Fredericksburg is outside my licence — here is the useful part

The part most sites leave out

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.

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 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.
• Virginia 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 Virginia 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.
• Like Florida, Virginia has coastal exposure and a named-storm deductible regime in its property insurance market. The mechanism will feel familiar; the numbers will not necessarily.
• Florida’s homestead exemption and its Save Our Homes assessment cap do not follow you. Virginia has its own property tax treatment, its own exemptions, and its own rules on how fast an assessment may rise. Confirm the specifics with the local taxing authority.

What actually happens next

Where I stop, on purpose

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 half of this I can actually do

Worth asking yourself before you call: is there a Florida house in this? If so, the referral is only half the conversation. The other half is a Florida listing, which is my actual job, and coordinating the two is materially easier when the same person is watching both calendars.

The questions that tell you who you are dealing with

• 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?
• 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.
• What is the local convention on inspection and financing contingency periods, and how tight are people making them right now?
• 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

• Lynchburg
• Harrisonburg
• Charlottesville
• Danville
• Manassas
• Winchester
• Herndon
• Leesburg
• All of Virginia