Transfer Property to an LLC in Florida: Steps and Traps

The Two Questions to Answer First

Before the how, two questions decide whether any of this is worth doing. The first is whether this property belongs in an LLC at all. For a rental, the honest answer is often yes, and the full case, along with the times the answer is no, lives on our page about putting a Florida rental in an LLC. For the home you live in, the answer is almost always no, because the move trades Florida’s strongest protections for an ordinary liability shield, a trade we walk through on should I put my house in an LLC. And if what you are really doing is moving property to a person rather than a company, that is a different decision with different traps, covered on our transfer to a family member page.

The second question is whether the property carries a mortgage, because the loan balance drives the two most expensive surprises on this page. Nearly every mortgage contains a due-on-sale clause, which lets the lender call the entire balance due when the property is transferred, and a deed to your own LLC is a transfer. And Florida’s documentary stamp tax treats that same balance as taxable consideration, so a mortgaged property pays real money at the recording counter while a free-and-clear one records for pennies. A paid-off property makes this a paperwork project. A leveraged one makes it a math project first.

The Step-by-Step Transfer Done Right

The order matters more than any single step, because the expensive versions of this transfer all share one storyline. The deed got signed first and the phone calls happened after. Here is the sequence we run.

Confirm the company is real and current. The LLC should be active on Sunbiz with its annual report filed, since a company that let the $138.75 filing lapse can be administratively dissolved, and a dissolved company is a poor place to park a building. The operating agreement needs to catch up too. It should say who manages the company, who can sign for it, and what happens to the property when a member dies or divorces, and a downloaded form that has never mentioned real estate should be brought up to date before the company owns any.
Ask the lender in writing. If the property is mortgaged, write to the servicer, describe the transfer to a company you control, and keep the answer. Many servicers tolerate this move, and the major mortgage investors have published policies permitting certain transfers of this kind, but tolerance is not consent, and the letter you keep is worth more than the folklore you read. This conversation happens before the deed, not after the lender notices a new name on the tax roll.
Call your title agent. The owner’s policy from your closing insures you, not your company, and the coverage may not follow the deed. Ask whether your policy needs an endorsement to cover the LLC, or already handles a transfer to an entity you wholly own, and get the answer in writing. The details are in the title insurance section below.
Line up the insurance rewrite. Tell your property and umbrella carriers what is coming, and have the re-titled policy ready to take effect when the deed records, so the building never spends a week owned by a company the policy has never heard of.
Choose and prepare the deed. A quitclaim deed is the usual tool for a transfer to your own company, since it conveys whatever you own and warranties to yourself add little; a warranty deed earns its keep when a stranger is buying, not here. Either way Florida’s execution rules apply in full. Two witnesses, a notary, each witness’s mailing address on the face of the deed since 2024, the legal description copied from the prior recorded deed, and on a married person’s homestead, the spouse generally must join.
Price the documentary stamps before you record. Run the math in the next section against your actual loan balance, and decide with the number in front of you rather than at the counter.
Record, then finish the housekeeping. The clerk records the deed for roughly $18 to $30, and the transfer is only half done. The leases, the deposits, the bank account, and the insurance all still need to learn who the new owner is, which is the housekeeping section below.

The Documentary Stamp Surprise

Florida taxes deeds on the consideration exchanged, at $0.70 per $100 in most of the state, with Miami-Dade calculating slightly differently. Deeding a property from yourself to a company you own feels like moving your wallet from one pocket to another, and here is the surprise. The outstanding mortgage counts as consideration even when the LLC is entirely yours and never formally assumes the loan. So a rental carrying a $300,000 balance costs $2,100 in stamps to deed into your own company, on a transfer where no money changed hands and no ownership really moved. This is the single most common ambush in these transfers, and it is why the math comes before the deed.

A free-and-clear property is the opposite story. With no mortgage and no payment, the deed generally records for the nominal minimum stamp. One rule keeps that from becoming a loophole. Selling the LLC interests within three years of a bargain transfer can bring the full tax back under Florida’s conduit-entity rule, so a plan that deeds the property in cheaply and sells the company shortly after has not outsmarted anyone. If a sale is on the horizon, say so at the consult, because the sequencing changes.

About to deed a property into your LLC?

Book a free 30-minute consult first. We will run the stamp tax on your actual loan balance, check the assessment-cap and title-policy questions, and prepare the deed for a flat $399 if the move still makes sense.

