Who Pays If Your Florida House Is Damaged Before Closing?

Keep the House the Way It Was on the Effective Date

Signing doesn't hand the house to the buyer. Until closing, it's still yours to keep up. What you're protecting in that stretch is the sale you signed, closing on the date in the contract.

Keep the property in the condition it was in on the Effective Date. Paragraph 11 of the Florida Realtors/Florida Bar AS IS contract sets that standard, and the Effective Date is the day the last of you and the buyer signed or initialed and delivered the offer or the final counter-offer. Ordinary wear and tear is carved out. So is damage from fire or another casualty, which the contract's Standard M handles on its own terms. The form names the lawn and the pool. Shrubs too.

Fall short and it costs you at closing. Under paragraph 9(a), if you can't meet that maintenance requirement before closing, 125% of the estimated cost to meet it is held in escrow at closing. If the real cost runs higher, you pay the difference. Unused money comes back to you.

The buyer also gets a final look. Under paragraph 12(b), the buyer or the buyer's representative can walk through the day before closing, or on closing day before the closing time. The walk-through checks two things: the items included in the sale are still in place, and you've kept up the maintenance and met your other obligations. On this form, those items include storm shutters and storm protection items and hardware you own that were on the property at the initial offer, unless paragraph 1(e) or another term of the contract excludes them.

So keep the lawn cut and the pool in the shape it was in, even after you move out. And unless you excluded them, leave the shutters.

Repair Storm Damage Before Closing or Escrow It

One number decides who pays. It's 1.5% of the Purchase Price, set by Standard M of the Florida Realtors/Florida Bar contracts for fire or another casualty that damages the house after the Effective Date and before closing. Same wording in the standard and AS IS versions.

At or under that number, fixing the house is on you and the closing goes ahead. On a $400,000 contract, for example, 1.5% is $6,000.

That leaves you one call to make. Fix the damage before closing. Or let escrow cover it. If the work isn't done by closing, 125% of the estimated cost to finish it is held in escrow at closing, capped at 1.5% of the price. If the real cost runs past what's held, you pay it, up to that same 1.5%. Anything unused comes back to you.

Above 1.5%, the choice isn't yours. The buyer either takes the house as is together with the 1.5%, or gets the deposit back, which releases both of you from the contract.

NOAA's National Hurricane Center puts the Atlantic hurricane season at June 1 to November 30, with most activity from mid-August to mid-October. Expect the buyer to want another look after a hurricane passes. A Florida Realtors legal article from September 2024 says buyers often do, whether or not the inspection period is still running. Under Standard L, you provide utilities and access on reasonable notice for appraisals and inspections, including a walk-through, or a follow-up walk-through if necessary, before closing. Keep your homeowner's insurance in force until closing too, since the repair cost up to 1.5% of the price stays yours until then.

Wait Out a Hurricane Delay or End the Contract After 30 Days

A storm doesn't have to touch your house. It can still stop the closing. Standard G of the Florida Realtors/Florida Bar contracts lists hurricanes and floods first among Force Majeure events, meaning events the side that can't perform is unable to prevent or overcome with reasonable diligent effort. While one disrupts, delays or prevents performance, or the services, insurance or approvals a closing needs, neither side has to perform and neither owes the other damages.

Insurance gets named outright. Under paragraph 5(b) of the AS IS form, if Force Majeure leaves services essential for closing unavailable, including the issuance of hazard, wind, flood or homeowners' insurance, the Closing Date extends as Standard G provides.

The extension has two limits. Every affected deadline, the Closing Date included, moves a reasonable time, up to 7 days after the event stops preventing performance. If it keeps blocking performance more than 30 days past the Closing Date, either side can end the contract with written notice. The deposit goes back to the buyer. Both of you are released.

The 30-day mark is your call too. Before it, plan for slack: don't put your move-out or the closing on your next home on the same day as this one. After it, wait or end the contract in writing.

Where Cash Flow Deals Fits Before You Sign

Before you sign any contract, find what it says about damage before closing. Nothing with Cash Flow Deals is binding until a written contract is signed by both sides, and you can read it with an attorney first. Everyone on the title is welcome on the call.

Cash Flow Deals is a Florida real estate investor that locks in a net price for a seller's house before repairs are scoped, using a novation-based, flat-fee process arranged through its licensed FL brokerage partner, Silver Door Realty — not a traditional listing, and not a brokerage itself.

You get two offers in writing, and you choose. Cash Flow Deals' process, in order:

1. Your address: enter it and confirm it, then answer the offer questions. We call back the same day during business hours.

2. Cash offer: our as-is number. We buy the house and close. No listing, just one walk-through by our team.

3. Premium offer: a higher number, paid by a real FHA or conventional buyer through novation. You sign with us at a number you agree to and give us permission to bring in a buyer in our place. That buyer signs a new contract directly with you. Their lender funds it, and title transfers once.

4. Inspection period: 15 business days on either offer. On the Premium offer, the home may be listed through Silver Door Realty during those days. A licensed agent brings each buyer. Showings are scheduled ahead and take 10 to 15 minutes.

5. Closing: 45 days or less, on a date you help pick.

6. Costs: You get the amount you agree to, and we'll handle any costs on top of that. On the Premium offer, we're paid as a separate line item on the closing statement.

If a Premium buyer's financing falls through, you can still take our Cash offer. In our view, that exposure to real FHA and conventional buyers is where the higher Premium number comes from.

The one exception: if something structural surfaces that was not visible or disclosed before we signed — foundation issues, hidden moisture, old wiring, cast-iron drain failure — we re-cost it and bring the number back to you. You decide. You can walk away. We disclose what we know at offer time so this almost never happens.