Tenant representation in Florida.

What Florida law presumes about the broker you are talking to

Most commercial tenants I meet assume the broker showing them space is working for them. In Florida that assumption is backwards, and it is worth understanding before you tour a single building.

Florida authorizes two brokerage relationships, single agent and transaction broker, and prohibits dual agency outright. The statute then sets a default. Section 475.278 states that it is presumed all licensees are operating as transaction brokers unless a single agent or no brokerage relationship is established, in writing, with a customer. Absent a signed document saying otherwise, the person across from you is a transaction broker.

That distinction is not cosmetic. A single agent owes fiduciary duties, among them loyalty, confidentiality, obedience and full disclosure. A transaction broker provides limited representation: deal honestly and fairly, account for funds, use skill and care, present offers in a timely way. Those are reasonable standards. They are not the same as having someone whose duty of loyalty runs to you.

Here is the part that catches commercial tenants. The written disclosure requirements in that section do not apply to nonresidential transactions, and they do not apply to the rental or leasing of real property. So in a Florida commercial lease you are presumed to be dealing with a transaction broker, and nobody is obliged to hand you a form explaining that. The default applies quietly.

None of this makes transaction brokerage improper. It is the standard way most deals get done, and plenty of capable brokers work that way. My point is narrower: if you want loyalty as a duty rather than a courtesy, it has to be put in writing at the start. That is what engaging a tenant representative does.

I am a commercial broker, not a lawyer, and this is general education rather than legal advice. Read the statute yourself or have your attorney read it before you rely on any summary of it, including mine.

What that difference looks like inside a real lease negotiation

Abstract duties become concrete fast when money is on the table. A few places it shows up:

What gets told, and to whom. If you mention that your lease expires in ninety days and you are getting nervous, that is a fact about your negotiating position. Under a single agent relationship it is confidential. Under limited representation it is not protected the same way. I have watched tenants hand over their urgency in the first ten minutes without realizing they had done it.

Whether anyone tells you the deal is bad. Presenting offers in a timely manner is a duty. Advising you that the escalation clause compounds against you for eight years, or that the option to renew at market with no ceiling is worth negotiating now, is advocacy. Advocacy is what loyalty buys.

Who runs the comparison. A landlord's broker markets one building. My job is to bring you the four you have not seen, including the ones with no sign out front, and then to tell you which is actually cheaper once operating expenses and build-out are on the same basis.

Who pays for tenant representation in Florida

On a lease, the landlord pays the tenant representative's fee. It is built into the deal economics whether or not you bring someone, which is the part most business owners do not know. Walking in unrepresented does not lower your rent. It removes one side of the negotiation and leaves the commission where it was.

On a purchase the arrangement is different and we agree it in writing before we start. No surprises, no ambiguity about who I work for.

The numbers I work from across South Florida

Representation is only as good as the information behind it. I keep a compiled record of arm's-length commercial sales across the tri-county market, 5,709 of them from 2021 through 2026, which is what I use to tell a client whether a quoted number is defensible. Recorded sale prices per square foot by county and property type:

Read the spread rather than the midpoint. Miami-Dade office runs from $322 to $584 across the middle half of recorded sales, and the gap between those two numbers is condition, location and what the leases in the building say. A citywide midpoint is a starting bracket for a conversation, never a value for a specific asset. When a client needs a defensible number for one building I run a Broker Opinion of Value on it, and that comes back as a range too.

Representation by property type

The negotiation changes with the asset. Retail lives or dies on percentage rent, exclusivity and co-tenancy. Office turns on parking ratios, build-out and the renewal option. Industrial is clear height, power, loading and truck court before anything else.

Where I work

Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach, which is where I can actually add value. I know these corridors, the landlords who own in them, and which buildings have problems that do not appear on a listing. If your requirement sits outside the tri-county market I will tell you rather than take the assignment.

When to bring in a tenant representative

Earlier than most people do. The single most common mistake I see is a tenant calling ninety days before expiry, which is the point at which the landlord already knows you have nowhere to go.

For a small requirement, under about 5,000 square feet, start six to nine months out. That leaves room to tour, shortlist, and run a real negotiation without the clock forcing your hand. Above 15,000 square feet, or anything needing meaningful build-out, start twelve to eighteen months out. Permitting and construction in Broward and Miami-Dade take longer than owners tell you they will, and a delivery date that slips leaves you holding over at a penalty rate.

The leverage argument is simple arithmetic. A landlord facing a tenant with two viable alternatives and nine months of runway negotiates differently than one facing a tenant with sixty days and a moving crew to book. Nothing about the building changed. Your position did.

Renewals deserve the same treatment, and rarely get it. A renewal feels like paperwork, so it gets handled as paperwork, often at whatever the escalation clause says. Quietly getting a competing proposal before you open that conversation costs you nothing and changes the tone of it completely. That is most of what lease renewal and renegotiation work consists of.

If you are already mid-process and unrepresented, it is usually not too late. What matters is whether a written relationship exists before the terms are agreed, not whether you have already toured a building.

How an engagement actually starts

A call, usually twenty minutes. You tell me the size you need, the timing, and what is wrong with where you are now. I tell you what the market looks like for that requirement and whether you have leverage. If it makes sense to work together we put the relationship in writing, which is the step that converts the statutory default into actual representation.

If it does not make sense, I will say so on that call. Not every requirement needs a broker, and a tenant with one obvious option and a reasonable landlord sometimes does better handling it directly.