Free guide
Vet a cash buyer in 20 minutes
Four free public records searches. No cost, no login, and you can do all of them from your phone before you sign anything.
Look the company up on Sunbiz
Florida's corporate registry is free and public. Search the exact name on their business card or contract at search.sunbiz.org. Check when the company was formed, whether it is active, and whether the person you are talking to is actually listed. An LLC registered six weeks ago is not a company with a track record. Note the manager's name - you will use it in the next step.
Search the county records for their name
Every property transfer in Florida is recorded. Search the company name, and the manager's name, in your county's Official Records as the grantee. This answers the only question that matters: has this person ever actually taken title to a house? If a company claims to have bought hundreds of properties and the records show none, they have never bought anything. They find sellers and sell the contract on.
Ask for proof of funds dated this week
A real buyer with cash can produce a current bank statement or a letter from their bank, dated within the last few days, in an amount at or above the purchase price. Not a screenshot. Not a letter from a year ago. Not a 'transactional funding' letter, which is a same-day loan used to flip contracts. If the answer involves a pause, an excuse, or a promise to send it later, you have your answer.
Ask one question and watch what happens
"Will you sign this with the assignment clause struck out?" A buyer who intends to own your house will not care. A wholesaler cannot agree, because their entire profit depends on selling your contract to someone else. This question ends more conversations than every other check combined.
Know where the legal line is
Wholesaling itself is legal in Florida. Crossing one specific line is not.
It is worth being precise about this, because a wholesaler will happily discredit everything else you have read if you get it wrong. In Florida, a person can sign a purchase contract as the actual buyer and then assign that contract to someone else before closing, without holding a real estate licence. That is legal, and it has been for decades.
What is not legal is marketing the property itself rather than their own contractual interest in it. The moment they advertise your address, publish photographs of your house, describe its condition to a list of buyers, or put a sign in your yard, they have stepped into brokering real estate without a licence under Chapter 475. Unlicensed brokerage in Florida is a third-degree felony, not a parking ticket.
So the useful question is not "are wholesalers legal?" It is: what exactly are they advertising, and to whom? If your address is circulating on a buyers list and you never signed a listing agreement, that is the line, and that is what you take to an attorney.
A different pitch, a different statute
If they want you to sell and rent it back
Some operators do not offer to buy outright. They offer to take title now, let you stay as a tenant, and give you the right to buy your house back later. Florida treats that as a foreclosure-rescue transaction under section 501.1377 of the Florida Statutes, and the rules are strict.
- The agreement must be written in at least 12-point uppercase type and signed and dated by you before you sign anything conveying an interest in the property.
- You must be given a copy of the completed agreement within three hours of signing it.
- The agreement has to state, above the signature line, that you understand you are selling your home to the other party.
- If there is a repurchase right, you get 30 days to cure any default in the contract, and you can use that right on up to three separate occasions.
- You have a right to cancel, and the cancellation notice and deadline must be in the paperwork.
- Any lease-option or repurchase arrangement creates a rebuttable presumption, between you and the buyer, that the whole thing was really a loan.
If someone is pitching you a sell-and-stay deal and none of that paperwork exists, stop and take it to a lawyer.
This is not legal advice. Before you sign anything, talk to a Florida real estate attorney. We often point people to Liriano Law PLLC, a Florida real estate and civil litigation firm with experience taking on wholesalers. Free HUD-approved housing counselling is also available at hud.gov or 800-569-4287.
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