Florida is my licence. Lake Charles is a referral.

What I do once you call

Read this part before the rest

Most of what goes wrong in a long-distance move goes wrong at the handoff: nobody owns the introduction, so you end up cold-calling names off a search results page. I would rather own it. I cannot be your Louisiana agent, but I can be the person who found them and who you can call when you want a second read.

What changes when you leave Florida

• Licensing in this industry is granted state by state, not federally. A Florida licence carries no authority in Louisiana, and a Louisiana licence carries none in Florida — which is why an introduction, rather than representation, is the only honest offer on this page.
• Louisiana is a non-disclosure state: sale prices are not public record. Researching value works differently there than in Florida, where documentary stamps on the deed make the price effectively public. Your Louisiana agent will explain what that changes.
• Louisiana 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.
• Louisiana is a community property state. How a married couple may take title, and what happens to cost basis on the first death, follow different rules than in Florida. Raise it with your attorney before closing, not after.
• Closings in Louisiana generally run through a title or escrow company rather than requiring an attorney as a matter of course — structurally closer to what you are used to in Florida than not.
• Like Florida, Louisiana has coastal exposure and a named-storm deductible regime in its property insurance market. The mechanism will feel familiar; the numbers will not necessarily.
• Neither the homestead exemption nor the Save Our Homes cap travels with you out of Florida. Louisiana 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.

Questions I would put to them myself

• What disclosures is a seller in Louisiana required to make, and what are they entitled to stay silent about?
• Which documents will you ask me to sign at the very start, what does each one commit me to, and how long does it run? Ask for them by email so you can read them somewhere other than at a kitchen table.
• What does a normal contract-to-close timeline look like in Louisiana, and what most often blows it up?
• 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.

The limits, stated outright

I will not answer a legal, tax, insurance or appraisal question in any state, including my own. I am a sales associate, not an attorney, a CPA, a lender, an appraiser or an inspector, and an honest version of this job includes knowing where its edges are. What I can usually do is tell you which of those people you actually need, which is a cheaper question to get right early than late.

The Florida side of a two-state move

Not everyone sells. If you are keeping the Florida property and letting it out, that is a different conversation with different consequences: the homestead position changes once it stops being your primary residence, and the insurance and association questions change alongside it. I am not your tax adviser and the county property appraiser is the authority on the exemption itself, but I can tell you what the Florida side of that decision looks like in practice before you commit to it.

Other cities in Louisiana

• Ruston
• Bossier City
• Hammond
• Monroe
• New Orleans
• Alexandria
• Baton Rouge
• Houma
• All of Louisiana