Buying Privately in Miami: How Title Is Held, and What It Costs You

August 15, 2026

Every Florida property sale ends up in a public database. The deed is recorded with the county, the Property Appraiser publishes the owner’s name against the parcel, and within weeks the transaction appears on a dozen consumer real estate sites with a photograph of the house attached.

For most buyers this is unremarkable. For a buyer whose name carries recognition, or whose family has security considerations, or who simply prefers that a $12 million purchase not become a searchable fact, it is a genuine concern. The good news is that Florida offers well-established structures for holding property discreetly. The important news is that the most obvious structure is usually the wrong one, and choosing it carelessly can cost you a great deal in property tax.

What is public, and what is not

The deed is public. The mortgage, if there is one, is public. The Property Appraiser’s parcel record showing the owner of record is public and searchable by name, and the mailing address attached to the tax bill is public alongside it.

What is not public is the beneficial ownership behind a properly structured entity. Florida does not require an LLC’s members to be listed on the state’s public registry, only a manager or authorised representative, and Florida land trusts are specifically designed so that the beneficiary’s identity sits in a private trust agreement rather than in the recorded deed.

There has also been a significant federal development this month that changes the picture. The Corporate Transparency Act had required most US entities to report their beneficial owners to FinCEN. On August 11, 2026, Treasury issued a final rule, effective August 14, that permanently exempts domestic reporting companies from beneficial ownership reporting, exempts reporting of US-person beneficial owners, and provides for deleting information previously reported by US persons. Only certain entities formed under foreign law and registered to do business in a US state remain subject to reporting, and then only for their non-US beneficial owners.

That is a meaningful shift, though not an unlimited one. The separate Customer Due Diligence rule still requires banks to identify the beneficial owners of entity customers at account opening, so your lender and your title company will know exactly who you are regardless of what the county records show. Privacy from casual public search is achievable. Privacy from your own financial institutions is not, and should not be the objective.

The mistake that costs the most money

Here is the trap, and it catches sophisticated people regularly.

If the property will be your primary residence and you title it in an LLC, you will generally lose the homestead exemption. The Florida Constitution extends homestead protection to natural persons, not to business entities. A property appraiser will typically deny the exemption even where the buyer is the sole member of the LLC and lives in the house full-time, because the individual does not personally hold title.

Losing the exemption is not just the loss of the annual deduction, which for 2026 is $51,411 against taxable value. Far more importantly, it forfeits the Save Our Homes cap, which limits annual assessed value increases to 3 percent or CPI, whichever is lower. On a high-value Miami property held for a decade in a rising market, that cap is worth a great deal more than the exemption. Giving it up in exchange for privacy is a poor trade, and most buyers who make it never realise they have made it.

Separately, LLC ownership also forfeits the constitutional protection against forced sale that homestead confers on a natural person, which is often the opposite of what the buyer intended.

The structure that usually fits

For a primary residence, the Florida land trust is generally the more appropriate instrument. Legal title sits with a trustee, who is named on the recorded deed. The beneficiary’s identity lives in an unrecorded trust agreement. The public record shows the trustee, not you.

Critically, and unlike an LLC, a land trust can be structured to preserve the homestead exemption. Section 689.071(7) of the Florida Statutes addresses this directly, but the trust agreement must contain the right language, specifically granting the beneficiary a present possessory right to occupy the property as a residence. Without that provision, the beneficial interest is classified as personal property rather than an interest in real estate, and the exemption may be denied. This is not a detail to leave to a template. It is the entire point of the exercise, and it is why this work belongs with a Florida attorney who does it routinely.

Transferring property into a properly constituted land trust does not itself trigger a reassessment, because assessment follows the property rather than the identity of the titleholder.

For a second home, an investment property or a rental, the calculus is different. Homestead is not available in any event, so an LLC becomes attractive for the liability containment it offers, and it is common to combine the two, with a land trust holding title and an LLC as beneficiary or trustee, delivering privacy and liability protection together. Land trusts by themselves are a privacy and probate tool, not a liability shield, and anyone who has been told otherwise has been told something inaccurate.

What it costs, and what it complicates

Establishing a Florida land trust with competent counsel typically runs in the region of $1,500 to $2,500, with modest ongoing administration. Against a purchase in the millions, that is immaterial. The complications are more likely to be practical than financial.

Lenders are the main friction point. Financing a homestead property held in trust is difficult, and many lenders will simply decline. Any transfer of title into an entity after closing may implicate a due-on-sale clause. If you are financing rather than paying cash, the structure has to be agreed with your lender before you write the offer, not arranged afterwards as a tidy-up.

Insurance requires attention too. The named insured must match the titleholder, and a high-value carrier will want to understand the ownership structure. This is routine for brokers who write coastal high-value risk and confusing for those who do not.

The other half of privacy: how you buy

Structure controls what appears in the record after closing. It does nothing about the process of getting there, which is often where exposure actually occurs.

Off-market and pocket listings matter here. A property that never reaches the MLS never generates the public marketing trail, the syndicated listing history or the price-reduction record that follows a conventional sale. For a discreet purchase this is frequently more valuable than the entity structure, and access to that inventory is a function of relationships rather than search tools.

Practical measures during the transaction matter as well: a non-disclosure agreement where appropriate, controlled access for showings and inspections, wiring instructions handled carefully, and a title company accustomed to entity purchases and to clients who expect discretion. On the highest-profile transactions, it is also worth thinking about how the closing itself is handled and who within each firm has visibility.

Decide before you offer, not after

The single most useful thing a buyer can do is settle the ownership question during the search rather than during the closing. Deciding at the last minute produces rushed structures, lender problems and, occasionally, a forfeited homestead exemption that nobody notices until the first tax bill arrives.

The decision itself is not complicated once the facts are on the table. Will this be your permanent residence or a second home? Are you financing? What is the actual privacy concern, public searchability or something more specific? Is asset protection part of the objective, or only discretion? Those four answers point clearly to a structure, and your attorney and CPA can execute from there.

Chris King works regularly with buyers who require discretion, including access to off-market inventory and coordination with the attorneys and title companies who handle these purchases properly. If privacy is a factor in your search, it is worth raising at the first conversation rather than the last.