The questions we hear
across every kitchen table.

The asking price is the least informative number in the file. On this island the same figure buys a single-family lot, a 1970s co-op unit or a top floor with a reserve schedule attached, and what those cost to own diverges long after the closing — the association's assessment, the insurance, and whatever the building has committed to spend next. Ask what the monthly obligation is before you ask what the price is. If it is the median you want, it is printed in the guide for whichever of the three neighbourhoods you are looking at, beside the month it was pulled and the source it came from. It is not printed here, because nothing on this page carries a date.

Nothing here works the way a paid option period works in the states that have one, and there is no window you can buy. What a condominium buyer gets instead is three separate clocks, started by three different things, running at the same time. The contract most people sign — the Florida Realtors / Florida Bar "AS IS" form — gives you an Inspection Period at Paragraph 12(a), a number of days written into the blank and fifteen if the blank is left empty, during which you may terminate in your sole discretion by written notice and have your deposit back. Paragraph 10(d) gives you a second and quite different right: if the lowest floor sits below minimum flood elevation, or the property cannot be insured through the National Flood Insurance Program or a private flood policy, you may terminate within twenty days of the Effective Date unless a shorter figure was written in. And Section 718.503(2) of the Florida Statutes gives a condominium buyer seven days, excluding weekends and legal holidays, running from execution and from actually receiving the association's documents — not from whichever came first. Those three do not expire together, and the third one does not start until the paperwork arrives.

Two rules answer that and only one of them is Florida's. Florida's part is about what I am to you rather than about paperwork: section 475.278 presumes every licensee is acting as a transaction broker unless a single agent relationship, or no brokerage relationship at all, has been established in writing — and it forbids dual agency outright, disclosed or otherwise. A transaction broker gives limited representation to both sides without becoming anyone's fiduciary, and if you want a single agent instead, that has to be put in writing, deliberately, before it exists. The second rule is not Florida's at all and holds in every state: since the National Association of REALTORS settlement's practice changes took effect on 17 August 2024, I cannot walk you into a property — on foot or on a live video tour — before we have both signed something, and that something has to put an actual number on what I am paid rather than an "up to" or a "whatever the seller is offering". Here that conversation happens earlier than it used to, because showings get scheduled around an association's access rules and a lost slot is a lost week.

The contract sets the pace, not a statute. On the "AS IS" form the Title Evidence Deadline is written into a blank in Paragraph 9(c), and if that blank is left empty the form fills it for you — fifteen days before the Closing Date on a financed purchase, but only five if Paragraph 8(a) has been checked to say the deal is cash with no financing contingency. Read that blank before you assume you have a fortnight, because on this island cash is the ordinary case and five days is not long to obtain a commitment, read the exceptions and object to them. The Closing Date itself is simply another date the two of you negotiated — nothing moves it automatically, and an extension is a thing both sides sign. Closing runs through a Closing Agent, which may be a title company or a lawyer; the form defines "Closing Services" by reference to section 627.7711(1)(a) of the statutes and has each side pay its own. One thing has changed recently and it lands hardest in a market like this one: for closings on or after 1 March 2026, federal rules require the settlement professional to file a report with FinCEN on residential purchases that involve no mortgage and are taken in the name of a company or a trust. If you are buying a beach condominium for cash through an LLC, expect to be asked for identification you would not have been asked for two years ago.

Two things, and they answer different questions. A milestone inspection under section 553.899 is about whether the structure is sound: every condominium or cooperative building of three habitable stories or more must have one by the end of the year it turns thirty, and then every ten years, and a local enforcement agency may pull that forward to twenty-five years for buildings exposed to conditions such as proximity to salt water — which on this island means most of them. Phase one is a visual examination by an architect or engineer; phase two happens only if substantial deterioration turns up, and it is the one that involves opening things. A structural integrity reserve study under section 718.112(2)(g) is about whether the money exists: roof, structure, fireproofing, plumbing, electrical, waterproofing and painting, windows and doors, plus anything else whose deferred maintenance or replacement cost passes the threshold the statute sets, studied at least every ten years, and for budgets adopted after the end of 2024 an owner-controlled association can no longer simply vote to fund those items short. Both the inspection summary and the reserve study are on the list of documents section 718.503(2)(a) lets you ask the seller for. Ask for them in writing, early, and read the phase-one findings and the funding plan next to each other rather than one at a time.

