Selling a Florida condo as a Canadian

The withholding is calculated on what the property sells for, not on what you made. A Canadian selling a $700,000 condo bought for $650,000 can watch a five-figure sum leave the closing table on a $50,000 gain, and wait a year to get most of it back. That outcome is avoidable, but only by acting before the closing, not after it.

Published September 6, 2026

Canadians are the largest single group of international sellers in Florida, and the sale is where the cross-border rules bite hardest. This page is the sequence in the order it actually happens. Everything here is US federal law: it reads the same for an Ontario seller and a Québec seller, and the same in Miami as in Naples.

1. It is withheld on the price, and that is the whole problem

FIRPTA withholding is computed on the amount realized — the cash paid, the fair market value of anything transferred, and any liabilities assumed by the buyer. For an ordinary condo sale that is simply the price.

Nothing in that calculation knows what you paid. A seller with a modest gain and a seller with an enormous one are withheld on identically, and the seller with the modest gain is the one who feels it, because the withholding can exceed the entire tax owed several times over. The excess is recoverable — by filing a US return for the year and claiming it back — but that is a refund cycle, not a closing.

2. The two reductions, and the condition both depend on

There are two lower tiers, and both hang on the same thing: what the buyer intends to do with the property. This is not within your control, which is why it belongs in the negotiation rather than in the paperwork at the end.

• No withholding where one or more individuals acquire the property for use as a residence and the amount realized is $300,000 or less.
• 10% instead of 15% where the property is acquired by the buyer for use as a residence and the amount realized is $1 million or less.
• 15% otherwise — including any sale above $1 million, regardless of residential use.

The residence condition is stricter than "they say they will live there". The buyer or a member of their family must have definite plans to reside at the property for at least half the number of days the property is used by any person during each of the first two twelve-month periods after the transfer. Days the property sits vacant are left out of that count. The buyer must be an individual rather than an entity, and there are notification requirements to satisfy.

3. The certificate, which only works beforehand

The route that actually fixes an over-withholding is a withholding certificate: an application to the IRS, made on the basis that the withholding would exceed the tax you will actually owe, asking for a reduced amount. The IRS lists a withholding certificate among the exceptions to normal FIRPTA withholding.

The timing is the entire point. A certificate application is a pre-closing instrument. Once the funds have been withheld and remitted, the mechanism available to you is a return and a refund, and that takes a filing season. The difference between the two paths is months of your own money.

This is a cross-border accountant's filing, not a real estate agent's, and it is the single strongest argument for assembling the professional side of a Canadian sale before the unit goes on the market rather than after it goes under contract.

4. Then there is the building, and it decides more than you think

Everything above is the money side, and it runs in parallel with a sale that has to survive an inspection period. Since Florida rewrote its condominium law after Surfside, a buyer's lender, attorney and inspector all look at your association before they look at your unit — the reserve study, the milestone inspection, and any assessment that has been discussed but not yet levied.

A Canadian seller is usually further from those documents than a resident owner, and often a time zone and a season away from the board. Getting them in hand early matters more here, not less.

• What actually decides a Miami condo sale — the full seller sequence
• What is in your board minutes — read them the way your buyer will
• The reserve study and the milestone inspection
• Seller net proceeds calculator — run your own numbers

5. The same page in French, and the rest of the cluster

This material has been on the site in French since August, written for Québec sellers and covering ground this page deliberately does not repeat — the Canadian side of the gain, the reporting position at home, and US estate exposure.

• La retenue FIRPTA, expliquée — les 15 % et les deux seuils
• Le certificat de retenue — réduire la retenue avant la clôture
• Le gain en capital des deux côtés de la frontière
• The whole Canadian cluster, in both languages

What this page does not cover

It does not cover the Canadian side of the sale — the capital gain as Canada computes it, the foreign tax credit, or the reporting obligations that attach to a foreign property. Those are CRA and, for Québec residents, Revenu Québec questions, and the French cluster covers them with the authorities cited.

It does not cover US estate tax exposure for a Canadian owner, which is a different regime with its own thresholds and a treaty position, and which belongs with a cross-border tax adviser rather than in a summary here.

And it names no rate for depreciation recapture, which affects any unit that was let out. That figure and its interaction with your basis is an accountant's computation, and this page will not estimate it for you.