Sheboygan is outside my licence — here is the useful part

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 Wisconsin 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 Wisconsin, and a Wisconsin 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 Wisconsin. 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.
• Wisconsin 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 Wisconsin 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.
• Neither the homestead exemption nor the Save Our Homes cap travels with you out of Florida. Wisconsin 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

Where I stop, on purpose

I will not tell you what to offer or what to ask in Sheboygan. Pricing is the advisory half of brokerage, it rests on evidence I have no proper access to, and giving it where I hold no licence would be the precise thing this page says I do not do. When you want that answer, take it from the licensee I introduce you to, in writing, with the comparable properties attached to it.

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 Sheboygan, 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

• Who handles the closing here — an attorney, a title company, an escrow agent — and when do they get involved?
• What disclosures is a seller in Wisconsin required to make, and what are they entitled to stay silent about?
• If I am buying before my Florida property sells, what do sellers here accept as proof of funds?
• How do you handle it when you represent both sides of a transaction, and what does Wisconsin law allow there?

Other cities in Wisconsin

• Fitchburg
• Waukesha
• Milwaukee
• Brookfield
• Eau Claire
• Madison
• New Berlin
• Janesville
• All of Wisconsin