You are owed a written answer before you sign, not after. Section 689.302 requires the seller of residential property to hand you a flood disclosure at or before the moment the contract is executed, saying whether they know of flood damage during their ownership, whether they have filed a flood insurance claim including through the National Flood Insurance Program, and whether they have taken federal flood disaster assistance. That sits on top of an older and broader duty: since Johnson v. Davis in 1985, a Florida seller who knows something that materially affects value and is not readily observable has to disclose it, and no "as is" clause dissolves that. Then get the elevation certificate, because Paragraph 10(d) of the contract turns it into an exit — if the lowest floor is below minimum flood elevation, or the building cannot be insured through the NFIP or a private flood policy, you may terminate and take your deposit with you. Miss the window and you have accepted the elevation and the flood zone as they are.

On a barrier island the average is close to meaningless — one estate sale and one waterfront closing in the same month will pull it in opposite directions, and a building with an unresolved inspection sells on a different clock from the building next door. What I can tell you without a figure is which of those two situations a unit is in, and that is usually the whole answer. The figure itself belongs somewhere it can be dated, so it lives in the neighbourhood guide with the month and the publisher printed next to it.

"Recovering" is carrying a lot of weight in that question, and on this island it is really two questions. One is what units are trading for. The other is how many buildings have finished the structural work the state now requires of them and stopped assessing owners for it. The second moves slower than the first and predicts it better, which is why I would rather talk about a specific building than about the market. Neither belongs on a page with no date on it; the guides carry the direction, the figure behind it, and where it came from.

Not a number I could type here honestly, because it would be about a property I have not walked in a month that has already ended. What I do instead has two halves, and on this island the second half is usually the one that moves the figure. First the unit: what condition it is actually in, which way it faces, what has been replaced and when. Then the building: the inspection findings, the reserve study, what the association has already voted to spend and what it has not yet decided. A unit in a building with its structural work funded and finished is not the same asset as the identical unit two doors down whose owners are still arguing about it, and pricing them alike does one of the two owners a disservice. It is complimentary, there is nothing to sign, and if the answer is that this is not the year, I will say so.

Here, that question has a trap in it that it does not have inland, and it is worth knowing about before you draw up a scope. Under the federal flood rules a project whose cost reaches half the market value of the structure counts as a substantial improvement, and a substantial improvement has to bring the whole building up to the current floodplain standard — which at this elevation can mean raising it. Communities are free to set the bar lower than that and to add the work up over time, so the first call is to the city's floodplain administrator, not to a contractor. Within that boundary my answer is the ordinary one and I will say it before I have seen the house: paint, light, floors where they have given up, and half the furniture gone. Not a new kitchen. What sells a unit on this island is the impression that nothing has been deferred, and that impression is built out of small finished things rather than one large unfinished one.

Negotiable, and not set by any law, association or MLS — no rate exists to quote you. Since the National Association of REALTORS settlement took effect in August 2024, buyer-side compensation is negotiated separately rather than advertised through the MLS, so there are two conversations now where there used to be one, and both happen in writing before anything goes on the market. One Florida detail worth saying plainly: the agreement is with the licensed brokerage, Sunshine Professional Realty Corp, because that is where a broker associate's license hangs and that is the name Florida requires on the advertising. Whatever the figure is, you will see it written down before it is earned.

