Can you sell a house in Florida without clear title?
Not through a normal listing: no title insurer will cover the buyer, so no lender will fund it and most buyers walk. But almost every title cloud in Florida can be cured, and a buyer who specializes in curing them can purchase the house as it is today and do the fixing after closing.
The difference between "unsellable" and "sold" is usually not the law. It is whether anyone is willing to do six months of paperwork. We are.
What "clear title" actually means
A title is clear when the public record shows an unbroken chain of ownership from the original grant to you, with no unreleased liens, no missing signatures, no unresolved estates and no competing claims. A title company examines the Brevard County Clerk's official records back 30 years or more and lists every defect as an exception. If the exceptions are serious, they refuse to insure, and the deal dies.
A clouded title does not mean you do not own the house. It means the record cannot prove it cleanly enough for a stranger to buy it.
The clouds we see most in Brevard County, and whether they can be fixed
A deceased owner still on the deed. The most common one. Fixable through Florida probate (summary or formal administration). We handle it: see Can I sell a house if the owner is deceased?.
A quit claim deed somewhere in the chain. A quit claim transfers whatever the grantor had, which might be nothing. If a prior owner quit claimed to a relative without a notary, without a spouse's signature on homestead, or from someone who was never on title, the chain is broken. Fixable by locating the right people for corrective deeds, or by quiet title under Chapter 65 of the Florida Statutes.
An old mortgage that was paid but never released. The lender went under, merged, or just never recorded a satisfaction. Under Fla. Stat. 95.281 a mortgage lien expires 5 years after its stated maturity date, or 20 years after recording if no maturity is shown. Younger than that, we chase the successor lender for a release. Older, we can often clear it by affidavit or a quiet title.
Code enforcement liens. Brevard County and the cities (Palm Bay, Cocoa, Titusville and Melbourne are the active ones) record liens under Fla. Stat. 162.09 that keep growing daily. Fixable: most municipalities negotiate the fine down sharply once the violation is corrected and a new owner is in place. We pay them at closing.
Judgment liens. A recorded certified judgment attaches to real estate for 10 years and can be re-recorded once (Fla. Stat. 55.10). Fixable by payoff, settlement, or waiting them out if close to expiry. Homestead property is protected from most of them.
Delinquent taxes and tax certificates. Fixable by redemption any time before the tax deed sale. See What happens if I'm behind on property taxes in Florida?.
Missing or unknown heirs. Fixable through heir search, probate, and if needed a partition under the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act (Fla. Stat. 64.201 to 64.221). See Selling when an heir cannot be found.
Divorce decree never followed by a deed. The court said the house goes to one spouse, but the other never signed. Fixable with a deed from the ex, or a court order enforcing the decree.
Boundary and survey problems, encroachments, unrecorded easements. Fixable, but slower: new survey, boundary line agreements with neighbors, and sometimes a quiet title.
What cannot be fixed (honestly)
A few things stop us. If a federal tax lien exceeds the equity, the IRS has to agree to a discharge and sometimes will not. If a prior owner was declared incompetent and a deed was signed anyway, that deed may be void rather than voidable. And if someone with a legitimate claim simply refuses every offer and litigates, the cost can exceed the house. We will tell you on the first call if your situation looks like one of these.
Quiet title vs. curative title, in plain terms
Curative title means fixing the record without a lawsuit: corrective deeds, releases, affidavits, probate, payoffs. Faster and cheaper, used first.
Quiet title (Fla. Stat. Chapter 65) is a lawsuit asking a Brevard circuit judge to declare you the owner against all the world. It is the tool when a necessary person cannot be found, refuses to sign, or when the defect is too old to fix by document. In Brevard it runs 4 to 9 months uncontested and $3,500 to $7,000 in attorney and publication costs.
Most of our purchases need some of the first and occasionally the second. The seller never pays for either.
What it looks like in Brevard County
A typical case: a house in Cocoa that had passed grandmother to mother by an unrecorded handwritten deed, mother to son by quit claim, with a 2004 mortgage from a bank that no longer existed showing as open and a Cocoa code lien at $31,000 for a roof and overgrowth. Two agents had told the son it could not be sold.
We bought it from him at an agreed price with the clouds in place, opened a summary administration for the grandmother, got a lost assignment affidavit on the mortgage from the FDIC successor, corrected the roof and settled the code lien with the city for a fraction, and resold with full title insurance. He was paid at our closing, about five weeks after the first call, and the rest was our problem.
Frequently asked questions
Will a title company insure a house with a quit claim deed in the chain? Sometimes. A quit claim by itself is not fatal; title companies care about who signed it and whether they had the right to. If the grantor was on record title, was competent, and any spouse signed on homestead, it is usually fine. If not, it needs a corrective deed or quiet title.
How much does it cost to clear a title in Florida? Curative work by document (releases, corrective deeds, affidavits) is typically $500 to $2,500 in attorney and recording fees. Probate adds $2,500 to $8,000. A quiet title suit is $3,500 to $7,000 and up. When MGO buys the house, those costs are ours, not the seller's.
Can I sell a house with a lien on it in Florida? Yes. Liens are paid from the sale proceeds at closing, or negotiated down beforehand. A cash buyer can also take the house subject to a lien and deal with it afterward, which is how we handle large code enforcement liens.
How long does a quiet title action take in Brevard County? Four to nine months if nobody contests it, mostly waiting on service by publication and the court's calendar. Contested cases take longer.
How MGO buys houses with title problems
We are a Florida cash home buyer and curative title is what we do. We purchase houses in Brevard and Palm Beach Counties with broken chains, unreleased mortgages, probate, code liens and missing heirs, and we do the cleanup after you are paid. No commissions, no repairs, no waiting on a lawyer you have to hire.
Call or text (561) 295-9202 or send the address through the form.