Lady Bird Deed Miami: The One County Where the Stamp Tax Is Different
A lady bird deed Miami owners record is taxed differently from one recorded anywhere else in Florida — sixty cents on each hundred dollars instead of seventy, because of a local option taken up in 1983 that no other county ever adopted. At Lorenzo Law I draft and record these across Miami-Dade. Jose M. Lorenzo, Jr., Florida Bar No. 107002.
| Miami-Dade County | Where |
|---|---|
| Deeds | Clerk of the Court & Comptroller, County Recorder, 20 NW 1st Avenue, Miami |
| Probate | Same building, six floors up |
| Homestead and parcel data | Property Appraiser, 111 NW 1st Street, Suite 710, Miami |
| Judicial circuit | Eleventh — Miami-Dade County alone |
| Recording, page one | $10.00, then $8.50 each later page |
| Documentary stamps | $0.60 per $100 — the only county in Florida below $0.70 |
| Surtax on anything but one residence | $0.45 per $100 more |
| Lorenzo Law flat fee | $675, recording charges included |
| Call | (305) 224-6811 |
Why is the documentary stamp rate lower here?
Because of a 1983 local option no other county took. Miami-Dade implemented Chapter 83-220, and a later statewide ten-cent increase was written so that it does not reach counties that did.
§ 201.02 sets the rate at seventy cents on each $100 of consideration for deeds and other instruments conveying an interest in real property. Then § 201.0205 carves out the ten-cent increase added in 1992 for any county that had implemented the 1983 chapter. Miami-Dade is the only one. Seventy minus ten leaves sixty, and the Department of Revenue and its own rule both state the sixty-cent figure for this county in plain terms.
That is worth knowing chiefly because it is the beginning of the calculation rather than the end of it. The rate is lower; whether the bill is lower depends entirely on the next question.
When does the 45-cent surtax apply?
When the deed conveys anything other than one residence. A house is exempt. A condominium unit is exempt by name. A duplex is not.
§ 125.0167 authorises a discretionary surtax of up to forty-five cents per $100, levied under § 201.031, and then removes it from any document where “the interest granted, assigned, transferred, or conveyed involves only a single-family residence.” The statute goes on to say that such a residence may be a condominium unit, a co-operative unit held through stock ownership, or a detached dwelling. The Department of Revenue’s rule repeats the point and adds the limit that matters: where a document conveys more than one single-family residence, the tax is due.
| What the deed conveys | Surtax | Rate on each $100 |
|---|---|---|
| Detached house | No | $0.60 |
| Condominium unit | No — named in the statute | $0.60 |
| Co-operative unit | No | $0.60 |
| Duplex, or two homes in one deed | Yes | $1.05 |
| Vacant land, commercial, anything else | Yes | $1.05 |
Read the bottom two rows again. On a transfer that falls outside the exemption, Miami-Dade charges $1.05 per $100 — half again what every other county in Florida charges. The county is cheaper on the ordinary case and dearer on everything else, and a deed drafted without noticing which side of that line the property sits on gets the number wrong in whichever direction hurts.
The practical trap is the parcel that looks like one home and is not. A house with a permitted garage apartment, a lot carrying two addresses, a pair of units conveyed together to save a trip to the counter: each of those pushes the instrument across the line. Splitting a two-property transfer into two deeds is not always possible and is not always cheaper once recording is counted, but it is a question worth asking before anything is signed rather than after.
Does an outstanding mortgage change the tax?
Yes, and this is where the real money is. An unpaid loan balance counts as consideration even though nobody pays anything and nobody assumes the debt.
Most people approach one of these deeds expecting the tax to be trivial, because nothing is being bought. On an unmortgaged property that expectation is right: a transfer for love and affection and ten dollars is taxed on a nominal figure. But where a mortgage is outstanding at the moment of transfer, the balance is treated as the consideration for it. The gift becomes a taxable conveyance measured by the debt.
| Mortgage balance at transfer | House or condo, at $0.60 | Duplex, at $1.05 |
|---|---|---|
| $200,000 | $1,200 | $2,100 |
| $400,000 | $2,400 | $4,200 |
| $650,000 | $3,900 | $6,825 |
Those are state taxes collected at the counter. They sit outside the firm’s $675 flat fee, which pays for reading the title, drafting the instrument, supervising signature and getting it onto the record — not for a tax the Clerk collects on behalf of Tallahassee. Anyone quoting a Miami-Dade lady bird deed as a single all-in number without first asking whether the property carries a mortgage has not yet asked the question that determines the bill.
