Selling your Florida house yourself? Start with the chapter that tells you whether you should.
Chapter 1 of Selling Your House in Florida Without an Agent — The Licensed Broker's Field Guide, free. Written by Peter Mergenthaler Jr · Licensed in Florida real estate since 1992 · Broker, BK 3608530.
Yes, a Florida owner may sell their own home without a license or an agent. What you cannot delegate is the work: a price built from public records, insurability documented, statutory disclosures made, a contract and closing handled on deadline. Chapter 1 gives you four filters to judge whether that work fits your property, your buyer situation and your calendar. It is free.
No card for Chapter 1. No phone call. The full 293-page guide and all fourteen fillable worksheets are $29 if you want them, and Chapter 1 is useful whether you buy it or not.
Verify me before you trust me
My broker's license number is BK 3608530 and the brokerage license is CQ1070192. Look both up at myfloridalicense.com before you take a word of this seriously. It takes ninety seconds, and it is the same habit the book asks of you on every page: check the primary source yourself.
Here is my conflict, stated before you spend a dollar. I make my living from listings, and this book teaches you how to sell without one. It is disclosed on page two of the book as well. I wrote it anyway, because most Florida owners who struggle selling by owner are not struggling for lack of a license. They are struggling because nobody wrote down the mechanics — how insurability decides whether a deal closes, how a comparable-sales analysis is actually built from public records, what a permit search turns up, which contingency quietly kills a contract on day forty-seven.
What is in the guide
- 18 chapters, 293 pages, Florida statutes, Florida forms, Florida timelines, Florida county records throughout
- 14 fillable worksheet PDFs, each with a worked example — net proceeds, the by-owner-versus-agent comparison, the hidden-cost worksheet, the prep budget, the insurability audit, the offer comparison matrix, the Day-30 rule, the three-input price reconciliation, the seller's document packet, the settlement statement cross-check, the listing gate and more
- 13 figures, including the four-filter decision tree and the Day 30 / 60 / 90 hand-off framework
- A 151-entry Florida glossary, from estoppel letter to SIRS to documentary stamps
- Appendix A — a public-source citation index: every statute, rule, case and dataset cited, with where to read it free
- Appendix B — a library of 87 tools across the eighteen chapters and Appendix D
- Appendix C — Florida's statutory warranty deed form (§ 689.02)
- Appendix D — the licensing line: what a licensed person may do that an owner may not, and where that line falls
It also teaches the part nobody selling you services wants to teach: how to compare any broker's written quote line by line, mine included, and the three checkpoints — Day 30 review, Day 60 decide, Day 90 hand over — that tell you on a calendar, with data, whether to keep going.
Who this is for
- Florida owners selling, or thinking about selling, without a listing agent
- Owners who already have a buyer — a relative, a neighbor, a tenant — and need to paper the deal correctly
- Owners who want to understand pricing, insurability and disclosure well enough to judge any quote they are given
- Owners who would rather read the statute than be told what it says
- Executors, trustees and out-of-state owners handling a Florida property
Who this is not for
- Anyone selling outside Florida. Every statute, form, custom and timeline here is Florida-specific.
- Anyone who wants a script instead of the mechanics. The worksheets are the book, and several ask for your signature and a date.
- Anyone looking for a promise about their own house. There isn't one in here.
- Licensees looking for a practice manual. This is written for the owner.
Questions Florida sellers actually ask
Can I sell my house by owner in Florida?
Yes. An owner selling their own property does not need a real estate license. What does not disappear is the work and the liability: pricing, exposure, disclosure, contract and closing. In the National Association of REALTORS® 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, for-sale-by-owner sales were 5% of home sales, an all-time low, while 91% of sellers sold with the assistance of a real estate agent. That does not tell you what to do. It tells you that you will be doing something most sellers no longer do, so do it deliberately.
Do I need a real estate attorney to sell a house in Florida?
Florida does not require an attorney at a residential closing; title companies commonly handle closings here. That is not the same as not needing one. Contract language, title defects, estates and trusts, liens, open permits, divorce and probate situations are attorney work, and the guide flags each place where the cost of guessing exceeds the cost of a phone call. We are a brokerage, not a law firm, and nothing here is legal advice.
What do I have to disclose when I sell a house in Florida?
Florida's rule comes from Johnson v. Davis, 480 So. 2d 625 (Fla. 1985): where a seller of a home knows of facts materially affecting the value of the property that are not readily observable and are not known to the buyer, the seller has a duty to disclose them. Two things sellers get wrong — an "as-is" clause does not waive that duty, and the buyer's inspection does not relieve you of it. Read the case; it is public and free. Your disclosure duty stays yours at every service level, including full service.
Can I put my house on the MLS without a real estate agent?
Not directly. MLS participation runs through a licensed brokerage, so a broker places the listing and you do the rest. Exposure is the reason people ask about it: in NAR's 2025 Profile, 40% of for-sale-by-owner sellers said they did not actively market their home. The guide sets out every route, from by-owner to full service, and how to compare any broker's written quote line by line — ours included.
How do I price my house without an agent?
From public records, not from an automated estimate. Your county Property Appraiser gives you parcel data and recent neighborhood sales; the Clerk of Court gives you recorded deeds with the actual prices; the Florida Realtors® monthly market report for your county gives you median price, months' supply and median time to contract. Then you adjust for size, condition and insurability, and you write it down. Markets differ county by county and by property type, so use your county's latest report rather than a statewide headline.
Is it true that homes sold by owner sell for less?
Here is the number with the caveat that belongs to it. In NAR's 2025 Profile, for-sale-by-owner homes sold at a median $360,000 against $425,000 for agent-assisted homes. But the two groups are not selling the same houses — the mix of property types, locations and price bands differs — and nobody has cleanly separated what the homes are from how they were sold. Anyone who tells you that whole gap is their fee is selling something. The part you control is pricing, exposure, negotiation and paperwork, which is what the guide is about.
Figures above are from the National Association of REALTORS® 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, as reported by NAR on 11 November 2025. Read it at nar.realtor/research-and-statistics.
Start with Chapter 1
Walk the four filters before you read another statistic, and before the sign goes up, fill in the listing gate.