Selling your Central Florida home

Most selling advice is generic because most agents cannot see past the finishes. I am also a licensed residential contractor, which changes the most expensive decision a seller makes: what to spend money on before the house goes on the market.

What your home is worth

A range, based on comparable sales and on the actual condition of your house — not a single number from an algorithm that has never been inside it.

Automated estimates work from public records: square footage, bedroom count, the last sale price. They cannot see that the roof was replaced two years ago, that the kitchen was renovated properly rather than cosmetically, or that there is a moisture problem behind the laundry. All three change the number materially.

Which repairs return money, and which do not

Repairs that remove a buyer’s uncertainty about risk usually return more than they cost. Cosmetic renovations usually do not.

A buyer looking at an ageing roof does not deduct the cost of a roof — they deduct the cost of a roof plus a margin for everything else they now suspect. Removing that doubt is worth more than the repair. A new quartz countertop, by contrast, competes against the buyer’s own taste and rarely returns its cost.

This is a general ordering, not a rule for your house. The point of walking it together is to work out which of these apply to you and which are irrelevant.

Pricing strategy

Price it right in the first fortnight. The attention a listing gets in its first two weeks is the most it will ever get, and a reduction never recovers it.

Overpricing to “leave room to negotiate” costs sellers money with dispiriting reliability. The house sits, the days-on-market count climbs where every buyer can see it, and the eventual reduction arrives after the audience has moved on. Houses priced correctly at launch usually sell nearer to asking than houses that reach the same price via a reduction.

Preparation and staging

Clean, decluttered and neutral beats expensively decorated, and costs a fraction as much.

In order of return: remove roughly a third of what is in the house, deep clean including the things nobody thinks about, repair the small broken things a buyer reads as neglect, paint anything bold in a neutral colour, and make sure it smells of nothing at all.

How I market a home

Professional photography, a written description that answers real questions, and a listing page built to be found and cited rather than just to exist.

Every listing I take gets its own page on this site — properly structured, fast, and marked up so search engines and AI assistants can read it. It also gets something no other listing in this market carries: my construction read on the property, which tells a serious buyer that the condition has already been looked at by someone qualified.

Judging an offer — the price is not the offer

The highest number is not always the best offer. What matters is the probability that it actually closes, and at what price it closes after the inspection.

Two offers at the same price are rarely worth the same. The things I look at, in roughly this order:

• Financing. Cash, then a fully underwritten pre-approval, then a pre-qualification, then nothing. The difference between the second and the third is enormous and mostly invisible in the headline number.
• The appraisal contingency. If the buyer has agreed to cover a shortfall, and has the cash to do it, the price is far more real.
• The inspection period. A long one is a long option on your house — you are off the market while they decide.
• Deposit size. A larger deposit is a buyer telling you they intend to close.
• Sale of another home. A contingent offer is only as reliable as a transaction you cannot see.
• Closing date and possession. Sometimes the timing is worth more to you than a few thousand dollars.

I will lay every offer out against those and give you my honest read, including when the lower one is the better one.

Inspection and appraisal — where deals wobble

These two stages break more Central Florida transactions than financing does, and both are more manageable if the work was done before listing.

The inspection report will find things. It always does, on every house, including new ones. What determines whether it becomes a renegotiation is whether the findings are surprises. A buyer who already knew the roof was fifteen years old, because it was disclosed and priced in, does not come back asking for a new roof. A buyer who discovers it on page forty of a report does.

This is the main argument for the pre-listing walkthrough. Knowing what an inspector will find, deciding in advance what to fix and what to disclose, and pricing accordingly, removes most of the leverage a renegotiation depends on.

On the appraisal: if it comes in below the contract price, the options are to renegotiate, to have the buyer bring the difference in cash if their contract requires it, or to challenge the appraisal with comparable sales the appraiser did not use. That last one works more often than people expect, but only if someone assembles the comparables quickly and puts them in front of the lender. That is a job I do rather than hope for.

What you have to disclose

In Florida, a seller must disclose known facts that materially affect the value of the property and are not readily observable by the buyer.

That standard is broader than most sellers assume, and it is not limited to what is on a form. Past flooding, a repaired sinkhole claim, an active leak, prior termite damage, unpermitted work — if you know about it and a buyer walking through would not see it, the safe course is to disclose it.

Sellers resist this because it feels like arguing against their own interest. In practice, disclosure protects you: a known and disclosed defect that the buyer accepted is closed business, while an undisclosed one is a problem that can follow you after closing. It also tends to produce a cleaner negotiation, because the buyer is not discovering things.

I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. If you are unsure whether something needs disclosing, the answer is to ask a Florida real estate attorney rather than to guess — and to lean towards disclosing while you wait for their answer.

The process, start to finish

Valuation and walkthrough, preparation, photography and launch, showings and offers, inspection and appraisal, then closing.

1. Walkthrough and valuation. I see the house, we agree a range, and I tell you what is worth doing first.
2. Preparation. The repairs we agreed, then cleaning and decluttering.
3. Photography and launch. Photographs, the written description, the listing page, and a launch timed for the week.
4. Showings and offers. Feedback after every showing, and a straight assessment of each offer including the terms that are not the price.
5. Inspection and appraisal. The stage most deals wobble at. Having already looked at the condition, there are fewer surprises here.
6. Closing. Title, final walkthrough, keys.

Recently sold