The home selling process, step by step

There is no single answer, and anyone who gives you one without asking about your house is guessing. The honest version splits the timeline into two halves that behave very differently. The first half is how long it takes to get a contract, which depends almost entirely on price and condition. The second half is how long it takes to get from contract to closing, which depends mostly on how the buyer is paying.

A cash buyer can close in a couple of weeks once title is clear. A financed buyer moves at the speed of underwriting, and a condominium adds an association approval step on top of that. So two identical houses under contract on the same day can close three weeks apart purely because of the buyer.

The part you control is the first half. Days on market is a price signal more than anything else, and it compounds: a listing that sits gets fewer showings, then attracts lower offers, because buyers read time on market as a reason to wait. Our city pages publish the measured days on market for each market we cover, so you can see what normal looks like where you actually live rather than a statewide average.

Season matters too, and not in the direction most people assume. The quietest listing months in the Palm Beach County markets we measured were not the fastest ones. Listings that came to market in late winter and spring sold materially faster than listings launched at the end of summer.

Florida sellers have a disclosure duty that comes from a court decision rather than a form. In Johnson v. Davis, 480 So. 2d 625 (Fla. 1985), the Florida Supreme Court held that a seller must disclose facts materially affecting the value of the property which are not readily observable to the buyer. That duty applies whether or not you fill in a disclosure form, and selling a house as is does not remove it.

In practice this means the things you already know about. A roof leak that was patched rather than fixed. Work done without a permit. Repeated flooding. A pending special assessment. A boundary dispute with a neighbour. Disclosing these costs you far less than having a buyer discover one after closing.

Condominium sellers have more to hand over than house sellers do. Florida requires structural milestone inspections for certain buildings under Fla. Stat. 553.899, and structural integrity reserve studies under Fla. Stat. 718.112, and buyers and their lenders now ask for both as a matter of routine. If your association has completed either, the documents are part of the sale, and if it has not, that itself is information a buyer will want.

Homeowner associations governed by Chapter 720 and condominium associations governed by Chapter 718 are not the same thing and do not carry the same obligations. Knowing which one you are in tells you which documents you are responsible for producing.

Very few sales die over the price in the contract. They die at inspection, at appraisal, or at the lender. The inspection produces a list, the buyer asks for some of it, and the negotiation reopens from a position where both sides have already spent money and time. The sellers who do best here decided in advance which findings they would concede and which they would not.

Appraisal is the other common failure point, and it is the one you have the least control over. If the appraisal comes in below the contract price, the lender lends against the lower figure and somebody has to cover the gap. Whether that is you, the buyer, or a renegotiated price depends on what the contract already says.

Financing falls through for reasons that have nothing to do with your house. A buyer changes jobs, opens a credit line, or turns out to have an issue underwriting only finds late. This is why the strength of a buyer matters when you compare offers, and why a slightly lower offer from a better qualified buyer is often the better deal.

Condominium sales have one extra way to stall. Lender approval of the building is separate from approval of the buyer, and a building that is not warrantable narrows the pool of buyers who can finance a purchase there at all.