Selling a fire or water damaged house in Florida

The pitch is that no ordinary buyer will touch a damaged house, so you have to take a discount from a specialist. In practice a large share of Florida transactions are cash, and a large share are sold strictly as-is with no repair obligations. Investors who buy damaged property are competing with each other on the open market every single day - and competition is precisely what an off-market sale is designed to prevent.

Whether the claim proceeds stay with you or transfer with the property is a term you negotiate, and it can be worth more than the difference between two offers. Get the claim status, the adjuster's estimate and any payments already issued in front of you before you discuss price with anyone. A buyer who wants the claim assigned to them is buying two things and paying for one.

Sellers routinely spend money on repairs that return less than they cost. Sell it in the condition it is in, disclose everything you know, and let buyers price the work themselves. Your job is disclosure and access, not renovation.

Full disclosure of material facts is not just the law, it is your protection. A buyer who has seen every photograph and signed as-is has no grounds to come back mid-inspection asking for twenty thousand off. The sellers who get retraded are almost always the ones who let a buyer 'discover' something.