Homestead

I sell homes in Homestead, and almost nowhere else

Agent advertising is full of the word specialist, and the only version of it worth anything is a record you can check. Mine is concentrated in one city, and it is published on this site address by address, with the side I represented on every line. Most of my week is sellers, buyers - a steady share of them buying their first house - and owners working out whether a property here is worth keeping. Here is what working a single city actually buys you, and where it does not help.

Updated 2026-10-04

What I actually do, stated plainly

I sell houses in Homestead. That is the center of it: listing for sellers, representing buyers, and a steady share of first-time buyers who are doing every part of this for the first time and are entitled to the long version of every explanation. My license sits with Keys Gate Realty at 10 NE 3rd Street in Florida City, minutes from the south end of Homestead, and I work south Miami-Dade generally.

Almost everything I have closed is in this one city. Every closing is published address by address on the sold and rented pages of this site, each one labeled with the side I represented, so the record is something you can verify rather than something you have to accept. I would rather you read that list than take a transaction count from me. Counts change every month, every agent counts them differently, and they tell you nothing about whether the work was any good.

The third part of the week is owners - people who already have a property here and have not decided whether to sell it or hold it as an investment. That is mostly arithmetic rather than persuasion, and it has a section of its own further down this page.

Working one city closely has a real limit, and it is worth saying out loud. Inside Homestead my read on a specific street comes from having worked on it. Outside it I am reading the county record and the closed comparables rather than remembering them - still a perfectly serviceable way to work, but not the same thing, and you are entitled to weigh that.

Pricing a Homestead house, and why the argument matters more than the number

A house here prices off two different buyers, and a listing that ignores one of them leaves money on the table. The retail buyer is paying for a home: the kitchen, the schools, the drive up US-1. The investor is paying for what the property produces, and that ceiling has very little to do with how the kitchen feels.

Which is why I keep track of what houses here rent for as well as what they sell for. If I know what a house on your street would bring, I know roughly where an investor's offer lands - and that tells us whether to price for the retail buyer, for the investor, or deliberately for both. Most sellers in this city are never told there were two numbers.

Everything in a pricing argument should trace back to something that actually closed. Asking prices are opinions and closed sales are facts. Where the comparables are mixed - and in Homestead they are, because tract subdivisions sit beside older individual houses - the appraiser has more adjusting to do, and a contract price nobody can support becomes everyone's problem at the point where everyone is already committed.

It matters most in week one, because a listing is at its most visible the day it posts: the buyers who have already been searching for months see it immediately. An over-priced first week is the most expensive week you have.

So ask for the pricing argument in writing, with the comparables attached - from me or from anyone else.

Selling here: the four things that actually move the number

Roof age. In Florida the roof drives the insurance quote, the insurance decides whether a lender can close, and that decides how many buyers exist for your house at all. Find the roof's actual permit date before you set a price, not the year someone remembers. An old roof behind a retail asking price tends to produce a long run on market and then a reduction, which usually costs more than having the roof conversation up front would have.

Permits. Enclosed patios, converted garages and added bedrooms turn up regularly around here, and not all of them were permitted. Compare the Property Appraiser's recorded bedroom, bathroom and living-area figures against what you are actually selling. If your listing square footage sits above the county's, a buyer's lender will ask which permit covers the difference - and a permit that was opened and never closed can hold up a closing by itself. Ask the right office, too: a Homestead mailing address does not prove the parcel sits inside the city limits. Permits for city parcels are held by the City of Homestead and unincorporated parcels are county, and the Property Appraiser's record for the address tells you which one you are dealing with.

Your buyer's carrying cost. Your tax bill is not their tax bill. The assessed value is reset the year after the sale, and the homestead cap you have been enjoying belongs to you, not to the house. Their insurance quote is their own, and it turns on the roof and the flood designation. Two houses at the same price are not equally affordable, and the cheaper one to carry draws the better financed offers.

The association. Some communities here require the association to approve a buyer before closing, and some sit inside a community development district whose assessment appears on the tax bill as a non-ad valorem line beside the county's. Both belong in the timeline, and in the conversation with the buyer's agent in week one rather than week six.

Buying here, and especially if it is your first

If this is your first purchase, the number that decides your life is not the price - it is the monthly figure, and in Florida the parts first-time buyers are never warned about are the ones that move it most. Principal and interest is the predictable piece. Insurance and taxes are where two houses at the same price stop being equally affordable, and an association fee sits on top of both. Work the whole monthly number out on the specific address before you get attached to it, and ask every basic question you have: nobody is born knowing this, and an agent who makes you feel slow for asking is the wrong agent.

Get a real insurance quote on the specific address during your inspection period, not a neighborhood estimate. Ask whether it assumes wind mitigation credits, and ask separately whether the carrier will still write the policy at renewal given the roof's age.

