Florida Real Estate Investing Blog
Probate, divorce, pre-foreclosure & eviction lead strategy, Florida county breakdowns, and skip-tracing tactics for real estate investors.
10 min read
Pre-Foreclosure vs. Foreclosure Auction vs. REO in Florida: Which Path Fits Which Investor
Florida investors treat “buying a foreclosure” as one strategy, but it is three separate businesses with different capital, title risk and competition. This guide compares the pre-foreclosure window, the courthouse auction and bank-owned REO against Florida’s judicial-foreclosure statutes — and against our own data on 1,308 pre-foreclosure homes, where 23% are underwater and 32% hold at least half their value in equity.
August 26, 2026
8 min read
Florida Property Owned by an LLC, a Trust, or an Estate: Who Can Actually Sign
About one in four single-family homes and condominiums in Collier, Lee, Pinellas and Sarasota counties is titled to a company, a trust, or an estate rather than to a person. We measured how that share shifts across eviction, probate, pre-foreclosure and divorce filings against a baseline of 1,162,605 parcels. The answer changes who can legally sign a deed — and how long your closing takes.
August 20, 2026
9 min read
Real Estate Lead Generation for Realtors: How Florida Agents Find Listings Before They Hit the Market
Most real estate lead generation advice for realtors assumes off-market and distressed properties are a cheap, marginal segment. We compared 5,974 Southwest Florida properties carrying a public-record life-event signal against every single-family home and condo in the same four counties, and the price distributions are nearly identical. This guide covers where Florida listing leads legally come from, what the public record does and does not make available, and how to judge a lead source before you pay for one.
August 17, 2026
8 min read
How to Take a Florida Divorce Listing: A Realtor's Workflow
Florida divorce listings look like ordinary owner-occupied homes and behave nothing like them financially. Four out of five carry an open recorded mortgage - the near-inverse of a probate listing - and both spouses must sign whether or not both names are on the deed. This is the sequence to run from filing to closing.
August 13, 2026
7 min read
Florida Absentee Owners: What 1.16 Million Property Records Show
Absentee owner lists are one of the most heavily marketed lead products in real estate, but across 1.16 million Florida county property records the absentee rate among distressed properties runs below the ordinary residential baseline. The one clear exception is eviction filings, where more than three in four properties have an owner who gets no mail at the address. This report breaks the numbers down by lead type and by county.
August 10, 2026
9 min read
Probate Listings vs. Standard Listings in Florida: What Realtors Need to Know
An estate sale is not a standard sale with extra paperwork. Florida statutes change who can sign the listing agreement, whether a court has to confirm the sale, and what the seller is able to disclose. Here is what separates a probate listing from a standard one — and what our own filing data says about the size of this listing pool.
August 4, 2026
10 min read
Florida Inheritance Leads: The Estate Timeline From Obituary to Transfer
Most estate lead lists start at the probate docket. That is the fourth stage of a five-stage process — and one entire class of Florida estate property never reaches it at all. Here is what the public record shows at each stage, and how much head start each signal actually buys.
August 1, 2026
9 min read
Nearly Half of Florida Probate Properties Sit in a FEMA Flood Zone
We analyzed 6,060 Florida properties behind court filings in Collier, Lee, Sarasota and Pinellas counties. Nearly half of the estate properties sit in a FEMA Special Flood Hazard Area — and the federal insurance mandate attaches to the loan, not the land. Here is what the numbers show, and what they deliberately do not.
July 30, 2026
9 min read
Florida Property Tax Reassessment: What the New Disclosure Law Means for Buyers
Florida has warned buyers for years not to trust a seller's tax bill. Now the state is forcing listing sites to stop showing it. Here's what the assessment reset actually costs — measured across 5,833 distressed Florida properties.
July 26, 2026
9 min read
Florida Homestead and Probate: What Heirs and Investors Need to Know
In Florida, the family home follows its own rulebook in probate — a will often can't decide who inherits the house, and the deceased owner's creditors usually can't touch it. This guide breaks down homestead descent, the devise restriction, and creditor protection, and what each one means for heirs settling an estate and investors buying an inherited Florida home.
July 23, 2026
8 min read
Buy-and-Hold Real Estate in Florida: A Workflow for Sourcing Rental Deals from Distressed Leads
Florida's best rental deals rarely show up on the MLS at a price that cash-flows. This buy-and-hold workflow shows how to source below-market rentals from probate, eviction, pre-foreclosure, and divorce leads — and how to underwrite them against the two costs that quietly sink Florida holds: insurance and a property-tax bill that resets the day you buy.
July 20, 2026
7 min read
Florida's Foreclosure Rate Is #1 in the Nation: What the Mid-Year 2026 Data Shows
Florida posted the highest foreclosure rate of any state in the first half of 2026, and five of the nation's ten worst-hit metros are in the state — two of them on the Southwest Gulf Coast. Here's what ATTOM's mid-year data shows, where the distress is concentrating, and why a long foreclosure timeline keeps the pre-foreclosure window open for investors.
July 17, 2026