Leaving Florida for Olive Branch, MS

The honest position, stated up front

A referral fee is not a finder’s fee and it is not something you pay. It is a share of the commission the Mississippi brokerage earns on a transaction it closes, paid across to The Keyes Company under an agreement signed between the two firms before you are ever introduced. Nothing is added to your closing statement, and nothing arises at all unless a transaction completes. I set this out early because the word “referral” has been used to describe several quite different arrangements, and you are entitled to know which one you are being offered.

Boundaries worth naming

I will not sit between you and your Mississippi agent during a negotiation. Two voices on one side of a deal is how positions get muddled and how something ends up conceded twice. Once you are in a transaction they advise and you decide. If you want a second read from me on how something is worded, ask for it — but it will be a private conversation, not a message relayed to the other side of the table.

What I do once you call

What works differently in Mississippi

• Real estate licensing is state by state. An agent licensed in Florida cannot represent you in Mississippi, and a Mississippi licensee cannot represent you in Florida.
• Sale prices in Mississippi are not a matter of public record — it is one of a minority of non-disclosure states. Coming from Florida, where documentary stamps on the deed make the number effectively public, expect to lean far harder on your agent for comparables than you are used to.
• Leaving Florida means picking up a state income tax in Mississippi. Model it against the housing number before you settle on a price range, and take the actual arithmetic to a tax adviser rather than to any real estate agent, including me.
• Closings in Mississippi 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, Mississippi 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. Mississippi 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.

The questions that tell you who you are dealing with

• What goes into an offer here besides the price, and what do sellers in Mississippi expect to see attached to it? Local custom on this varies more than people moving between states tend to assume.
• 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.
• How do closing costs divide by local custom, which of those items are genuinely negotiable, and which are simply the way it is done here?
• What is the local practice on possession — do I get the keys at closing, or do sellers here commonly stay on for a period afterwards, and how is that documented?

Selling here, buying there

The referral is what I can do for Olive Branch. The Florida sale is what I can do for you. When a move involves both, treat them as one project — the closing dates have to talk to each other, and the cost of them not talking is usually a rent-back or a bridge loan nobody budgeted for.

Other cities in Mississippi

• Clinton
• Hattiesburg
• Pearl
• Biloxi
• Madison
• Meridian
• Ridgeland
• Tupelo
• All of Mississippi