Sell Your House When Life Is Moving You — On Your Timeline

When the move does not fit a listing

A traditional sale in Pinellas County takes 60 to 90 days on a good run: a few weeks to declutter, paint and fix what the agent flags, a few weeks of showings and an open house, then 30 to 45 days for the buyer's loan, appraisal and inspection. If the inspection turns up a 2006 roof or a Federal Pacific panel, add a repair negotiation. That is fine when you have the time. Relocations and downsizing rarely do.

• Job relocation. The start date is fixed, the relocation package covers a month of temporary housing, and the family wants to move once, not twice.
• Assisted living or memory care. A room opens, the deposit is due, and the monthly cost starts whether the house has sold or not. Adult children are often doing this from out of town, between their own jobs.
• Moving to be near family. The grandchildren are in Raleigh or Atlanta, the spouse is gone, and staying in a big house alone in Largo has stopped making sense.
• Downsizing. The yard, the pool, the stairs and the insurance bill are too much, and the new place is a villa or an apartment that needs a fraction of what is in this house.

We close in as little as 7 to 14 days when title is clean, or on the date you choose. If the move to the community is in March, we close the week after you are settled, so you are not packing and signing on the same day.

Sell before the move, or after?

Most people would rather sell before they leave, and with a cash buyer that is possible without the house being empty and staged first. We do one 15 to 30 minute walkthrough while you still live there. Boxes in the hallway and a half-packed garage do not affect the offer; we are looking at the roof, the systems and the layout, not the housekeeping.

Selling after the move is the expensive option, and worth being honest about. An empty Florida house carries a mortgage or taxes, insurance, lawn service, utilities kept on for the AC, and someone to check it after storms. Once it is no longer your permanent residence, the homestead exemption and the Save Our Homes cap come off for the following tax year, so the tax bill goes up while the house sits. Most insurers treat a house as vacant after 30 to 60 days and may limit or drop coverage. And hurricane season, June 1 to November 30, is a bad time to own a house you cannot get to. Our out-of-state owner page and vacant house page cover that in detail if you have already moved.

If you have to leave before closing, we work with that too. A neighbor or a lockbox handles the walkthrough, and the closing can be done by remote online notary from wherever you land.

Homestead, Save Our Homes and portability if you are staying in Florida

If you are downsizing within Florida, from a house in St. Petersburg to a villa in Seminole, say, ask the property appraiser about portability before you buy the next place. Florida's Save Our Homes rule caps the yearly increase in a homestead's assessed value at 3 percent or the change in the CPI, whichever is lower (Fla. Stat. § 193.155(1)). After twenty years in a house, the gap between what it is assessed at and what it is worth can be large. Under Fla. Stat. § 193.155(8), you can transfer up to $500,000 of that difference to a new Florida homestead, as long as you had the exemption on the old house in one of the three prior tax years. The Pinellas County Property Appraiser notes that the three-year clock runs from January 1 of the last year you had the exemption, not from the sale date, and that the application deadline for the new home is March 1 of the year after you buy it.

Portability does not depend on how the old house is sold, so a cash sale to us does not affect it. What matters is the timing of your new homestead application. We are not the property appraiser and this is not tax advice; the Pinellas County Property Appraiser's office answers these questions for free, and it is worth a call before you sign on the new place. The standard homestead exemption itself, $25,000 plus an additional exemption of up to $25,000 on value over $50,000 for non-school taxes (Fla. Stat. § 196.031), is applied for the same way, on the same deadline.

Capital gains: a question for your CPA

Most people selling the home they have lived in for years owe little or no federal tax on the sale. Under IRC § 121, as the IRS explains in Topic 701, you can generally exclude up to $250,000 of gain, or $500,000 on a joint return, if you owned the home and used it as your main home for at least two of the five years before the sale. A long-held Pinellas house that has gone up a great deal in value can still have gain above those numbers, especially for a widow or widower filing alone, and the rules around a deceased spouse's share are specific.

If you have been in the house less than two years because of a job move or a health reason, IRS Publication 523 describes a partial exclusion: a new job at least 50 miles farther away, or a move to get or give care for a family member, can qualify. We do not give tax advice and we do not know your basis; the closing statement we provide gives your CPA what they need. Ask before the sale rather than after.

Leaving things behind, and moving a parent gently

Downsizing from a house to a room means most of what is in the house is not coming. The garage, the attic, the china cabinet, the workshop. The stress of sorting it is often the real reason the move keeps getting put off.

With us, you take what you want and leave the rest. Furniture, clothes, tools, the shed, the boat trailer, the forty years of paperwork in the closet: it stays, and we clear it after closing. There is no clean-out fee and no requirement that the house be broom-clean. If you would like a few days after closing to come back for a last few things, ask us; it can often be written into the contract.

For adult children helping a parent move to assisted living or memory care, a few practical notes. The parent signs, or whoever holds a valid power of attorney for them; a Florida power of attorney needs two witnesses and a notary (Fla. Stat. § 709.2105), and the title company needs to review it before closing. If a parent has already died and the house is in their name, that is a probate matter, and we pay for and handle probate; start with our inherited house page. There is no pressure and no deadline we impose, and if the answer is that listing would net more and the time is there, we will say so on our compare page.

Related: Out-of-state owner · Vacant house · Inherited or probate house · all situations we buy

We are a cash home buyer, not a law firm. This page is general information about Florida law and local process, not legal advice. For advice on your situation, talk to a Florida attorney — we work with several and are glad to make an introduction.