Yes, and on a beach it is the question that separates two otherwise identical buyers. Homestead is for a permanent residence: twenty-five thousand dollars off the assessed value, and a second twenty-five thousand off the portion above fifty thousand which applies to every levy except the school district's. Apply to the Pinellas County Property Appraiser by 1 March. What it is really worth, though, is not the exemption but the cap that comes with it — Save Our Homes limits your assessed value increase to three percent a year or the change in the consumer price index, whichever is lower, and if you already hold a Florida homestead you can carry up to five hundred thousand dollars of that accumulated benefit to the new one, provided the new homestead is established within three years of leaving the old. A second home or a rental gets none of that. Non-homestead residential property has its own cap, ten percent a year and not against school levies, and it resets to full just value the January after it changes hands. If someone 65 or older is buying, ask about the additional local-option exemption as well: Florida authorises it and each county and city decides whether to adopt it, and the income limit moves every year, so the current figures are the ones published by the Property Appraiser rather than any typed here.

The honest answer is that the seller's tax bill tells you almost nothing about yours, and the contract says so in capital letters. Your bill is the just value the Pinellas County Property Appraiser determines, multiplied by the millage every authority that taxes the parcel adopts each autumn — county, city, school district, and any independent district — with your exemptions taken off first. The part that surprises people is the reset: a long-held homesteaded property has been rising by three percent a year at most while the market did whatever it did, and the January after it changes hands it is reassessed at full just value. That is why a property whose taxes look modest on the listing can be markedly more expensive to own the year after you buy it. The contract carries a capitalised warning about exactly this at Paragraph 10(h), and the figure to work from is the Property Appraiser's estimate for a new owner, not the number on last year's bill.

You can contest the value. You cannot contest the tax — the Property Appraiser sets neither the millage nor the budgets behind it, so an appeal arguing that the bill is too high has nowhere to land. The clock is short and it is not a date you can look up in advance: a petition on valuation is due within twenty-five days of the mailing of your Notice of Proposed Property Taxes, and the actual deadline is printed on that notice, so open it the day it arrives rather than filing it. Before that, the statute expressly allows an informal conference with the Property Appraiser and expressly says it is not a prerequisite to anything, which makes it close to free to try. If you do petition, it goes to the Clerk and a special magistrate hears it; and if the whole thing goes against you, section 194.171 leaves the circuit court open. Worth it most often where the record is simply wrong about the property — square footage, condition, a view the file thinks you have.

The taxes are fixed by statute and the split is not. Florida charges documentary stamps of seventy cents per hundred dollars of consideration on the deed — the same everywhere except Miami-Dade — and, if you are borrowing, thirty-five cents per hundred on the note plus two mills of intangible tax on the mortgage. Those are due when the documents are recorded, and they are the part nobody negotiates. Everything else is a line on the contract: Paragraph 9(a) and 9(b) itemise what the seller pays and what the buyer pays, and Paragraph 9(c) is a check-one box deciding whether the seller designates the closing agent and buys the owner's title policy or the buyer does. The form singles out only one part of the state for different treatment, and it is Miami-Dade and Broward, not here — so in Pinellas that box is genuinely negotiated rather than customary, and it is worth a moment's attention rather than a shrug. Each side pays its own closing services fee.

Two different things get called this and confusing them is expensive. A district is governmental: a community development district under Chapter 190, or another special district under Chapter 189, levying on your parcel alongside the county, city and school levies, plus non-ad valorem assessments which Chapter 197 lets local governments collect on the same tax bill as a separate block of lines. The contract treats those carefully — Paragraph 9(f) makes the seller pay liens certified before closing and the buyer pay the rest, then expressly carves community development and special district liens out of that rule and prorates them instead. A condominium's own assessment is not any of that. It is levied by the association under Chapter 718, it never appears on a tax bill, and it is not capped, prorated or disclosed by any of the machinery above — which is why on this island the number that ought to worry you is more often in the association's budget than on the tax roll. Read both.

I'm Joan H. Walker, a Senior Broker Associate with Sunshine Professional Realty Corp, licensed in Florida since 1988.

I live and work in Pass-a-Grille. My practice is residential real estate, including three neighboring St. Pete Beach communities: Pass-a-Grille and Don CeSar, Vina del Mar, and Belle Vista.

Don't wait, don't try to predict, let's talk. And simply begin the conversation around your goals and your concerns.