There is a further wrinkle worth stating rather than glossing. The Department of Revenue’s view of these deeds lives in a technical assistance advisement, and under § 213.22 a document of that kind reaches no further than the person who applied for one. Persuasive, yes. A rule, no. On a mortgaged property that gap between the two is where somebody could actually lose money.
Where is a lady bird deed Miami-Dade owners sign recorded?
With the County Recorder at 20 NW 1st Avenue, on the fifth floor. The Clerk of the Court and Comptroller runs it, and the probate division sits in the same building.
The Recorder is on level five and the Probate Court on level six, which puts the office that records the deed and the court that opens the estate one lift ride apart. Palm Beach County achieves the same thing with a single combined office; Orange County does the opposite, splitting recording to the Comptroller on one street and probate to the Clerk on another. Miami-Dade lands between the two — one address, two divisions, two direct telephone numbers.
One small thing that trips people up: the Clerk publishes Suite 5.243 as the Recorder’s office and Suite 5.246 as the address for recordings sent by post. Both figures come from the Clerk’s own pages. Use the second for mail and the first if you are walking in, and telephone 786-463-0566 before making the trip, because the building’s published hours and the court’s published hours do not agree and the Recorder’s counter does not publish its own.
Mailed submissions need a self-addressed stamped envelope, and the Clerk asks for the preparer’s name and address on the face of the instrument, addresses for both grantor and grantee, a full notarial acknowledgment, and two witnesses who are not parties to the transaction.
What does recording actually cost at the counter?
Ten dollars for the first page and $8.50 for each one after it. Names beyond the first four are indexed at a dollar each, and a records search runs two dollars a year.
| Charge | Amount |
|---|---|
| First page | $10.00 |
| Each later page | $8.50 |
| Each name indexed beyond the first four | $1.00 |
| Searching the records, per year | $2.00 |
| Certified copy | $2.00 |
Miami-Dade does not charge per legal description, which Palm Beach County does. A lady bird deed Miami-Dade residents record runs to two pages in most cases, so with two names on it the counter takes $18.50, and the stamp tax is the whole of the rest of the bill. That ratio is the point of this page: the recording is small change and the tax is not, which is the reverse of what most people assume when they compare quotes.
Can the deed be e-recorded in Miami-Dade?
Yes, through five approved vendors. Corporation Service Company, e-Docs Solutions, eRecording Partners, Hopdox and Simplifile all submit to this Recorder.
A stamped copy usually comes back within a day of acceptance, and the Clerk is careful to say it cannot recommend between the vendors. What vendor software checks is page size, margins, legibility and whether the fees tendered match the fees due. It does not check whether the person signing had the power to convey what the deed says they are conveying, and it does not check whether the property is one residence or two for surtax purposes. An electronic rejection notice is a formatting document. It has never once been a title opinion.
Who pays the condominium assessments after the owner dies?
The remainder beneficiary, jointly with the estate. § 718.116 makes a unit owner liable for assessments falling due while they own, and joint and several with the previous owner for arrears.
This deserves more attention in Miami-Dade than it gets anywhere else, because of what the tax roll looks like. Of 938,920 real estate parcels on the county’s 2025 roll, 391,062 are condominium units and 389,484 are single-family homes. Condominiums are not a special case here. They are the largest single category of property in the county, narrowly ahead of houses.
So when the remainder vests at death, the beneficiary takes the unit and takes the unpaid assessments with it — regular assessments and any special assessment the association has levied, including the ones many South Florida buildings have levied to fund structural work. The estoppel certificate is the tool for finding out the number, and an association that understates it is bound by what it wrote. A beneficiary who accepts a unit without ever asking for one is accepting an unknown liability along with the property.
None of that is an argument against the deed. It is an argument for knowing the figure before the deed is drafted, because if the number is large enough the right answer may be a different instrument altogether.
Does the association have to hand over the milestone inspection first?
No — those duties attach to a resale contract, not a gift. § 718.503 triggers the disclosure package on contracts for resale of a residential unit.
A lady bird deed is not a sale and there is no contract, so the milestone inspection summary and the structural integrity reserve study are not documents anyone is obliged to deliver on the way to recording. That is a real convenience and also a real gap. § 553.899 requires a milestone inspection of condominium buildings three habitable storeys or taller by the end of the year the building turns thirty, with local agencies able to bring that forward to twenty-five years where salt air justifies it. § 718.112 requires the reserve study on the same class of buildings and stops owner-controlled associations from voting to underfund the items it covers.
