A real estate contract in Florida is considered to be so important that it is required to be in writing for it to be legally binding and it must comply with the Statute of Frauds. There are limited exceptions to the writing requirement.
The Statute of Frauds requires certain contracts to be in writing and signed to be valid. See Florida Statute 725.01. The third District Court of Appeals identified the two elements of the Statute of Frauds as follows:
- “[T]he contract must be a writing signed by the party against whom enforcement is sought,” and
- “[T]he writing must contain all of the essential terms of the sale and these terms may not be explained by resort to parol evidence.” Fox v. Sails at Laguna Club Dev. Corp., 403 So. 2d 456, 458 (Fla. 3d DCA 1981).
The first limited exception to the Statute of Frauds’ writing requirement for real estate contracts is part performance. The Supreme Court of Florida, in Miller v. Murray, 68 So.2d 594, 596 (Fla. 1953), identified the elements of part performance as:
- Buyer paid all or part of the consideration;
- Buyer is in possession of the property; and
- Buyer has made improvements to the property with consent of the seller or facts exist that would make the transaction a fraud on the buyer if it was not enforced.
Part performance is only available when the buyer is seeking a remedy in equity. Part performance is not available if the remedy sought is money damages. A remedy in equity would be specific performance, which is where the buyer asks a court to force the seller to convey the property to buyer as seller had originally promised.
In addition to satisfying the elements to part performance, the buyer also must establish the existence of an oral contract by “clear, definite and certain proof.” See Miller v. Gardner, 144 Fla. 339 (1940).
The second limited exception to the Statute of Frauds’ writing requirement for real estate contracts is complete performance. If a verbal agreement has been fully performed by a party, then the verbal agreement is outside the Statute of Frauds and the Statute of Frauds cannot be used as a defense. W.B.D., Inc. v. Howard Johnson Co., 382 So.2d 1323, 1327 (Fla. 1st DCA 1980).