Leaving Florida for Chesapeake, VA

Starting with what I cannot do

A referral fee is not a finder’s fee and it is not something you pay. It is a share of the commission the Virginia 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.

What changes when you leave Florida

• Licensing in this industry is granted state by state, not federally. A Florida licence carries no authority in Virginia, and a Virginia licence carries none in Florida — which is why an introduction, rather than representation, is the only honest offer on this page.
• Leaving Florida means picking up a state income tax in Virginia. 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 Virginia 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.
• Virginia 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. Virginia 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.

How the introduction gets made

Boundaries worth naming

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.

One move, two transactions

Sometimes the Florida property is not the one you live in. A second home, an inherited house, a unit that has been let for years — each of those sells differently and each carries paperwork that has to be in order before it can go on the market at all. If one of them is attached to your move to Chesapeake, that part sits squarely inside my licence, and it is worth starting early, because the documents take longer than the marketing does.

What to ask the agent I introduce you to

• 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.
• When an inspection turns something up, what is the local practice — a price reduction, a credit at closing, or the seller arranging the work — and who conducts that negotiation on my behalf?
• 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 is a shortfall on the appraisal usually handled in Virginia, and what do buyers here commonly write into the contract to deal with it before it happens?

Other cities in Virginia

• Herndon
• Alexandria
• Charlottesville
• Vienna
• Roanoke
• Manassas
• Norfolk
• Suffolk
• All of Virginia