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The Title Insurance Gap

When you bought the property, you almost certainly bought an owner’s title insurance policy with it, the coverage that pays if a forged deed, a missed lien, or a boundary problem surfaces from the property’s past. That policy insures the named insured, which is you personally. Deed the property to your LLC and the party who now owns the property may sit outside the coverage, so the title claim that surfaces in year twelve can find a building whose owner holds no policy at all.

The fix is usually modest, which is what makes skipping it so painful. Title agents can often issue an endorsement carrying the coverage to the new owner, or confirm that your policy’s terms already extend to an entity you wholly own, and that phone call belongs on the checklist before the deed is signed. The deed choice feeds the same gap. A quitclaim to your own LLC carries no title warranties, which is normally fine between you and your company, but it means the old policy is the only backstop the LLC has, so keeping that policy attached is the whole game. This trap, along with its four siblings, gets the summary treatment on the rental LLC page; here it is step three of seven for a reason.

The Insurance and Lease Housekeeping

The deed changes the owner in the county records. Everything else that touches the property still names the old one, and each mismatch is a small landmine with a long fuse.

The insurance re-title. Once the LLC owns the property, the landlord policy needs the LLC as the named insured, usually with you added as an additional insured, and your umbrella carrier needs to know. A company that owns the building while the policy still insures only you personally is a coverage dispute waiting for its claim, and it is the mismatch with the highest price tag on this list.
The leases and the tenants. Existing leases should be assigned to the LLC, and tenants told in writing who their landlord now is and where the rent goes. Rent that keeps flowing to you personally after the transfer undercuts the story that the company really owns and runs the property.
The security deposits. Deposits the tenants paid you should move to an account in the LLC’s name, with the paperwork showing the handoff. Deposits are the tenants’ money in your keeping, and they should sit with whoever now holds the landlord’s obligations.
The bank account. The company needs its own account, with rent coming in and expenses going out through it. An LLC run out of your personal checking account invites a court to disregard the company exactly when you need it most, which defeats the reason you formed it.
The Sunbiz record. Keep the company’s addresses, registered agent, and managers current, and file the $138.75 annual report every year, because the liability wall you built with the deed only stands while the company behind it does.

The Tax Consequences of Transferring Property to an LLC

Start with the good news. For federal income tax, a transfer to a single-member LLC that is disregarded for tax purposes is generally a non-event. You have not sold anything, no gain is recognized, and the property keeps reporting on your return the way it always has. That is the general rule, your accountant should confirm it for your facts, and a multi-member company changes the filing picture enough that the accountant conversation belongs before the deed.

The real tax bites are Florida’s, and they come in two sizes. The immediate one is the documentary stamp tax above, a one-time hit measured by the mortgage balance. The recurring one is property tax. Non-homestead property in Florida carries a 10 percent cap on annual assessment increases for everything except school taxes, and the cap resets when ownership changes, which a deed to your LLC is under the assessment rules. A rental assessed at $220,000 under the cap while its market value sits at $320,000 gets reassessed at the full $320,000 the January after the transfer, and the higher bill repeats every year afterward. On a long-held property in a hot market, this quiet reset often costs more over time than the stamps do on day one. If the property was your residence, the stakes climb further, because the homestead exemption and the Save Our Homes cap do not survive a transfer to a company, a loss we detail on should I put my house in an LLC.

One more caution for anyone doing elder planning at the same time. Florida’s nursing-home Medicaid program reviews five years of transfers when you apply, and restructuring property in that window deserves advice first, because a move that is harmless for income tax can still complicate an application. If long-term care is anywhere on the horizon, talk to a Medicaid planning attorney before the deed, while every option is still open.

What the Transfer Changes in Your Estate Plan

Here is the change nobody mentions at the recording counter. The day the deed records, you no longer own real estate. The company owns the real estate, and what you own is a membership interest, which Florida’s LLC act classifies as personal property. Your asset is now an intangible, the same legal category as a brokerage account, and any estate plan written for the building has quietly stopped matching what you own. A lady bird deed you recorded for that property now operates on nothing, because a deed conveys real property and you no longer hold any to convey. A will that leaves “my real property” to one child no longer reaches this asset. We walk the whole reclassification, including the doors it opens, in when your real estate stops being real estate.

