Florida Real Estate Investing Blog
Probate, divorce, pre-foreclosure & eviction lead strategy, Florida county breakdowns, and skip-tracing tactics for real estate investors.
6 min read
Pinellas County Is the Gulf Coast Market That Isn't Recovering
Pinellas County is the only one of Florida's four southwest coastal counties where pending home sales fell this year, while Lee, Collier, Sarasota and the state as a whole all rose. This report sets six Realtor.com inventory measures side by side for September 2026, then shows what the property rolls add: a median Pinellas home built in 1974, twenty-eight years older than Lee's, and the highest share of owner-occupants of the four.
October 14, 2026
7 min read
Florida Pre-Foreclosures Are Hitting Owners With 2.9% Mortgages
Nearly a third of the first mortgages behind Florida pre-foreclosures carry an interest rate below 4 percent — cheaper than anything available today. This report breaks 1,436 recorded mortgages down by the year each loan was written, checks them against Freddie Mac's national averages, and sets them beside what it now costs to insure a home in Collier, Lee, Sarasota and Pinellas. It also says plainly what the data cannot explain.
October 7, 2026
5 min read
How to Search Florida Probate Records: A County-by-County Guide
This guide explains how to search Florida probate records at the Pinellas, Lee, Collier and Sarasota county clerks, including what the free public search shows and what Florida law keeps offline. It also shows how often a will filing appears weeks before the probate case, using our own estate data, and the four mistakes that leave a search incomplete.
October 5, 2026
10 min read
Florida Tax Deed Sales: How Two Years of Unpaid Taxes Can Transfer a House
A Florida tax deed sale can transfer a house over unpaid property taxes, but the statutory clock takes more than two years to run and the owner can redeem at nearly any point along it. This guide walks the timeline from the November 1 due date to the courthouse auction — what an opening bid includes, which liens survive the deed, and how surplus funds are claimed. It closes with what our own property records show about the homestead classification that quietly shields most estate-linked houses, until it lapses.
September 23, 2026
6 min read
Florida Gulf Coast Housing Inventory Is Shrinking — and Asking Prices Are Still Falling
Active listings across Florida's Gulf Coast counties fell in every month of 2026, ending the inventory build that began in 2022. Pending sales rose over the same period, which rules out the usual explanation that sellers simply gave up and delisted. Asking prices kept sliding anyway, and Pinellas is not moving with the other three.
September 15, 2026
8 min read
Probate Leads vs. Pre-Foreclosure Leads in Florida: What the Property Records Show
Florida probate leads and pre-foreclosure leads point at two different houses, and the property records prove it. Across 5,662 properties behind live filings in four counties, estate-path homes had been held a median of 16 years against 6 for pre-foreclosures, and carried a homestead exemption 81.3% of the time against 56.5%. The bigger difference is what each court file is legally allowed to tell you.
September 9, 2026
9 min read
Florida Homeowner Tenure: The Homes Behind Estate Filings Have Been Owned Twice as Long
Across 1.16 million Florida property records, the median homeowner has held their home for eight years. Properties behind estate filings have been held for sixteen — twice the county baseline — while divorce and pre-foreclosure homes turn over faster than ordinary stock. The gap is not explained by the age of the housing, and it changes what the next buyer pays in property tax.
September 3, 2026
7 min read
Heirs Property in Florida: When Several People Inherit One House
Florida law turns most inherited homes into property co-owned by several relatives, so no single heir can sign a sale on their own. This post covers the tenancy-in-common default, the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act protections that apply to partition actions filed on or after July 1, 2020, and what county property records show about how often a home carries three or more owners. It closes with what buyers and listing agents should check before making an offer.
August 31, 2026
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