Question 1

Do I need a Florida real estate license to wholesale in Tampa?

Accepted Answer

It turns on whether you are acting for yourself or for another. Florida Statutes section 475.01(1)(a) requires a license to sell, exchange, buy or rent real property "for another" for compensation. The statute carries no express exemption for a person selling their own equitable interest under a contract. The customary reading is that assigning your own contract sits outside "for another," while marketing the underlying property on a seller's behalf does not. That is a legal characterization, not settled ground, and we are a lender and not your counsel. Assignments and double closes are both common in Florida. Have a Florida real estate attorney review your contract, your marketing and your disclosure language before you run the play.

Question 2

What do documentary stamps cost on a Tampa double close?

Accepted Answer

You pay them twice, because Florida taxes each instrument. Deed stamps run 70 cents per $100 of consideration in every county except Miami-Dade, and note and mortgage stamps run 35 cents per $100 of the obligation. In an A-to-B-to-C double close there are two deeds and, if both legs are financed, two notes, so the tax lands on each. On a $300,000 A-to-B leg and a $360,000 B-to-C leg, deed stamps alone are roughly $2,100 and $2,520. Consideration expressly includes the amount of any mortgage or other encumbrance, whether or not the underlying debt is assumed. Florida also imposes a nonrecurring intangible tax on mortgages, and we will not quote you a rate for it. Price the full stamp stack into your spread before you sign, and confirm the figures with your closing agent.

Question 3

Who actually pays the deed stamps at a Tampa closing?

Accepted Answer

The contract decides, even though the statute names the purchaser. Section 201.02 places payment of the deed tax on the purchaser, but in most Florida counties the seller customarily pays deed stamps by contract, and the allocation you negotiate is what controls at the closing table. On a double close that matters twice over: you are the buyer on one leg and the seller on the other, so a default you never read can move a few thousand dollars in either direction. Read the tax allocation clause on both contracts, and make sure the two of them do not leave you paying on both sides by accident.

Question 4

How does Florida's judicial foreclosure change Tampa deal flow?

Accepted Answer

Distressed supply arrives slower here, and it arrives through the court. Every Florida foreclosure runs through the circuit court, so there is no Texas-style first-Tuesday courthouse auction on a 21-day notice. For scale: the national average time to complete a foreclosure was 563 days in the second quarter of 2026, and Texas, a non-judicial state, was the fastest in the country at 165 days. Florida-specific timing figures we could not source, so we will not invent one. What we can say is that the pipeline is long and it is full. In the first half of 2026 Florida had 27,494 properties with foreclosure filings, a rate of 0.27% of housing units, the worst in the nation and up 32.65% year over year. For a wholesaler that means more pre-foreclosure and lis pendens leads with longer runways, and it means our own remedy on the A-to-B leg is a court process, which is part of why Florida bridge and transactional terms price the way they do.

Question 5

How much end-buyer risk should I price into a Tampa wholesale deal?

Accepted Answer

Enough to survive a 72-day resale. As of July 2026 the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater metro showed a median list price of $397,450, down 4.2% from a year earlier and 10.7% off the 2022 peak, with 18,292 active listings, 7,840 of them carrying a price cut, and a median 72 days on market. That is a market that cooled and then flattened, not one in free fall, but it is not a market where your end buyer flips out in three weeks. Florida flippers were still clearing a $75,000 typical gross profit at a 28.3% ROI in the first quarter of 2026, above the national numbers, so the margin is there if the underwriting is honest. Our transactional funding is repaid from the simultaneous resale, so the B-to-C buyer is the whole deal. Get their proof of funds and their lender timeline before you commit to a closing date.

Question 6

What kills a Tampa wholesale deal at the end buyer's underwriting?

Accepted Answer

Insurance and the tax reset, usually in that order. Florida's regulator puts the average homeowners premium including wind at $4,063 in Pinellas, $3,525 in Hillsborough and $2,756 in Pasco as of March 2026. The roughly $1,300 gap between Pinellas and Pasco is the reason the same numbers pencil in Wesley Chapel and die in Clearwater, and flood is a separate policy on top, which a lender will require across much of coastal Pinellas. Those are the highest premiums in the country, and they are finally coming down: the same regulator reported the average premium including wind fell in 51 of 67 counties between its January and July 2026 reports. The second one is taxes: an investor gets a 10% annual assessment cap, not the 3% homestead cap, and it resets on change of ownership, so the seller's tax bill systematically understates what your buyer will pay in their first full year. Pull a real insurance quote and underwrite to a market-value assessment before you set your resale price, and send your buyer to the county property appraiser rather than to last year's bill. Talk to your CPA on the tax side.

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