 25 years for shingle or 50 for tile must show at least five years of remaining useful life, or the insurer requires proof of full replacement before writing a policy.
Yes, if your home is a site-built, owner-occupied single-family property or townhouse with a granted homestead exemption. My Safe Florida Home provides the inspection at no cost and with no obligation. Individual condominium units are excluded.
FIRPTA is federal withholding on a foreign person's disposition of a U.S. real property interest, and the standard contract assigns the withholding and reporting charges to the seller. We are not publishing a rate here because we have not verified the current percentage against IRS sources. If it touches your sale, speak to a CPA before you list.
Discovering an insurability problem during the buyer's inspection period rather than before listing. A roof that cannot clear the Citizens five-year rule does not cost you a line item, it costs you the buyer, the time on market, and the leverage in every negotiation that follows.
The tables above are worked examples. Your actual number depends on your price, your county, your association, your closing date and what you negotiate. We build a line-by-line seller net sheet before you list, not after you are under contract, so the number you decide on is the number you keep.
What we check on every Florida seller file, in this order:
Portability. A Florida seller moving to another Florida homestead can carry the accumulated Save Our Homes differential to the new home, capped at $500,000 under Fla. Stat. 193.155(8), by filing form DR-501T with the new homestead application within three years of January 1 of the year the old homestead was abandoned. It is the largest sum most move-up and downsize sellers leave unclaimed, and it is administrative rather than negotiable. The buyer's tax reset. The Lee County Property Appraiser states that a homestead's capped assessed value returns to market value in the year following a sale, so the tax figure a seller quotes from their own bill understates the buyer's first full year, and that difference surfaces during the buyer's underwriting rather than at the negotiating table. The federal exclusion. IRS Topic 701 allows a seller who owned and used the home as a main home for at least two of the five years before the sale to exclude up to $250,000 of gain, or $500,000 on a joint return. None of these three is a closing cost, and all three change what a seller actually keeps. We tracked each of them on every Florida seller file this year, and they are on the net sheet we build for you. You are working with Top 1% Real Estate Agents Nationally Since 2008.
McGreevy and Comisar, Domain Realty Group
Serving Estero, Bonita Springs, Fort Myers, Naples and Southwest Florida.
Jesse McGreevy: (239) 898-6072 (call or text, same-day response)
Marc Comisar: (239) 287-5873
Free home valuation: mcgreevyandcomisar.com/home-valuation
Contact: mcgreevyandcomisar.com/contact-us
Honors and recognition: Top 1% Real Estate Agents Nationally Since 2008 · 5 Star Award for Customer Satisfaction for 20 straight years, only 5 out of 21,000+ licensees (Gulfshore Life Magazine) · #1 Team in Southwest Florida since 2012 · over $2.5 billion sold as Domain Realty Group · over $900 million in personal sales between Jesse and Marc · Nationally Recognized Top Producing Realtors · Platinum Sales Production Award Winners.
Jesse McGreevy and Marc Comisar are top-reviewed Southwest Florida listing agents, and the quotes below are genuine five-star Google reviews from sellers we represented, reproduced word for word rather than trimmed to fit a marketing line. Every one of them can be read in full on our Google Business Profile, which is the only honest way to publish this, and we do not display an aggregate rating figure anywhere on this site. You are working with Top 1% Real Estate Agents Nationally Since 2008.
★★★★★ "We had been on the market for several months with no offers. When we signed with Marc our house was sold in 2 weeks. He has a unique system for selling homes." Verified Google review
★★★★★ "Their recommendation on pricing my unit was sound and proved prescient. I never questioned their integrity and found it easy to rely on their recommendations. I would work with them again in a heartbeat." Verified Google review
★★★★★ "Marc and Jesse were amazing to work with AGAIN! We just sold our 3rd home with them and couldn't have been happier! If we ever move again we'll always call Jesse and Marc!" Verified Google review
★★★★★ "Not living in the area, Jesse made life easy for me when we decided to sell our condo. His attention to detail, patience, understanding, and tenacity in dealing with all the moving parts was truly impressive." Verified Google review
Six figures that appear on most competing pages are deliberately absent here, because we could not source them to anything better than a lead-generation site: a typical settlement fee, a pre-listing home inspection price, home warranty cost, staging cost, professional cleaning cost, and the FIRPTA withholding rate.
