Updated August 2026 · Reviewed by Adams, Cameron & Co.
There are two separate deadlines and agents routinely only know about one. If you take a deposit as a sales associate, you must deliver it to your broker by the end of the next business day after you receive it. Your broker then has to place it in escrow immediately, and Florida defines immediately as within three business days. Saturdays, Sundays and legal holidays do not count as business days for either clock. The statute also restricts where it can go: an escrow account with a title company, banking institution, credit union or savings and loan located and doing business in this state.
- Two clocks, not one. Yours runs to the end of the next business day; the broker's runs three business days from receipt.
- Weekends and legal holidays do not count as business days, which is what makes a Friday deposit deceptive.
- The statute says a broker must place funds in escrow immediately upon receipt. The rule defines immediately as three business days.
- The account has to be with a title company, bank, credit union or savings and loan located and doing business in Florida.
- Never hold a deposit yourself over a weekend to be helpful. Your obligation is to move it, not to look after it.
This is a question with a specific, checkable answer, and it is one of the few places where a new agent can create a serious problem through nothing worse than being busy.
Two deadlines, and most agents only know about one
The rules split the job between you and your broker, and each half has its own clock.
Your deadline as a sales associate. If a deposit is handed to you, you must deliver it to your broker by the end of the next business day after you receive it. Not when you next drop into the office, and not when you happen to be passing. The next business day.
Your broker's deadline. Florida's licensing statute makes it a ground for discipline for a broker to fail to immediately place, upon receipt, any money, fund, deposit, check, or draft entrusted to him or her in escrow. On its own the word immediately would be impossible to work with, so the Commission's rule defines it: immediately means within three business days.
So the full chain is next business day from you to your broker, then three business days from your broker into the escrow account.
Business days are the part that catches people
Saturdays, Sundays and legal holidays are not business days. That single sentence explains most of the trouble this rule causes.
A cheque handed to you on a Friday afternoon does not need to reach your broker until the end of Monday, which sounds generous and is exactly why it goes wrong. The deposit spends the weekend somewhere, usually in a bag or a car, and by Monday it has been forgotten under a pile of other things. The generous-sounding deadline is what creates the risk, not a tight one.
The same is true around holidays, where a long weekend can quietly stretch a deadline out and stretch your memory of it further.
Where the money is allowed to go
The statute does not simply say it must be deposited somewhere safe. It specifies the kind of institution: an escrow account with a title company, banking institution, credit union, or savings and loan association located and doing business in this state.
Two things follow. It has to be a proper escrow account rather than an operating account that happens to have money in it. And the institution has to be located and doing business in Florida, so an out-of-state arrangement that seems convenient is not a solution.
In practice most deposits in this market are held by a title company rather than by the brokerage, which is entirely normal. What matters is that the arrangement is deliberate and documented rather than assumed, and the surrounding mechanics are in how escrow works in a Florida transaction and how earnest money works.
What you must not do, however helpful it feels
Do not hold it. Not overnight beyond your deadline, not over a weekend, not until the contract is fully signed, not because the buyer asked you to wait until their transfer clears. If somebody hands you a deposit, your job is to move it, not to look after it.
Do not put it anywhere of your own. A licensee's own account is not a holding place for client funds under any circumstance or for any length of time. This is the line that separates an administrative slip from something far more serious.
Do not treat a delay as harmless because the deal is fine. The obligation attaches to the handling of the money, not to whether the transaction eventually completed. A deal that closes perfectly does not retrospectively fix a deposit that sat for a week.
Do not accept a deposit you cannot deliver. If you are about to be away, say so and arrange for it to go directly to the broker or the title company instead. Taking it to be accommodating and then missing the deadline helps nobody.
The realistic ways this goes wrong
Almost none of them involve dishonesty.
An agent takes a cheque at a Saturday showing and puts it in a folder. A buyer hands over a deposit at a closing table for a different property. A cheque arrives in the post at a branch office and nobody tells the broker. An agent goes on holiday on the Friday and the deposit goes with them in a bag.
The pattern is always the same: the money is not stolen, it is simply not moved. Which is why the practical protection is a habit rather than a policy. Deliver it the same day if you possibly can, and tell your broker in writing that it is coming, so there is a record of when it arrived with you and when you passed it on.
What to ask your brokerage
Firms handle this differently and the answer should be part of your onboarding rather than something you work out during your first contract.
- Who normally holds deposits here, the brokerage or the title company?
- If a deposit is handed to me physically, exactly who do I give it to, and what do I do if they are not in?
- Is there a receipt or a log I should be completing?
- What is the process if a client wants to deposit electronically instead?
A firm with a clear procedure answers all four immediately. That is a small but genuine signal about how the rest of its compliance runs, and it belongs alongside the other questions in the list worth asking before joining. If something does go wrong, the process that follows is in what happens if a complaint is filed against you with FREC.
Why the rules are this strict
Worth understanding rather than just memorising, because it makes the rule easier to respect.
An earnest money deposit is somebody else's money, held by a person they have known for a fortnight, at a moment when they are already anxious about the largest purchase of their life. The entire licensing framework treats client funds as the point where public trust is most exposed, which is why the deadlines are short, the permitted destinations are named in the statute, and the consequences of getting it wrong are disproportionate to the sums involved.
It is also the one area where a well-meaning new agent can cause real harm without ever intending anything. That is exactly why it is worth being slightly obsessive about.
The honest bottom line
End of the next business day to your broker. Three business days from your broker into escrow. Weekends and legal holidays do not count, which makes a Friday deposit the one to watch rather than the easy one.
If a deposit is ever in your hands, treat it as something to move immediately rather than something to keep safe, and put in writing when you received it and when you handed it on.
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