What governs the interest at death is the operating agreement and the LLC act’s defaults, and the defaults are harsher than most owners expect. Heirs inherit the right to distributions, not the vote, and a single-member company whose only member dies faces a 90-day clock before dissolution, a machinery we cover in what happens to a business when the owner dies. The clean fix is usually the trust and LLC combination. The company holds the property and supplies the liability wall, your revocable trust holds the membership interest and supplies the probate avoidance, and the operating agreement is drafted to admit the trustee, mechanics covered on can a trust own an LLC. Choosing between the two tools, or confirming you want both, is its own decision, mapped on LLC vs. trust for real estate.

The reclassification gives as well as it takes. Real estate is probated where it sits, so a Florida resident who dies owning an out-of-state property in her own name hands her family a second court case in that state, called an ancillary probate. Put the property in an LLC and the asset she owns is an intangible that sits at her Florida domicile, one estate instead of two, or none at all if a trust holds the interest. The point of this section is simple. The transfer is not finished when the clerk stamps the deed; it is finished when the estate plan has been redrawn for the asset you now actually own, and we draft the deed, the agreement, and the trust as one plan.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I Transfer Property to an LLC With a Mortgage on It?

You can record the deed, and two consequences follow it. Nearly every mortgage carries a due-on-sale clause, which lets the lender call the whole balance due when the property transfers, and a deed to your own LLC is a transfer. Many servicers tolerate a move into a company the same borrower controls, but tolerance is not consent, so ask the servicer in writing before recording and keep the answer. The second consequence is tax. Florida counts the outstanding loan balance as consideration for documentary stamp tax even on a deed to your own company, so a $300,000 balance means $2,100 in stamps at the recording counter. Neither problem forbids the move; both should be priced before it, not discovered after.

What Are the Tax Consequences of Transferring Property to an LLC?

For federal income tax, a transfer to a single-member LLC that is disregarded for tax purposes is generally a non-event. There is no sale and no gain, and the property keeps reporting on your return the way it always has, which your accountant should confirm for your facts. The taxes that actually bite are Florida taxes. Documentary stamp tax applies to the deed on any mortgage balance the property carries, and the transfer counts as a change of ownership that resets the 10 percent assessment cap on a non-homestead property, raising the property-tax bill every year afterward. A multi-member LLC adds a partnership-filing conversation, which belongs with your accountant before the deed rather than after it.

Is a Quitclaim Deed OK for Transferring Property to My LLC?

Usually, yes. A quitclaim deed conveys whatever interest you own with no title warranties, and warranties from you to a company you own accomplish little. The reason to slow down is not the deed type. It is what the deed does to your title-insurance coverage, since the owner’s policy insures you rather than the company, and the execution details, because Florida requires two witnesses and a notary, and since 2024 each witness’s mailing address must appear on the deed before the clerk will record it. Our flat fee for an attorney-prepared deed is $399 plus recording, and the legal description gets copied from the prior recorded deed rather than retyped from memory.

Does My Title Insurance Still Cover the Property After the Transfer?

Maybe not, and this is the trap almost nobody prices. The owner’s policy you bought at closing insures the named insured, meaning you personally, and deeding the property to the LLC can leave the new owner outside that coverage if a title problem surfaces years later. Title agents can often solve it with an endorsement, or confirm that your policy already extends to a transfer into an entity you wholly own. Make that call before recording, because the answer can shape which deed you use and whether the move is worth making at all.

Should I Transfer My Primary Residence to an LLC?

Almost never. Your home carries Florida’s constitutional protection from forced sale, plus the property-tax homestead exemption and the Save Our Homes assessment cap, and all of it belongs to a natural person who owns and lives in the home. An LLC is not a natural person, and the resident of an LLC-owned house holds a membership interest in a company, not title to a home. Trading the strongest asset protection in the country for an LLC’s ordinary liability shield is a bad swap in nearly every case. The full analysis, including the rare situations where an entity still enters the picture, lives on our page about putting your house in an LLC.

Should the LLC Have One Member or Two Before the Transfer?

For stopping a tenant claim at the company line, either works. The difference shows up when your own personal creditor comes after the company. A judgment creditor of a multi-member Florida LLC owner is generally limited to a charging order against distributions, while a single-member interest can ultimately be foreclosed on and taken whole under the Olmstead line of cases. Most rental LLCs are single-member, and for the tenant-lawsuit job that is fine. Whether yours needs the second protection, and what makes a second member genuine, is covered on our LLC asset protection page and belongs in the consult, decided before the deed rather than after a judgment.

