Updated August 2026 · Reviewed by Adams, Cameron & Co.
Not as a dual agent, and Florida is unusually blunt about it. The statute says a real estate licensee may not operate as a disclosed or nondisclosed dual agent, which closes both routes at once: you cannot do it secretly and you cannot do it with everyone's written consent either. What you can do is work with both parties as a transaction broker, which Florida presumes you are unless something else is established in writing. That is a limited form of representation rather than agency for both sides, and understanding the difference is the whole answer to this question.
- Florida prohibits dual agency outright. The statute bars operating as a disclosed or nondisclosed dual agent.
- Consent does not fix it. Unlike some states, there is no permission route where everyone signs a form.
- The default is transaction broker: Florida presumes it unless a single agent or no brokerage relationship is established in writing.
- Handling both sides is therefore common and legal, but as a transaction broker rather than as an agent for two masters.
- Agents licensed in other states are the ones who get this wrong, because disclosed dual agency is permitted in several of them.
This question arrives in two situations: a new agent whose own listing attracts a buyer with no agent, and an experienced agent moving here from a state with different rules. The second group is more likely to get it wrong, because what they are used to is prohibited here.
The rule, stated as the statute states it
Florida's brokerage relationship law is unusually direct on this point:
A real estate licensee may not operate as a disclosed or nondisclosed dual agent.
Both words matter. Nondisclosed closes the obvious route, which is quietly representing both sides and hoping nobody notices. Disclosed closes the route agents from elsewhere expect to exist, where everybody is told, everybody signs a consent form, and the arrangement proceeds.
There is no consent form here. It is not a matter of paperwork or of the parties agreeing to waive something. The arrangement itself is not permitted.
Why Florida takes that position
Agency, in the full sense, means undivided loyalty and obedience to a client's lawful instructions, including confidentiality about their position. Two clients on opposite sides of a price negotiation cannot both receive that from the same person. One of them is going to be shortchanged the moment anything is genuinely contested.
Rather than manage that conflict through disclosure, Florida removed the arrangement and built its default around a different relationship instead.
What you can do: transaction broker
Here is where the practical answer lives, and it is why plenty of Florida agents do handle both sides of a deal without breaking anything.
The same statute provides that it shall be presumed that all licensees are operating as transaction brokers unless a single agent or no brokerage relationship is established, in writing, with a customer.
So transaction broker is the default setting. It is a limited form of representation: you provide honest dealing, skill and care, and you assist the transaction, but you are not the undivided advocate of either party and you are not holding confidences for one against the other. That is materially different from being an agent for both, which is what is prohibited.
The role itself, what it does and does not include, and the two moments where it genuinely bites, are set out properly in what a transaction broker is in Florida real estate. Read that before you find yourself in the situation, because the distinction is the entire subject.
The situation this actually arrives in
You have a listing. An unrepresented buyer comes to the open house, likes it, and wants to buy it. Nobody has done anything wrong and there is no reason the transaction cannot proceed.
What you do need is clarity, in writing, about what relationship you have with each party, before you start advising anybody. If you are a single agent for the seller, you cannot simultaneously become the buyer's agent. If you are a transaction broker, that is the presumed position and you behave accordingly with both.
Where it goes wrong is not usually a deliberate decision. It is an agent sliding into advising the buyer, in the way an agent naturally would, without anyone having established what the relationship is. Advice about what to offer, what the seller might accept, or whether to walk away is advocacy, and giving it to both sides is where the problem begins.
This is a conversation to have with your broker the first time it comes up rather than the second, and firms have established procedures for exactly this. Whether you have somebody available to ask is the practical argument in why a non-competing manager changes everything.
Two agents at the same brokerage
A related question, and a different one: one agent at your firm has the listing and another agent at the same firm has the buyer.
That is a normal occurrence, particularly at a large local firm holding a meaningful share of the inventory. It is not the same as one licensee acting for both parties, and firms have established ways of handling it. As with everything on this page, the answer is your brokerage's written procedure rather than an assumption.
If you are licensed in another state
This is the group most likely to be caught out, because several states permit disclosed dual agency with signed consent, and an agent who has practiced that way for years will reach for a form that does not exist here.
Do not assume the arrangement you used elsewhere translates. Florida's brokerage relationship framework is its own, the default is different, and the prohibition is absolute rather than conditional. Anyone arriving from out of state should read the transaction broker page before their first transaction, alongside how mutual recognition works if the license itself is still being sorted out.
Why this matters beyond compliance
Set the rulebook aside for a moment. A buyer and seller in the same transaction want opposite things about price, and both of them can tell whether the person in the middle is genuinely on their side.
The practical value of Florida's structure is that it removes an impossible promise. You are not pretending to be the undivided advocate of two people who want different outcomes. You are being clear about what you are and are not doing, which is easier to deliver and easier for clients to trust.
The moments where that clarity is tested, such as a seller asking what the buyer would really pay, are covered in the transaction broker page, and the general discipline of not answering what you should not answer is in what to say when a client asks something you do not know.
The honest bottom line
You cannot be a dual agent in Florida, disclosed or otherwise, and no amount of consent changes that. You can work with both parties as a transaction broker, which is the presumed relationship unless something else is agreed in writing.
The skill is knowing which relationship you are in with each party before you start giving anybody advice, and asking your broker the first time the situation arises rather than improvising.
A different conflict, with both clients on the same side, is covered in what happens when two of your own buyers want the same house.
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