Flood is a separate policy from your homeowners cover, with its own deductible, and a lender only requires it in certain zones - which is not the same thing as the property not flooding. Check the current designation for the address rather than for the area, because the maps get revised and what the seller remembers may not be current.

Assume your property tax lands nearer what you paid than what the listing shows. The seller's cap belongs to the seller, not to the house, and the figure printed on the listing is their history rather than your forecast.

Pull the permit history before you write the offer, from the city or the county depending on where the parcel sits. It is a public record, it costs nothing to look, and discovering an unpermitted addition halfway through the inspection period costs you leverage as well as time.

Ask what association approval involves, how long it takes and what it costs, and whether any special assessment is planned or under discussion. A pending assessment is a cost you inherit.

If you already own a property here: sell it, or hold it

This is the conversation I find most useful, and it is a decision rather than a pitch. Two real numbers settle it: what the property would sell for today, and what it would actually net you if you held it. I will give you both for the same address, with the comparables behind each, and I have no stake in which one you choose.

The netting is where owners go wrong. Start with what comparable properties have actually leased for recently, not what they are asking. Then subtract all of it: the mortgage, the taxes at the rate that will apply to you rather than the rate on an old bill, insurance, the association fee, a genuine maintenance allowance, an honest allowance for the weeks it sits empty between tenants, and the cost of each turnover. What is left is the real return, and it is routinely far smaller than the rent figure people begin with - occasionally negative.

There is also a deadline that expires quietly. If the property has been your primary residence, federal rules allow a substantial amount of the gain to be excluded when you sell, and that turns on having owned and lived in it for at least two of the five years before the sale. Hold it as a rental long enough and the exclusion is gone, and the tax on the gain can exceed the rent you collected in the meantime. Work out when that window closes before you sign anything, and do it with a tax professional.

If the arithmetic says hold, be clear about what I am and am not. I property-manage exactly one property, so I am not a management company and will not imply a portfolio I do not have. What I do for an owner is the front half of it: pricing off leases that actually closed, marketing and photographing the property like a listing rather than an afterthought, handling the showings, finding and screening a tenant for you against written criteria applied identically to everyone, and preparing the lease and seeing that the deposit is held the way Florida requires. If what you need is a company fielding maintenance calls all year, say so and I will tell you what to ask the ones you interview.

If you intend to run it yourself, three parts of Florida's residential landlord and tenant act are where owners get hurt. 83.49 governs how a security deposit must be held, the 15 days you have to return it if you are claiming nothing, and the written notice you must send by certified mail within 30 days of the tenant moving out if you do intend to claim against it. Miss that notice and you forfeit the right to claim against the deposit at all, however real and documented the damage - it goes back, and you are left pursuing the damage separately. 83.56 sets the notices that must be served before you can act on unpaid rent or a breach of the lease, and the form and wording of them matter as much as the sending. 83.53 requires notice before you enter - at least 24 hours where the entry is for repairs - and limits entry to reasonable times.

And set the lease end date deliberately, because it decides what you are choosing between a year from now. A tenancy that ends on your terms keeps the sale option open; one that runs on indefinitely narrows your eventual buyer pool toward investors, since the lease generally survives the sale.

What to ask me, or any agent working this city

Ask for the closing list, by city, with the side represented. Not a count of transactions somewhere in Miami-Dade - the list, address by address, with the side shown on every line. Mine is on the sold and rented pages of this site. An agent who cannot produce theirs quickly is telling you something.

Ask what is wrong with it. Roof age, permit gaps, flood designation, anything that narrows the pool of buyers who can actually finance it. An agent with no criticisms has not looked, and the criticisms are cheaper to hear now than in week six.

Ask who will physically be at the property. Who shows it, who meets the inspector, who is standing there when the appraiser arrives, and who arranges access if a tenant is still in place - that last one is a statutory notice question, not a scheduling preference. Ask for names rather than a team page.

Ask for the pricing argument in writing, with the comparables attached. A number with no list behind it is an opinion, and the agent who hands you the highest opinion is not doing you a favor - they are buying the listing and planning the reduction.

Ask what the fee covers, in writing. Commission is negotiable and is not set by law or by any board, so the useful question is what is included: photography, the MLS entry, syndication, who shows it, and what happens if it does not sell.

Common questions

Related

• Rent it out, or sell it?
• Roof age is the number that decides your insurance
• The seller's tax bill is not your tax bill

The record referred to on this page is closed transactions in which Zac Tranten, through Keys Gate Realty, represented a party or acted as transaction broker, as of October 2026, published address by address on the sold and rented pages of this site with the side represented shown on each; where a closing was handled as transaction broker for both parties, those pages say so. Past closings are not a prediction of any particular outcome. General information for Homestead owners and buyers, not legal, tax or insurance advice; Florida statute references are a starting form and should be read in their current form or with a Florida attorney. Equal Housing Opportunity.