Last reviewed: July 2026
The South Florida map
'Customarily' is doing real work in those sentences: nothing in Florida law assigns the cost. The purchase contract's checkbox controls every time, and parties negotiate against the custom constantly — investor buyers who want their own title company in Palm Beach, sellers offering to pay in Broward to sweeten a deal.
- Broward County: buyer customarily pays the owner's premium and selects the title company
- Miami-Dade County: buyer customarily pays and selects
- Palm Beach County: seller customarily pays and selects
- Most of the rest of Florida: seller pays and selects (with a handful of buyer-pays counties like Broward, Miami-Dade, and a few others)
Why it matters beyond the money
Whoever pays typically picks — and picking the title company means picking who searches the title, who holds the escrow, who chases the estoppels, and who solves the problem at week three. Since Florida promulgates the premium (the price is essentially the same everywhere), the choice is purely about competence. That's worth negotiating for.
For sellers in Palm Beach County, paying also means benefiting: a qualifying prior policy can earn the reissue credit, reducing the premium the seller is customarily covering. Bring your prior policy to listing.
How to handle it in your deal
Read the contract's title provision before signing — Florida's standard forms make the allocation explicit. If you hold the choice, exercise it deliberately. If you're trading it away in negotiation, price it: on a $500,000 purchase the owner's premium is $2,575, real money worth a paragraph of contract language.