Lady Bird Deed St. Augustine: A 1565 Town, a 30-Year Chain of Title
St. Augustine has been continuously occupied since 1565, and St. Johns County was one of the two counties Florida began with in 1821. None of that makes a title search here harder than anywhere else, for a reason set out below that most owners find reassuring. What does complicate matters is what the people inheriting your house will be allowed to do with it. Lorenzo Law drafts enhanced life estate deeds across northeast Florida — Jose M. Lorenzo, Jr., Florida Bar member 107002.
| St. Johns County | Detail |
|---|---|
| Deeds and probate | Richard O. Watson Judicial Center, 4010 Lewis Speedway, St. Augustine |
| Counter hours | Weekdays, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. |
| Branches recording deeds | Public Service Center, Julington Creek, Ponte Vedra |
| Judicial circuit | Seventh — Flagler, Putnam, St. Johns and Volusia |
| Owner-occupied homes | 82.2% — the highest in this series |
| 2026 homestead deadline | March 2, not March 1 |
| Lorenzo Law flat fee | $675, recording included |
| Call | (305) 224-6811 |
Does a town founded in 1565 mean a difficult chain of title?
No — and the reason is a statute worth knowing. Florida’s Marketable Record Title Act means the chain only has to run thirty years, not four hundred and sixty.
Section 712.01(6) defines the root of title as the last title transaction recorded at least thirty years before marketability is being determined. Section 712.02 then vests marketable record title in the holder, free of claims predating that root, subject to the exceptions the Act itself preserves.
That is how conveyancing functions in the oldest continuously occupied settlement of European and African-American origin in the United States, to use the City’s own careful phrasing. Colonial-era history is genuinely remarkable and almost entirely irrelevant to whether your deed records cleanly.
The qualification is in the exceptions. The Act preserves certain interests regardless of age, and it is those, not the antiquity of the town, that occasionally surface. A title examination looks for them. It does not read four centuries of documents.
What will my children be allowed to do with the house?
That is the question this county actually raises, and it is not answered by the deed. St. Augustine regulates alterations, demolition and even digging on private property.
Three overlapping regimes apply inside the city:
- Historic districts. Five local districts, designated HP-1 through HP-5, sit alongside seven National Register districts. Exterior changes within them require a Certificate of Appropriateness from the Historic Architectural Review Board before work begins.
- Demolition review. The same board reviews demolition of buildings fifty years old or older, or recorded on the Florida Master Site File, or designated as a local landmark. That is a low threshold in a city of this age.
- Archaeological zones. The City operates an Archaeological Preservation Ordinance covering eighteen zones across three tiers, graded by the density of cultural deposits beneath them. Review is triggered where a project sits in a zone, spans a hundred square feet, and goes three inches deep. Three inches. A pool, a footing, a serious replanting.
A lady bird deed triggers none of this. There is no ground disturbance and no exterior alteration in recording a conveyance, so no Certificate of Appropriateness and no archaeological review arises from signing one.
What the deed does is decide who inherits the obligations. The people you name will be the ones dealing with the review board, and a remainderman who assumed they could knock through the back of a 1920s house is a remainderman who will discover otherwise at the least convenient moment. Planning and Building takes those questions on 904-825-1065, and the time to ask is now.
Can I e-record the deed myself?
No. Deeds are excluded from the free consumer portal. The Clerk states that deeds, easements, mortgages and documents requiring clerk action are not eligible for submission through it.
This is a genuine, practical, county-specific limitation and it catches people out. The consumer e-recording route exists in St. Johns and works for other instruments, so a homeowner reasonably assumes it will take a deed. It will not.
That leaves three routes: in person, by post, or through a paid vendor account of the sort title companies hold. Approved vendors include CSC, Edoc Solutions, eRecording Partners, File and Go, Indecomm and Simplifile.
For most people the answer is to walk it in, which in this county is easier than most.
Where can I record it in person?
Four locations, and all of them provide full recording services. The Clerk says so expressly.
| Location | Address | Access |
|---|---|---|
| Judicial Center | 4010 Lewis Speedway, St. Augustine | 8:00–5:00 |
| Public Service Center | 4040 Lewis Speedway | Same hours, walk in, no appointment |
| Julington Creek Annex | 725 Flora Branch Boulevard, St. Johns | 9:00–4:00, appointment required |
| Ponte Vedra Annex | 151 Sawgrass Corners Drive, Ponte Vedra Beach | Monday and Wednesday only, appointment required |
Read the last row carefully. Ponte Vedra opens for this purpose two days a week and by appointment, which in the wealthiest corner of the county is where a good deal of the relevant property sits.
The main counter answers on (904) 819-3600. Probate is filed at the same Judicial Center — St. Johns does not separate recording from the courts the way Lee and Escambia do.
Is this a retirement county?
Not particularly, and that changes the case for the deed. St. Johns is 22.5% aged 65 or over — barely above the state’s 21.8%, and far below Sarasota’s 38.8%.
What distinguishes it is ownership and money. The county is 82.2% owner-occupied against a state rate of 67.6%, the median household income is $109,839, and the population grew 26.7% between 2020 and 2025 — roughly three times the statewide rate.
| St. Johns | Florida | |
|---|---|---|
| Owner-occupied | 82.2% | 67.6% |
| Median home value | $489,200 | $359,000 |
| Median household income | $109,839 | $74,568 |
| Growth 2020–2025 | +26.7% | +8.9% |
The implication is that this is not primarily a deed for people in their eighties putting affairs in order. It is a deed for owners in their fifties and sixties with substantial equity, young families, and a house they intend to keep — the group least likely to have thought about probate at all, and most exposed to it because so much of what they own is the home.
What happens to the house if I do nothing?
