True Title of Central Florida

09/25/2026

Nobody tells title anything because that would ruin the surprise!

09/24/2026

Real estate has a scarier side 👻
Boo It For a Good Cause.
Details coming soon.

09/16/2026

Girl math 💁🏼‍♀️

09/07/2026

09/03/2026

“We want you to know, if you need anything, don’t be shy, okay? There are no title issues too complex in this house. We’re not like a regular title company, we’re a cool title company.” 💅

08/31/2026

Two deeds, both valid, both recordable in Marion County, and they do completely different things to your title.

The warranty deed. Florida prescribes the form at Fla. Stat. 689.02, and the operative promise reads: "And the said party of the first part does hereby fully warrant the title to said land, and will defend the same against the lawful claims of all persons whomsoever." Section 689.03 then says a deed executed substantially in that form "must be held to be a warranty deed with full common-law covenants."

The House staff analysis for the 2023 bill spelled those covenants out. Among them: the grantor will cure defects "even from title defects dating back to before the grantor's ownership of the property to be conveyed."

The quitclaim deed. Until 2023, Florida prescribed no form for one at all. Chapter 2023-238 created Fla. Stat. 689.025 and set the operative words: the grantor "does hereby remise, release, and quitclaim unto the said second party forever, all the right, title, interest, claim, and demand which the said first party has in and to" the land. What the grantor has. There are no warranties. If the answer is nothing, the grantee got nothing, and the deed is still perfectly valid.

Which is why a quitclaim in the chain is not automatically a defect. It is a question. Nobody made a promise at that link, so the search has to go behind it.

The version that creates one: "we will just do a quitclaim to my sister before closing." Florida documentary stamp tax is computed on consideration, and the Department of Revenue counts a mortgage encumbering the property as consideration, so a deed where nobody hands over a dollar can still generate a tax bill on the loan balance. And if the property is homestead and the record owner is married, Article X, section 4(c) requires the spouse to join, even when the spouse is not on title.

Whether a deed did what someone meant it to do is a legal question for a Florida real estate attorney. What it does to the closing is a question we can answer, and it is a much shorter conversation before it is signed than after it is recorded.

08/28/2026

Marion County is 29.8% aged 65 and over against 21.2% statewide. You are going to see a life estate on a deed here. The words alone do not tell you who has to sign.

There are two kinds, and they produce opposite answers.

A plain life estate. Your seller holds it for life, named remaindermen hold the rest, usually the adult children. The Florida Bar's Uniform Title Standard 18.8-1 poses it as a problem: a surviving spouse holds a life estate with a vested remainder in the son. May she alone convey the homestead in fee simple absolute? "Answer: No."

An enhanced life estate, the lady bird deed. Uniform Title Standard 6.11: "A life tenant with an interest in homestead property, coupled with the power to sell, convey, mortgage, and otherwise manage the fee simple estate, can convey or encumber the fee simple estate during the lifetime of the holder without the remainderman." Standard 6.10 says the same for non-homestead property. Where the deed does reserve that power, the children do not sign and they have no consent right.

Three things worth carrying to the appointment.

The reserved power has to actually be in the deed. That is the whole hinge. The RPPTL Section's commentary notes that underwriters typically want to confirm the conveyance was clearly authorized by the powers the life tenant holds, and often distinguish a power to "sell" from a power to "gift."

Homestead and marriage still bite. Article X, section 4(c) of the Florida Constitution restricts conveying and encumbering homestead, and those restrictions still apply to homestead held in an enhanced life estate. A married grantor's spouse joins the deed.

At death, the non-homestead version does what it was drafted to do. Under Standard 6.10, if the property was not conveyed during the life tenant's lifetime, title passes to the remainderman on death "without anything further." Homestead is its own analysis under Standard 6.12, and a surviving spouse or a minor child changes it.

Who has authority to sign is a legal question for a Florida attorney. Which deed is in your chain, and what it will take to close on it, is the part we can answer.

