Guides
What to fix, what to sign, what it costs, and what the law asks of a seller in Florida and Louisiana. Each guide answers its question first and lists its sources at the end.
Repairs, inspections, permits, and the paperwork a buyer's agent will ask for. Most of it can be done before you call anyone.
You need proof of what you owe, proof of what you own, and the records behind the work that has been done to the house. In Florida that is a lender payoff figure, your association paperwork, the recorded deed and your survey, the permit history, the current tax bill, and the insurance file.
Read the guide: What documents do you need to sell a house?A Florida home inspection is a visual look at eight defined areas of the house, and most of what comes back is ordinary maintenance. The findings that move a contract are narrower: roof age and condition, the wiring and the panel, the plumbing material, and the age of the cooling system, because those are what an insurer underwrites before it will bind a policy for the buyer.
Read the guide: What do home inspectors find in Central Florida?Clear every flat surface, turn on every light, turn off every fan and screen, and move the cars before the photographer arrives. Most of the work happens the day before, and the last half hour is a walk-through with this list in hand.
Read the guide: How to prepare for listing photosAn open or missing permit is a records problem, and Florida law has a route out of every version of it. An owner may close a permit someone else applied for, a building department may close a substantially finished permit without issuing a new one, and an arms-length buyer cannot be fined for a permit a previous owner abandoned.
Read the guide: What happens if work on your house was never permitted?Fix what a buyer's inspector will write down and what a buyer notices in the first minute, then stop. Open permits, a roof near the end of its service life, and anything you already know is wrong matter more than a renovation you will not finish in time.
Read the guide: What to fix before you listWhat a listing agent does, what the listing agreement says, and how an asking price gets set from recorded sales.
An asking price starts from the recorded prices of similar houses that closed nearby, adjusted for the differences between those houses and yours, then checked against what is for sale now. The tax assessment and online estimates measure something else, and the buyer's lender will order an appraisal that tests the price against the same closed sales.
Read the guide: How is a listing price set?Interview two or three licensed agents, hand each one the same packet of documents, and ask every one of them for a written marketing plan and a written pricing rationale. Check each license on the state database before the meeting, then compare the proposals term by term rather than by impression.
Read the guide: How to choose a listing agentA listing agreement is a contract with a brokerage that sets the term, the fee and when it is earned, who the brokerage represents, and what happens if you sell after it ends. Read four clauses before anything else: the listing type, the termination date, the protection period, and the cancellation terms.
Read the guide: What is in a listing agreement?A listing agent markets your property, brings you every offer, and carries duties that Florida law attaches to the brokerage relationship you agree to in writing. The agreement itself runs to the brokerage, and the licensee you meet works under that broker.
Read the guide: What does a listing agent actually do?What happens between an accepted offer and the day the deed records, and what comes out of the seller's side of the statement.
On a Florida closing statement, the seller's column usually holds the documentary stamp tax on the deed, the owner's title insurance policy when the contract puts it on you, the mortgage payoff, your share of this year's property taxes, and any association estoppel and lien search charges. Brokerage compensation comes out of the same column, at whatever your listing agreement and the purchase contract say.
Read the guide: Seller closing costs in FloridaLouisiana has no statewide deed tax like Florida's documentary stamp, and its constitution bars new transfer taxes, so the seller's column is mostly the mortgage payoff and its cancellation, your share of the year's parish property taxes, whatever termite, association, or title charges the purchase agreement assigns to you, and brokerage compensation as negotiated. The sale itself is an act signed before a notary and recorded with the parish clerk of court.
Read the guide: Seller closing costs in LouisianaAccepting an offer starts a set of contract clocks: the buyer's deposit, the inspection or due diligence period, the loan and appraisal deadline, and title review, each ending on a date the contract fixes. The sale closes when the money and documents are in, and the deed or act of sale is then recorded in the county or parish records.
Read the guide: What happens after you accept an offer?The notices a seller signs, the tax rules that apply to a home sale, and what changes when the house came to you through an estate.
Most people who sell their main home owe no federal tax on the gain: Section 121 of the Internal Revenue Code excludes up to $250,000 of it, or $500,000 on a joint return, if you owned the house and lived in it for at least 2 of the 5 years before the sale. Florida adds no state income tax on top. Louisiana taxes any gain left over at its flat 3 percent rate.
Read the guide: Capital gains tax on a home saleYour Florida homestead exemption and Save Our Homes cap stay on the tax bill for the rest of the calendar year you sell, and then they end: on the next January 1 the property appraiser assesses the house at just value for the buyer. What you can carry forward is the Save Our Homes difference, up to $500,000, if you establish a new Florida homestead in time and file Form DR-501T.
Read the guide: Your homestead exemption when you sellA Florida home seller owes the buyer every known fact that materially affects value and that the buyer cannot readily see, plus a short list of statutory notices delivered at or before signing. No statute prescribes one general disclosure form, so the duty follows what you know rather than which form you used.
Read the guide: What a Florida seller must discloseA Louisiana seller of a home with one to four units completes the Louisiana Real Estate Commission's Property Disclosure Document, or a form with substantially the same content, and delivers it no later than the time the buyer makes an offer. The form reports only defects you actually know about, and it sits beside a separate warranty against redhibitory defects that the Civil Code reads into every sale.
Read the guide: Louisiana property disclosureLook the house up on FEMA's flood map, pull the flood insurance declarations page and any elevation certificate, and complete your state's flood disclosure before an offer arrives. A buyer with a government-backed mortgage on a house in a Special Flood Hazard Area has to carry flood insurance, so that cost is part of the buyer's math from the first showing.
Read the guide: Selling a house in a flood zoneSelling inside a Florida homeowners association adds three steps to an ordinary closing: the buyer gets a disclosure summary before signing, the association issues an estoppel certificate to the closing agent, and the association's records have to match what you told the buyer. Each step runs on the association's clock rather than yours, so start them before the sign goes in the yard.
Read the guide: Selling a house with an HOA in FloridaYou can sell an inherited house once someone has legal authority to sign the deed: a personal representative or the heirs in Florida, a succession representative or the heirs sent into possession in Louisiana. The tax side is often lighter than families expect, because the basis of inherited property generally resets to its fair market value on the date of death.
Read the guide: Selling an inherited houseA licensed agent who works your area will call at the time you choose.
Last updated October 24, 2026