Orlando Simultaneous Closings Lawyers
Two closings, one day, and money that has to move in exactly the right order. Whether you’re a wholesaler running a double closing or a homeowner selling one house and buying the next, Legal Counsel, P.A. structures simultaneous closings in Orlando so they actually close.
What Is a Double Closing in Real Estate?
The A to B to C transaction
There are several types of simultaneous closings, and the one real estate investors ask about most is the double closing. An investor or wholesaler finds a good deal, contracts to buy the property from the original seller, and then sells it the same day to an end buyer who is willing to pay more. Because the intermediary is party B between seller A and buyer C, this is also called an A to B to C closing, a double close, or a back-to-back closing.
Each leg is a separate, complete real estate transaction with its own closing costs. In the first transaction, the wholesaler agrees to purchase the property from the original seller at the contract price. In the second, minutes or hours later, the wholesaler agrees to sell the property to the final buyer at a higher price and keeps the difference. Two deeds are recorded, two closing statements are prepared, and the title company or closing agent has to run both files in the right sequence.
Double closing vs. assignment: why investors choose a double close
The alternative in wholesale real estate is to assign the purchase contract to the end buyer for an assignment fee. An assignment is cheaper and simpler, but it exposes the wholesaler’s profit margin to both sides, and a seller who learns the buyer is flipping the contract for a large spread sometimes walks.
A double closing involves two separate transactions, so it keeps each one private: the final buyer never sees what the wholesaler paid and the original seller never sees what the final buyer paid. That difference between the two methods is the whole reason experienced real estate investors put up with the extra cost.
A double close real estate strategy also solves the problem of contracts that aren’t assignable at all. Bank-owned and institutional sellers commonly prohibit assignment, and some add resale restrictions on top. If you want to wholesale deals from those sellers, taking title and reselling is the only path, and it has to be done correctly.
Money, funding and the order of operations
The catch is that the first leg has to fund before the second one does. Title insurance underwriters in Florida generally won’t allow the final buyer’s money to pay for the intermediary’s purchase, so the investor needs its own funds or transactional funding, a short-term loan, often for a single day, that covers the A to B purchase price and is repaid out of the B to C proceeds.
Transactional lenders, often the same hard money lenders investors already use, charge a percentage of the loan plus a fee, so the cost comes straight off the spread.
Each stage has to be carefully documented, with the money changing hands in the right order and each deed recorded at the right time, and both legs have to occur on the same day or the numbers stop working. Under Florida law, documentary stamp tax is due on each deed at the state rate on the full consideration, so a double closing pays it twice, and any new mortgage on the end buyer’s side carries its own tax. Those costs have to be in the numbers before you commit.
Staying on the right side of Florida license law
Double closings are legal in Florida. There is no prohibition on buying property and immediately reselling it, and an investor who takes ownership of the property is acting as a principal, not as a real estate agent.
The risk is in what happens before the closing: marketing a property you don’t own, or don’t hold a contract on, to a buyer for a fee can be treated as unlicensed brokerage under Florida’s real estate license law, and the Department of Business and Professional Regulation pursues it. A properly drafted purchase and sale contract that gives you an equitable interest, marketed as your contract rather than the seller’s property, is what keeps a real estate wholesaling business inside the line.
Investors and wholesalers wanting to complete simultaneous closings in Florida should talk to a lawyer who handles them regularly. Legal Counsel, P.A. employs simultaneous closing lawyers in Orlando, Florida, and a real estate attorney who has run these before will draft the purchase and resale contracts, coordinate the transactional funding and the title work, and review the transaction so you don’t encounter a problem at the closing table.
