Florida Residential As-Is Contract Series | Part 1: Identifying the Parties

For residential sales transactions in Florida, one contract form gets used more than any other –the Florida As Is Residential Contract for Sale and Purchase.  The drafters intended it to be simple: just fill in the blanks.  But, those blanks can be confusing.  And that confusion, combined with time pressure and client expectations, can lead to errors, lost deals, and liability for agents and their clients. 

We’ve crafted this Florida Residential As‑Is Contract Series for brokers and others who complete this form for their clients, as well as owners and prospective buyers who want to navigate a residential purchase and sale transaction on their own. In each article, we focus on one section of the form, moving through it step by step. We’ll explain what each section does, where people commonly go wrong, and how to get it right.

If you are looking for insight on a particular section, you can find all currently available articles from this series on our Insights page.

Hopefully, you find this series helpful.  With questions, suggestions, or requests as to alternative series, feel free to contact me directly at Brian.Stephens@Lowndes-law.com.

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Part 1: Identifying the Parties

Florida “As-Is” Contract, Line-by-Line: Lines 1–5 (“Parties”)

Lines 1–5 serve simple but foundational functions. They name the Seller and Buyer – the parties who will be legally obligated under this contract.  They also establish that the basic agreement: Seller agrees to sell, Buyer agrees to buy.

But these definitions matter for everything that comes after. Every deadline, notice, deposit, repair negotiation, and default remedy assumes you’ve correctly identified the legal parties from the outset.

Treat This Section as a Title and Identity Check

From a practical standpoint, parties completing the form should treat this section as an opportunity to conduct a title-and-identity check. Verify that the party with whom you have been discussing the potential purchase is, in fact, the true and correct owner of the subject property or their authorized representative. 

Publicly available records make this easy.  Use the relevant county property appraiser’s online records to confirm the current owner name(s).  Often, the property appraiser will allow you to search by address and provide a direct link to that property’s “vesting deed” – the recorded document establishing the present owner’s claim to title and from which the property appraiser got the owner’s name. 

If there’s no direct link, go to the relevant county’s official records portal and search by name. Either way, the name you insert in the “Seller” blank should mirror the same name provided on the vesting deed. This is especially important when title is held by a trust, an estate, a business entity, or when there are multiple owners.

Getting the Buyer’s Name Right

The same general principle applies to the Buyer. Use the true legal name (or the correct entity name) of the party intending to be bound by the contract and ultimately take ownership of the property.  Parties sometimes try to build in flexibility by adding something like “and/or assigns” after the Buyer’s name.  While understandable, this can create ambiguity about who is obligated under the contract and can invite objections.

The form already addresses assignment rights later on. The cleaner practice is to rely on the contract’s assignment mechanism rather than improvising in the party-identification lines.

Three Common Mistakes (and How to Avoid Them)

Working with clients, these are the three mistakes we see most commonly in this section:

1. Naming the wrong Seller or omitting a necessary co-owner. This usually happens when parties rely on MLS listings, occupant-provided information, or memory rather than the vesting deed of record.
2. Inserting “and/or assigns” after the Buyer’s name. Use the form’s assignment framework instead.
3. Using incomplete legal names or incorrect capacity. Examples include leaving off “LLC,” “Inc.,” or “as Trustee” from the Buyer’s name.

Why Getting This Right Matters

Any of these can trigger last-minute document corrections. At best, that means delays and additional work at a critical stage of the transaction. At worst, it can give a party who’s reconsidering the deal an opening to raise questions about authority or enforceability—and a potential exit.

We’ve seen transactions stall or fall apart at the closing table over party identification issues that could have been avoided by verifying names and checking the deed at the outset. Taking a few minutes to get this section filled out correctly the first time helps avoid disputes and gets deals closed.   

In the next post, we’ll walk through the property description section and discuss how to accurately identify what’s actually being bought and sold.