Broward County Quit Claim Deed: Recording, Taxes, and Homestead

A Broward County quit claim deed transfers whatever ownership interest the grantor holds in a piece of real estate, with no promise that the title is clean.¹ If the grantor owns the property outright, the grantee gets full ownership. If the grantor owns nothing, the grantee gets nothing, and has no legal claim back against the grantor for the empty transfer. That is why this deed is used for moves between people who already trust each other: adding a spouse, removing an ex after divorce, correcting a name, or dropping a home into a revocable trust. It is not the right tool for an arm’s-length sale.

When a Quit Claim Deed Is the Wrong Tool

A warranty deed guarantees clean title and obligates the grantor to defend it against third-party claims. A quit claim deed does neither. If the property has any complexity in its history — prior liens, boundary issues, old judgments — the grantee under a quit claim takes that risk with no recourse. For a purchase on the open market, insist on a warranty deed. Reserve the quit claim for transfers where the parties already know the property’s history and accept the risk.

What the Deed Must Contain

Broward County’s Recording Division publishes a checklist, and documents that miss any item come back unrecorded.² Get these right the first time:

Full legal names and mailing addresses of grantor and grantee. Florida law requires the grantee’s name and address on any instrument conveying an interest in real property (other than a mortgage) for it to be eligible for recording.³
The complete legal description of the property, pulled from a prior recorded deed or from the Broward County Property Appraiser. Transcribe it exactly; small discrepancies trigger rejection.
The 12-digit parcel identification number (folio number), looked up on the Property Appraiser’s website. Florida law requires it on conveyance instruments in addition to the legal description.⁴
The name and mailing address of the person who prepared the deed, printed on the instrument.³
A 3-inch by 3-inch blank space in the upper right corner of the first page, and a 1-inch by 3-inch blank space in the same spot on each additional page, for the clerk’s stamp.²

Signing, Witnesses, and the Notary

Florida separates what makes a deed legally valid from what makes it recordable. Both have to be satisfied.

For validity, the grantor must sign in the presence of two subscribing witnesses, and those witnesses must sign as well. Witnesses may participate remotely by audio-video technology if they hear the grantor acknowledge the signing and electronically sign during the same session.⁵

For recordability, the deed must carry a notary acknowledgment. Any instrument concerning real property must be acknowledged by the executing party (or proved by a subscribing witness) before a notary public or other authorized officer.⁶ Because of this, every Broward quit claim deed in practice involves a notary.

Beyond the acknowledgment itself, each person’s printed name must appear directly beneath their signature — grantor, both witnesses, and the notary. Each witness’s mailing address must also be printed below their signature.³ The notary block itself must show the names being acknowledged, the date, the notary’s signature and printed name, commission expiration, and seal.²

Florida also allows full remote online notarization, where the notary sits in Florida and the signer can be anywhere, connected through an approved audio-video platform. The notary must be separately registered as an online notary and use an approved RON service provider, and identity is verified through credential analysis plus knowledge-based authentication.

What It Costs To Record

Recording Fees

Broward County charges $10.00 for the first page and $8.50 for each additional page.⁷ A one- or two-page quit claim deed costs $10.00 to $18.50 to record.

Documentary Stamp Tax

Florida charges a documentary stamp tax of $0.70 per $100 of consideration on any deed transferring an interest in real property.⁸ The trap: “consideration” includes any mortgage or lien on the property, whether or not the grantee formally assumes it.⁹ Transfer a home with a $200,000 mortgage to a family member for no cash, and the doc stamp is still $1,400 ($200,000 ÷ 100 × $0.70).

A pure gift of unencumbered property with zero consideration produces zero tax. Payment is due to the clerk at recording, so long as recording happens before the 20th day of the month following the month the deed was delivered.⁹

Exemptions Worth Knowing

A transfer of homestead property between spouses is doc-stamp-free when the only consideration is the existing mortgage balance. A transfer between spouses or former spouses after a divorce is also exempt, provided the property was their marital home at the time of divorce.⁹ If divorced spouses are transferring property that was not the marital home, the tax applies on the full consideration, mortgage included.

There is no doc-stamp exemption for transfers into a trust for estate planning. Moving a home into a revocable living trust is not automatically tax-free; the tax turns on whether consideration exists, such as a mortgage the trust takes on.⁹

Submitting the Deed to the County

Once signed, witnessed, and notarized, the deed goes to the Broward County Records, Taxes and Treasury Division at 115 S. Andrews Avenue, Room 114, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301.¹⁰ Three ways to submit:

In person. Bring the original, payment for fees and doc stamps, and a self-addressed stamped envelope. Fastest for time-sensitive transfers.
By mail. Send the original with a check or money order payable to the Broward County Commission for all fees and taxes, plus a self-addressed stamped envelope. Mail-in recordings typically take four to six business days.²
E-recording through an approved vendor. Title companies and attorneys usually file this way.¹⁰

Do not forget the stamped envelope on mail submissions; the clerk uses it to return the recorded original. Status on mailed submissions is available on the county’s Work Request Status Update page.² Once accepted, the deed is indexed into the Broward County Official Records, which gives public notice of the ownership change.