What Does It Cost to Transfer Property to an LLC in Florida?

The deed itself is a flat $399 plus county recording of about $18 to $30. The variable costs are the ones this page exists to price. Documentary stamp tax runs $0.70 per $100 of any mortgage balance in most counties, a free-and-clear property generally records for the nominal minimum, and the reset of the non-homestead assessment cap can raise the annual property-tax bill from the next January forward, every year you own it. On a paid-off property in a flat market the transfer is cheap. On a leveraged, long-held property in a hot market it is not, which is why we run the numbers at a free consult before anything gets signed.

Common Situations

The transfer that ran in order. A Tampa landlord wants his duplex, carrying a $300,000 mortgage, inside the LLC he formed last spring. We run the sequence before touching a deed. The servicer answers the written inquiry with a letter tolerating the transfer, the title agent issues an endorsement carrying the owner’s policy to the company, and the stamp math says $2,100, which he decides the liability wall is worth. The deed records on a Tuesday, the re-titled insurance takes effect the same day, and the tenants get their letters that week. Total surprises, zero, which was the point.

The lady bird deed that pointed at nothing. A Naples widow deeded her rental condo into an LLC three years ago on a forum’s advice, and her estate plan never heard about it. The lady bird deed she recorded back when she owned the condo personally now conveys nothing, because the company owns the property and a deed cannot pass what the signer no longer holds. Her son discovers the gap while helping her refinance. We redraw the plan around the asset she actually owns, with her revocable trust holding the membership interest and the operating agreement rewritten to admit the trustee, and the condo’s path to her children no longer depends on a document aimed at property she gave away.

Sources of Law

Fla. Stat. §201.02 (documentary stamp tax on deeds at $0.70 per $100 of consideration; consideration includes the amount of any mortgage or other encumbrance; §201.02(1)(b) taxes certain sales of interests in a conduit entity within three years of a bargain transfer). flsenate.gov; Fla. Dept. of Revenue, Documentary Stamp Tax (Miami-Dade rate of $0.60 plus a $0.45 surtax on property other than single-family; Example 9 taxes a transfer of encumbered property to a related entity on the mortgage balance). floridarevenue.com (retrieved 2026-08-18)
Fla. Stat. §§193.1554, 193.1555 (10 percent assessment cap on non-homestead property, excluding school levies; assessment at just value following a change of ownership or control, defined to include any transfer of legal or beneficial title, with narrow exceptions). flsenate.gov (retrieved 2026-08-18)
Fla. Stat. §689.01 (execution of deeds; two subscribing witnesses); §695.03 (acknowledgment for recording); §695.26 (each witness’s mailing address required on deeds presented for recording, effective January 1, 2024). Retrieved 2026-08-18.
Florida Revised Limited Liability Company Act, ch. 605: §605.0501 (“A transferable interest is personal property.”), §605.0701(3) (dissolution after 90 consecutive days with no members), §605.0503 (charging orders; foreclosure of a single-member interest); Olmstead v. FTC, 44 So. 3d 76 (Fla. 2010). Fla. Div. of Corporations, LLC annual report fee of $138.75. Retrieved 2026-08-18.
Garn-St Germain Depository Institutions Act, 12 U.S.C. §1701j-3 (due-on-sale clauses are federally enforceable; the statutory exemption list does not cover transferring investment property to an LLC). Retrieved 2026-08-18.
Art. X, §4, Fla. Const. (homestead protection from forced sale belongs to a natural person’s primary residence, not to entity-owned property); Fla. Stat. ch. 196 (property-tax homestead exemption requires the resident to hold title). Retrieved 2026-08-18.

Updated on August 18, 2026. Reviewed by Kevin D. Klagge, Esq., Fla. Bar No. 99502. Attorney Kevin Klagge represents families, businesses, and international clients in estate and tax planning, business structuring, and international law, with a focus on Florida legal tools. He litigates estate and business issues in court. General information about Florida law and our posted fees, not legal or tax advice for your situation, and no prediction of any outcome. Tax figures and filing fees change; confirm current numbers before acting. No attorney-client relationship is created by reading this page. Do not send confidential information until we have agreed to represent you.

How Do You Transfer Property to an LLC in Florida?