We would rather hand you a page with gaps you can see than a page with numbers you cannot check. If you find one of these quoted elsewhere with a primary source attached, tell us and we will add it with the citation.
This page is general information about Florida closing costs, not legal or tax advice. Statutory figures change, contract forms are revised, and your transaction has facts this page does not know. For advice on your specific sale, talk to a Florida real estate attorney or your CPA.
Every document below links to the body that issues it rather than to a copy we host, so it stays current the moment the issuer updates it. A Florida seller is handed several of these during a transaction, and reading them before listing costs nothing while reading them at the closing table can cost a great deal.
Document | Issuing body | Link |
|---|---|---|
AS IS Residential Contract for Sale and Purchase, ASIS-7 redline (PDF) | Florida Realtors and The Florida Bar | |
Estoppel Certificate Fees, current inflation-adjusted amounts (PDF) | Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation | |
Florida Documentary Stamp Tax brochure GT-800014 (PDF) | Florida Department of Revenue | |
Rule 69O-186.003, promulgated title insurance rates (DOC) | Florida Office of Insurance Regulation via the Administrative Code | |
Portability of the Save Our Homes benefit, form DR-501T and instructions | Lee County Property Appraiser | |
Save Our Homes and the reset after a sale | Lee County Property Appraiser | |
Topic 701, sale of your home and the gain exclusion | Internal Revenue Service | |
Inspection requirements and the roof useful life rule | Citizens Property Insurance Corporation | |
Flood map lookup by address | FEMA Map Service Center | |
Property tax calendar and early payment discounts | Lee County Tax Collector | |
Closing costs and who pays them | Consumer Financial Protection Bureau |
Every figure above was read from one of these on September 11, 2026.
By Jesse McGreevy, co-founder of Domain Realty and partner in McGreevy and Comisar, and Marc Comisar. For this page we tracked every statutory figure against the 2026 Florida Statutes, the Department of Revenue, the Administrative Code and the Clerk of Court fee schedules on 11 September 2026, and we tracked the estoppel, title and recording lines on our own Southwest Florida closings against those figures, so the numbers here come from the documents rather than from other guides. We have represented Florida sellers since October 2004. Updated September 2026.
McGreevy and Comisar is the flagship brand of Domain Realty Group, the #1 real estate team in Southwest Florida since 2012, with $2.5 Billion in cumulative production and more than 4,000 transactions across Lee, Collier and Charlotte County. Jesse McGreevy and Marc Comisar have personally sold over $900 million in Southwest Florida real estate, hold the Top 1% Real Estate Agents Nationally Since 2008 distinction, and have been recognized with the Gulfshore Life Five Star award for 20 consecutive years. Jesse co-founded the brokerage in 2015 and has been selling in this market since October 2004. Brokered by Domain Realty.
Jesse McGreevy direct: (239) 898-6072. Marc Comisar direct: (239) 287-5873. Email: [email protected]. Office: 24031 S Tamiami Trl #101, Bonita Springs, FL 34134.
Brokered by Domain Realty. Jesse McGreevy and Marc Comisar are licensed Florida real estate professionals, licensed and regulated by the Florida Real Estate Commission (FREC) under Chapter 475, Florida Statutes. Licence numbers are available on request and are searchable on the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation licensee portal.
More on the team at about McGreevy and Comisar, or reach us through our contact page for Southwest Florida buyers and sellers. McGreevy and Comisar lead Domain Realty Group, a full-service Southwest Florida real estate team. If you are selling in Estero, start with a valuation of your Estero home; if you are buying here, read how we represent buyers in Southwest Florida. The area guide is the Estero area guide, and the county hub is our Lee County guide.
Send us your address and your intended closing month and we will send back a line-by-line net sheet with the statute or rate behind every figure. Call Jesse direct at (239) 898-6072. You are working with Top 1% Real Estate Agents Nationally Since 2008, and there is no obligation.
Updated September 2026. This page is general information about Florida seller closing costs, not legal or tax advice. Statutory figures change annually and contract forms are revised. For your specific sale, ask us for the file.