How the Transfer Affects Homestead and the Save Our Homes Cap

This is where a quit claim deed quietly gets expensive. Florida’s Save Our Homes provision caps annual increases in a homesteaded property’s assessed value at 3% or the change in the Consumer Price Index, whichever is lower.¹¹ After years of ownership, assessed value can sit far below market value, cutting the property tax bill substantially.

A quit claim deed that changes ownership generally resets the assessed value to full market value as of January 1 of the following year, erasing the accumulated Save Our Homes benefit.¹¹ On a long-held Broward home, that reset can add several thousand dollars a year to the tax bill.

Some transfers are protected. Transfers between spouses (including after death or divorce) do not trigger a reset. Correcting an error, or adding a name to the title while the same homestead-exempt person remains on it, is protected — though if the newly added person later applies for homestead on the property, that counts as a change of ownership. Transfers at death to a surviving spouse, minor child, or legally dependent person also preserve the cap.¹¹

The new owner must file for their own homestead exemption by March 1 of the year following the transfer. Miss it, and the exemption is waived for the year, though Broward does accept late filings through the statutory late-filing deadline (typically in September).¹² The Broward County Property Appraiser handles homestead applications and posts the yearly filing window.¹³

Federal Gift Tax and the Capital Gains Trap

When a quit claim deed moves property for less than fair market value, the IRS treats the difference as a gift. Two consequences follow.

Form 709 Reporting

The federal gift tax annual exclusion for 2026 is $19,000 per recipient.¹⁴ Real property transfers almost always exceed that, so the grantor must file IRS Form 709 for the year of the transfer.¹⁵ Filing does not necessarily mean owing tax; the excess over $19,000 simply reduces the grantor’s lifetime estate and gift tax exemption. Skipping the return is a serious mistake, because the IRS has no statute of limitations on unfiled gift tax returns.

Married couples can use gift splitting to combine exclusions, raising the per-recipient figure to $38,000 before using lifetime exemption. Both spouses must file Form 709 to elect gift splitting, even if only one spouse made the gift directly.

Carryover Basis and the Capital Gains Hit

This is the part most families do not see coming. Gifted property carries the donor’s original cost basis, not the current market value.¹⁶ If a parent bought a house in 1990 for $80,000 and quit claims it today when it is worth $500,000, the recipient’s basis is still roughly $80,000 (plus any qualifying improvements). Selling later could trigger capital gains tax on more than $400,000 of gain.

Inheriting the same property instead would deliver a stepped-up basis equal to fair market value at the date of death. The gap in tax liability can be enormous. For many families, that single difference is reason enough to leave the property in the original owner’s name until death rather than use a lifetime quit claim deed.

What Happens to Title Insurance

If the grantor holds an owner’s title insurance policy, a quit claim deed generally ends that coverage. Standard policies continue coverage only as long as the insured keeps liability through covenants or warranties in the deed. A quit claim deed carries no warranties, so the grantor keeps no liability, and the policy has nothing left to insure.

The grantee does not inherit that policy. If a title defect surfaces after recording, there is no warranty deed to fall back on and no title insurance to file against. For any property with a complicated ownership history, this gap is a real risk, and anyone receiving property by quit claim who plans to hold it should consider buying a new owner’s policy — which requires the title search the parties likely skipped by using a quit claim in the first place.

1
Broward County Property Appraiser. Broward County Property Appraiser – Frequently Asked Questions
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Broward County, Florida. Recording Your Deed
3
Justia Law. Florida Code 695.26 – Requirements for Recording Instruments Affecting Real Property
4
Broward County Records, Taxes and Treasury. Tips for Searching the Tracking Log
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Florida Senate. Florida Code 689.01 – How Real Estate Conveyed
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Florida Senate. Florida Code 695.03 – Acknowledgment and Proof
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Broward County Records, Taxes and Treasury. Fee Schedule
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Florida Senate. Florida Code 201.02 – Tax on Deeds and Other Instruments Relating to Real Property or Interests in Real Property
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Florida Department of Revenue. Documentary Stamp Tax
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Broward County Records, Taxes and Treasury Division. Broward County Records
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The Florida Legislature. Florida Code 193.155 – Homestead Assessments
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The Florida Legislature. Florida Code 196.011 – Annual Application Required for Exemption
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Broward County Property Appraiser. File for a Homestead Exemption
14
Internal Revenue Service. Gifts and Inheritances
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Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 709
16
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 551 – Basis of Assets