It passes under your will, or under Florida’s intestacy rules if there is none. Either route goes through the courts. The deed exists to make that unnecessary for the residence.
Homestead occupies a peculiar position in Florida law. It is protected from most creditors, it descends under constraints the deceased cannot always override, and it is treated differently from every other asset in an estate. Those protections are valuable and they are also the reason the process around it is slower and more technical than families expect.
The practical picture while an estate is open is what people underestimate. The house cannot be sold without the court’s involvement. Insurance and taxes continue to fall due and somebody has to fund them. A property standing empty through a northeast Florida summer deteriorates. Where heirs disagree about whether to keep or sell, that disagreement is now happening inside a court file rather than across a kitchen table.
A lady bird deed removes the residence from that process entirely. On the day of death it belongs to the people named, who can insure it, maintain it, live in it or sell it immediately, without waiting for letters of administration or anyone’s permission.
Two limits are worth stating plainly. The deed governs the house and nothing else — accounts, vehicles and personal property are untouched and may still require administration. And it does not replace a will. It sits alongside one, dealing with the single asset that would otherwise dominate the proceeding.
Where a family already holds property through a revocable trust, much of this may be handled and a further deed may add nothing. Establishing which of those situations applies means reading the existing documents rather than describing them from memory.
Will recording it cost me the homestead exemption?
No. A life tenant holds equitable title as a matter of statute. Section 196.041(2) declares a beneficial interest for life to be “equitable title to real estate.”
The county’s Property Appraiser at 4030 Lewis Speedway publishes the constitutional formula — legal title or beneficial title in equity — but says nothing anywhere about life estates, life tenants or remaindermen. As in most Florida counties, the reassurance has to come from the statute rather than from the county.
Two St. Johns specifics are published and both are worth having:
- The 2026 filing deadline is March 2, not March 1. The appraiser states this expressly. It is the kind of one-day difference that costs somebody an exemption every year.
- The additional homestead exemption is now inflation-adjusted. Following the 2024 constitutional amendment, the appraiser reported the 2025 total at $50,722, above the $50,000 floor.
Portability moves up to $500,000 of accumulated Save Our Homes benefit to a new homestead, within three tax years of leaving the old one, and the cap itself limits assessment growth to three percent or the change in the Consumer Price Index, whichever is lower. In a county growing at 26.7%, the gap between assessed and market value on a long-held house is widening quickly, and that accumulated benefit is worth protecting deliberately.
What has to be on the deed before the counter takes it?
Two witnesses, a notary, and the Clerk’s reserved space. Section 689.01(1) makes two subscribing witnesses a condition of creating the interest.
The Clerk’s published requirements call for a three-inch by three-inch blank at the top right of the first page and a one-inch by three-inch space at the top of each page after, with grantor and witness names and addresses printed legibly beneath the signatures, the preparer identified by name and address, and the notary’s signature, stamp and expiry date shown. Section 695.26 is the source of those rules.
Recording costs $10.00 for the first page and $8.50 for each page after, with an extra dollar for each name indexed beyond the first four. Documentary stamps run seventy cents per hundred dollars of consideration under section 201.02, and the Department of Revenue’s worked example is directly on point: an unencumbered property transferred to children for nominal consideration draws seventy cents in tax, whatever the property is worth. A two-page deed therefore records for $19.20.
The Clerk also runs a free Recording Activity Notification service, which emails you when a document records against your name. Worth enrolling in the same week you record anything.
Should I just download a blank form?
A free form cannot see your title, your family, or your zoning. In this county that last one is not a throwaway.
The facts that decide these matters are never on a template: whether a lender must be consulted before an interest is conveyed, whether an old conveyance left a defect in the legal description, whether someone you intend to name receives means-tested benefits an inherited interest would interrupt, or whether a minor child in the household makes homestead descent compulsory under section 732.401 whatever the deed says.
Then add the St. Augustine layer. A form has no view on whether the property sits inside HP-1 through HP-5, whether it falls in one of the eighteen archaeological zones, or whether the house is old enough to bring demolition under review. Those facts do not stop the deed. They shape who it should sensibly name.
What does Lorenzo Law charge in St. Johns County?
$675 flat, the $19.20 recording charge included in it. Title examination, drafting, the signing with two witnesses and a notary, and delivery to the counter on Lewis Speedway.
One caution about sources. The Clerk’s own fee page refers to a Senate Bill number that does not correspond to any fee legislation — the 2025 bill carrying that number concerned eviction records and died in committee. It is a stray citation rather than anything affecting what you pay, and the published figures are what the counter charges. Where a page and a statute disagree, the statute gets read.
Where should you go next?
The hub if the question is whether this deed fits your situation at all.
The Florida lady bird deed hub covers the statewide position, Medicaid treatment and the cases pointing to a different instrument. What a lady bird deed actually is introduces the mechanics gently, and the Florida form discussion addresses the document itself.
Across the state, Pensacola covers the other of Florida’s two original counties, and Sarasota is the one county whose appraiser confirms the exemption question in writing.
A lady bird deed St. Augustine owners record keeps the house out of probate and lets the harder local questions — the review board, the archaeological zone, the fifty-year rule — be answered by you rather than by whoever inherits. Call (305) 224-6811. Our preparation checklist lists what to bring.
Last updated: 8 August 2026. What changed: new page. Recording locations, branch access restrictions, fees and the exclusion of deeds from the consumer e-recording portal verified against the St. Johns County Clerk; historic district, demolition and archaeological zone requirements verified against the City of St. Augustine; the March 2 deadline and exemption figures verified against the St. Johns County Property Appraiser.
This page is general information about Florida law, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Lorenzo Law is a solo practice — Jose M. Lorenzo, Jr., assisted by staff. Florida Bar No. 107002.