Option 2: Hire a top Florida real estate agent

Even when you’re in a rush to sell your house, hiring an experienced real estate agent can be a strategic move. A seasoned agent can navigate the local Florida housing market and guide you to a speedy and successful sale. They can handle everything from staging to negotiating and help you net more from your home sale, even in a time crunch.

How fast do agents sell homes in Florida?

Top-selling Sarasota real estate agent Tami Cashi, part of the Team Cashi, has been helping home sellers and buyers navigate the Florida housing market for 18 years. She says Florida’s housing market remains favorable for sellers. “I would say it’s still robust. I would say we are still tight on quality inventory.”

According to Florida Realtors, the median days on market (DOM from list to contract) for a Florida home is currently 41 days. The median time until final closing is 85 days.

But the top real estate agents in the state can often cut that timeframe. With their market knowledge and connections, they can expedite the process by effectively pricing and marketing your home.

Benefits and drawbacks of selling your Florida house with an agent

Working with a real estate agent can maximize your sale price, provide professional staging and marketing, and handle negotiations and paperwork for you. However, it may take longer than a cash sale, and you’ll need to pay agent commissions.

How to find a top Florida real estate agent

Finding the right real estate agent for your needs is crucial. HomeLight’s Agent Match platform can help. By analyzing over 27 million transactions and thousands of reviews, we can match you with a top-rated agent in your area. Whether you’re selling or buying, let HomeLight introduce you to the best agent for your needs.

Expert agent tips to sell your Florida house faster

So, what are the biggest factors that influence how fast your Florida house will sell using an agent?

“I think any time, really, it’s your home — does it look good, and is it priced well?” Cashi explains. “It’s got to be clean, it’s gotta be decluttered, it’s got to look nice, and it has to be priced within the realm of reality.”

The most common tips top agents recommend for a fast sale include:

• Price it right from the start: Overpricing can lead to longer time on the market. An experienced agent can help price your home competitively.
• Highlight outdoor living: Florida buyers love outdoor spaces. Showcase patios, pools, and views.
• Stage for the Florida lifestyle: Stage your home to reflect Florida’s laid-back, beachy vibe. “Staging can be very important. It depends on the layout and the floor plan,” says Cashi, adding that it’s especially helpful if the home is vacant.
• Focus on curb appeal: First impressions matter. Fresh landscaping and a clean exterior can draw buyers in.
• Consider offering a home warranty: “A home warranty is a really nice way to defuse a potential inspection issue or deferred maintenance situation…it gives buyers peace of mind,” Cashi says.
• Use professional photography: Especially in Florida’s competitive market, high-quality photos can make your listing stand out.
• Use the reach of social media: Cashi’s team creates walkthrough videos. A recent TikTok post proved effective. “Within the first 36 hours, we had three offers on the property,” Cashi says. “No one had ever gotten into the property; they just saw the video.”
• Consider timing: Florida’s housing market can be seasonal. Consult with your agent to pick the optimal time to list. You can also check out HomeLight’s Best Time to Sell Calculator.

Cashi shares a pricing strategy for a faster Flordia home sale.

“Right now, a technique that is very effective in selling a home quickly is putting it just slightly below the market price for it. So we go into a listing, and we give them what we feel is the right price — nobody ever knows for certain what that is — but we give them our educated estimate. And if they are able to price it just below value, that creates a little bit more excitement and can create either a full-price offer or even still sometimes an overpriced offer with multiple offers,” she says.

Elaborating on some of the tips on our list above, Cashi provides some additional insights.

“So this might sound silly, but our best recommendation is to always have your home feel like either a model home or like a five-star hotel,” Cashi says. “You know, you walk into a five-star hotel, and there are fresh flowers, there are clean folded towels, there aren’t tattered towels that are thread barren. I know that sounds crazy, but it’s very true and very common.”

Mistakes to avoid when trying to sell a house fast in Florida

• Too much stuff in the house: “A common mistake sellers make is not getting rid of enough of their stuff,” Cashi warns. “People go in, and they think they’ve decluttered, and they haven’t. They’ve taken away like a quarter of their things, and really three-quarters of their things need to be taken away in order for people to really see the house, and not the homeowners’ stuff — their personal things. That tends to cloud the buyer’s perspective when they walk in the house.”
• Skimping on curb appeal: “Curb appeal is another thing, of course, that I think is important. If somebody is driving by your house and you don’t have a single piece of mulch left in your flower bed,” that’s a mistake, Cashi says, because you’ve missed a prime opportunity for a good first impression.
• Not cleaning the driveway: If you haven’t power washed your driveway in a year, that’s a mistake, interjects Lori Cashi-Haught, Tami’s sister and the other half of the Cashi team. “And in Florida, things tend to grow moldy rapidly — so you have to keep up on that stuff.”
• Showing your home with dirty windows: “Clean Windows for sure,” says Cashi. “There’s nothing better than walking into a house where the windows are like, ‘just a thing’ [in the house], instead of like cloudy and yucky. And it’s like $150 or $200 [to hire a window service]. It just makes your house feel so much cleaner.”
• Not preparing for the home inspection: “Have the house in inspection-ready shape as much as you can,” Cashi advises. “All homeowners know the demons that lie in their house. They know if their locks don’t lock. They know if their windows don’t work. They know if their AC is on the fritz. Do the maintenance items that you should do before the inspection comes up.”
• Not understanding Florida’s disclosure laws: “Florida’s disclosure laws aren’t necessarily what most people think they are. There is no law that states that a seller must provide a — quote-unquote — ‘sellers disclosure.’ The law says that if the seller knows something is wrong with the property, they must disclose it,” she explains. “So for example, if you inherit a home, and you have never lived in that home and you know nothing about it, there’s nothing for you to disclose, so there was no [required] disclosure to be provided.”
• Not being forthright about the house: “If you lived in the home, and you know you’ve been having trouble with the AC, and the roof has been leaking like a sieve, then you’d be violating the disclosure law if you did not make that known to the buyer.” Violating the disclosure law can be costly if issues arise later for the homebuyer, and it comes to light that the seller was not forthright about the home’s condition.
• Marketing an as-is home sale: “I think that selling as-is is a fantasy for most people,” Cashi says. “When sellers say they’re selling [a home] as-is, they never end up really doing that because everyone’s going to have an inspection. Everything is negotiable. To say upfront that your house is being sold as-is just creates a red flag in most buyers’ minds because the [buyer] feels like, ‘Oh, why are they selling as-is? There must be something wrong with it. They don’t want to fix it.’ So, we advise our sellers never to use those words.”

No matter what selling method you choose, Baron agrees that the presentation items on Cashi’s “mistakes to avoid” list above can still apply.

“If you want to sell your house [fast], make sure it looks good,” says Baron, “And it’s not that hard to make it look good…A lot of people seem to think, ‘Why should I invest in a coat of white paint if someone else is going to come in and maybe they want to paint it blue?’”

But Baron explains that, whether it’s a traditional buyer or an investor, how the house presents can make a big difference. “For $3,000 in paint, it can save you $20,000 in price. It’s a real thing. People don’t realize that if you do a little bit here and a little bit there, it ups the value.”

Working with a top Florida agent can help you avoid these seller mistakes.

Now that we’ve explored both getting a cash offer and hiring a real estate agent, let’s discuss a third option: comparing a cash offer with an agent’s opinion. This option can empower you to make the best decision for your situation.