08/26/2026

OMCAR's July 2026 Monthly Market Detail is out, and the interesting number is not the one on the front page.

Single family, July 2026: 747 closed sales, up 6.0 percent year over year. Median sale price $295,000, up 0.9 percent. Median time to contract 60 days. Months supply 4.8, down from 5.8. Median percent of ORIGINAL list price received 96.3 percent, up from 95.6.

Townhouse and condo, July 2026: 55 closed sales, up 34.1 percent. Median sale price $175,000. Median time to contract 107 days, up 55.1 percent from 69 days a year ago. Months supply 7.6. Median percent of ORIGINAL list price received 92.5 percent.

That is the story. Condo and townhouse is the only segment sitting in buyer's-market supply, and it is taking about 47 days longer to go under contract than a single-family listing in the same month. If a seller is anchoring their expectations to what the neighbor's single-family house did, that gap is the conversation to have at the listing appointment.

Two notes on reading the report correctly:

1. The list-price metric is measured against the ORIGINAL list price, not the final one. It runs lower than the percent-of-list figures most agents are used to seeing, and the two are not interchangeable.

2. Manufactured housing shows closed sales down 31.7 percent while median price is up 21.2 percent. On 56 closings, that combination is a mix shift, not appreciation. It says which homes sold, not what any one home is worth. Same caution applies to the foreclosure and REO line: 13 closings this July against 7 a year prior. Thirteen transactions cannot carry a percentage without its denominator attached.

And the caveat OMCAR prints on every page of the report, worth repeating because it changes what these numbers are: the data describes member activity for the association and is not confined to any specific geographic area. These are OMCAR member numbers, not Marion County numbers.

Full report and the monthly archive: omcar.com/community/local-market-statistics/

Figures are July 2026, retrieved 2026-08-16.

08/24/2026

A tax deed cuts off most private liens against the property. That is the whole reason people buy them at auction.

It does not settle who is personally liable for unpaid association assessments. That is a separate question, and it has its own statute.

Florida Statute 720.3085(2)(b): "A parcel owner is jointly and severally liable with the previous parcel owner for all unpaid assessments that came due up to the time of transfer of title."

The condominium version, 718.116(1)(a), reaches further. A unit owner is liable "regardless of how his or her title has been acquired."

Neither section carves out a purchaser taking by tax deed. The only safe harbor in either statute runs to first mortgagees, capped at the lesser of 12 months of assessments or 1% of the original mortgage debt. Somebody who bought at auction is not a first mortgagee.

Being precise matters here. Whether a tax deed extinguishes the association's lien is a different question with its own analysis. This is about personal liability, which the statutes address in plain words.

Marion County runs on deed restricted communities. On Top of the World, Del Webb Stone Creek, and the subdivision inventory behind 5,985 building permits in 2025. On a tax deed parcel here, the association's number is not paperwork at the end, it is part of the price at the start.

08/21/2026

Your buyer closed. The deed recorded. The lender's mortgage recorded. Three weeks later a supplier records a claim of lien.

That lien can outrank both of them.

Under § 713.07(2), construction liens attach and take priority as of the time the notice of commencement was recorded, not when the lien itself was recorded. The NOC went on record before anyone broke ground, so it predates the deed and the mortgage. And § 713.08(5) gives a lienor up to 90 days after final furnishing to record. That window does not close at your closing.

This is the whole reason a title company will not insure a new-construction closing on a builder's word.

It is also why the release package matters more than it looks. § 713.20 sets out two statutory forms, and they are not interchangeable. The progress payment release under subsection (4) covers labor, services, and materials only through a stated date, and it says on its face that it does not cover retention. Subsection (5) is the separate final payment form.

A stack of partial releases is not a cleared file. The retention is still exposed, and anything furnished after the stated date is still exposed.

Worth knowing alongside it: under § 713.20(6), nobody can require a lienor to sign a waiver or release that differs from the statutory forms. A custom lien waiver is working outside the statute.

Florida lien law is uniform statewide. None of this is a Marion County variation.

General education, not legal advice.