A family receiving a unit by deed inherits everything those two statutes are about without ever being handed the paperwork that describes it. Asking the association for both, voluntarily, before the deed is signed costs nothing and occasionally changes the plan entirely.
How does homestead work with the Property Appraiser here?
Filed by 1 March, tested as of 1 January. The office sits at 111 NW 1st Street, Suite 710, open weekdays until 5 p.m., with a branch in Cutler Bay.
| Miami-Dade Property Appraiser | Detail |
|---|---|
| Main office | 111 NW 1st St., Suite 710, Miami · (305) 375-4712 |
| Branch | 10710 SW 211th St., Suite 207, Cutler Bay · (305) 232-3810 |
| Filing deadline | 1 March, under § 196.011 |
| Tested as of | 1 January — title and residence both |
| Exemption value, 2025 | $50,722, the second tranche now indexed |
| Parcels on the roll | 938,920, of which 391,062 are condominium units |
Properly drafted, one of these deeds leaves the owner in possession with full power to sell, mortgage or revoke, so the exemption and the Save Our Homes cap ride through untouched. That is the whole design. The failure mode is a deed drafted without the enhanced powers, which converts the transfer into a completed gift of a remainder interest and puts both at risk. It is not a difference you can see by looking at the finished document unless you know which words to look for, and it is precisely the difference a blank template downloaded for free cannot supply.
Keep the two ideas separate as well. The homestead exemption is a tax benefit administered by this office. Constitutional homestead — the restriction on who a home can be left to — is a different thing tested by where the family actually lives, and it applies whether or not anyone ever filed for the exemption.
Where does the estate open if the instrument does not work?
The Eleventh Judicial Circuit, which is this county and no other. § 26.021 composes the Eleventh of Miami-Dade County alone.
The probate division sits at 20 NW 1st Avenue on the sixth floor, six storeys above the counter where the deed was recorded. A single-county circuit means one set of administrative orders and one probate bench, which makes the process more predictable than in circuits spanning two or three counties with different filing habits. Orange and Osceola share the Ninth and live with exactly that.
Predictable is not the same as quick or cheap. The estate still opens, an inventory still gets filed, and the creditor period still runs. A deed that works keeps the property out of all of it.
Why do free forms fail more often on a Miami condominium?
Because a blank form cannot see the two facts that matter here. It does not know whether the parcel is one residence or two, and it does not know what the mortgage balance is.
Both of those determine the tax, and neither appears anywhere on a downloadable template. A free form will not ask whether the building has a special assessment outstanding, will not distinguish a condominium unit from a co-operative unit, and will not tell you that the enhanced powers have to be drafted so that the owner can still sell and revoke without the beneficiaries joining. It reproduces the shape of a deed without any of the judgment that makes a particular deed correct for a particular property.
The recording clerk will not catch it either. Under § 695.01 recording is what makes a conveyance good against creditors and later purchasers, and a defective instrument recorded is still defective — filed, indexed, stamped, and wrong. The counter checks form. Nobody at the counter checks whether it works.
How do I reach a lady bird deed attorney in Miami-Dade?
Call (305) 224-6811. A standard matter is $675 including recording charges, quoted after the title review and before drafting, with the stamp tax stated separately because it depends on your mortgage.
Bring the current recorded deed, the folio number, and the most recent mortgage statement. If the property is a condominium, bring the last assessment notice and anything the association has sent about a special assessment. Those documents answer the surtax question, the consideration question and the liability question in one meeting rather than three.
Related reading: the statewide lady bird deed attorney page covers fees and when a lawyer earns the money, the Palm Beach County page covers a county that combines recording and probate in one office, the Orlando page covers one that splits them between two, and our preparation checklist lists what to gather first. Whether a lady bird deed Miami property owners are considering makes sense comes down to two numbers nobody can read off a form: what the mortgage balance is, and how many residences the deed conveys.
Last updated: 7 August 2026.
What changed: new page. Clerk, Recorder and Property Appraiser addresses, fees and deadlines verified against those offices; the $0.60 rate traced through § 201.02 and § 201.0205 rather than to the subsection commonly cited for it, which does not contain it; parcel counts taken from the 2025 preliminary assessment roll; statutes cited to the 2025 Florida Statutes, the current published edition.
Written and reviewed by Jose M. Lorenzo, Jr., attorney, Florida Bar No. 107002.
This page is general information about Florida law and does not constitute legal advice for any particular situation. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship.