Relocating to Amarillo? Here is how a referral works.

Where my licence stops

This page exists because you searched for something and a search engine had to answer you. That makes it an advertisement, and Florida requires me to say whose: I am a sales associate registered with The Keyes Company, licence 3623732. What is being advertised is not representation in Texas, because I cannot lawfully offer that. It is an introduction. Its value is that the person making it has a professional reason to get it right and a broker who is answerable if he does not.

How the introduction gets made

Where I stop, on purpose

I will not read your Texas contract and tell you it looks fine. I do not know that state’s standard form, its local addenda, or what its courts have made of the wording, and a Florida licensee’s reassurance about a contract in another state is worth precisely nothing. Put it to the agent, and where the sums are significant, put it to an attorney licensed where the property is.

Structural differences worth knowing before you go

• Licensing in this industry is granted state by state, not federally. A Florida licence carries no authority in Texas, and a Texas licence carries none in Florida — which is why an introduction, rather than representation, is the only honest offer on this page.
• Texas 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 Texas agent will explain what that changes.
• Texas joins Florida in having no broad-based tax on wage income, so that particular line in the relocation spreadsheet does not move. Most of the other lines will.
• Texas 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 Texas 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.
• Texas shares Florida's coastal exposure and, with it, a named-storm deductible regime in its property insurance market. The mechanism will be familiar. Do not assume the premium will be.
• Neither the homestead exemption nor the Save Our Homes cap travels with you out of Florida. Texas 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 half of this I can actually do

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.

Questions worth asking on that first call

• How do you handle it when you represent both sides of a transaction, and what does Texas law allow there?
• What are the property tax mechanics — how is assessment set, when does it reset after a sale, and what exemptions exist?
• What is the insurance picture on the kind of property I am looking at, and who should I be calling for a real quote?
• What is on the survey or title work here that a Florida buyer would not think to look for?

Other cities in Texas

• Austin
• Frisco
• Pas
• Longview
• Victoria
• Rowlett
• Corpus Christi
• Killeen
• All of Texas