Moving out of Florida? Start with the introduction.

What a Florida owner does not expect

• Licensing in this industry is granted state by state, not federally. A Florida licence carries no authority in Indiana, and a Indiana licence carries none in Florida — which is why an introduction, rather than representation, is the only honest offer on this page.
• Indiana levies a tax on income; Florida does not. It is a change worth modelling against the housing cost before you commit to a price range, and it is a question for your own tax adviser rather than for any real estate agent.
• Closings in Indiana are generally handled through a title or escrow company rather than by an attorney as a matter of course, which is closer to the Florida pattern than not.
• Neither the homestead exemption nor the Save Our Homes cap travels with you out of Florida. Indiana sets its own assessment rules, its own exemptions and its own limit on how fast a bill can rise — confirm the specifics with the local taxing authority rather than assuming a Florida analogue exists.

What actually happens next

What this page is, and what it is not

After the introduction I am not in your transaction. I do not supervise the agent, I do not see your contract, and I have no authority to intervene when something goes wrong — that authority belongs to their broker and to the body that licenses agents in Indiana. What I do keep is the telephone. If something reads badly three weeks in, tell me. I would far rather make an awkward call to another brokerage than find out at closing that the introduction was the wrong one.

The questions that tell you who you are dealing with

• Do you work alone or as part of a team? If it is a team, ask who writes the offer, who attends the inspection, and who I will actually be speaking to at nine o’clock on a Tuesday morning.
• How are deposits handled in Indiana — who holds the money, what amount is customary, and at what point does it stop being refundable? Get that answer before you write the cheque rather than after.
• What goes into an offer here besides the price, and what do sellers in Indiana expect to see attached to it? Local custom on this varies more than people moving between states tend to assume.
• If I am buying before I have seen the property in person, what will you do on my behalf and what will you refuse to do? A clear answer to the second half of that question is worth more than the first.

Boundaries worth naming

I will not promise you an outcome. Not a price, not a timeline, not a standard of service from somebody else’s employee. What I can give you is what I asked the agent, what they said, and anything in the conversation that gave me pause. Anyone offering more certainty than that about a transaction in a state they are not licensed in is describing a wish rather than a service.

What I can do directly, without an introduction

A tenanted Florida property does not empty because you have decided to move. The lease runs with the property, the tenant holds rights until it ends, and both of those facts sit in the middle of your closing date whether or not they are convenient. That is Florida work and it is mine to do, but it wants a start measured in months rather than weeks, so raise it on the first call rather than the fourth.

Other cities in Indiana

• Fishers
• Hammond
• Lafayette
• Elkhart
• Noblesville
• Terre Haute
• Indianapolis
• Evansville
• All of Indiana