Florida inspects the building before it reads the application.

Most guides to the Florida dealer license hand you a list of forms. The forms are not what stops people. What stops people is the order: in Florida the state looks at your premises first, and FLHSMV says in its own application booklet that it recommends you do not sign a lease until the site has been approved.

Plenty of new dealers find that out after the lease is signed.

This page is the VI licence, the Independent Motor Vehicle Dealer licence under section 320.27 of the Florida Statutes, which is the basic licence for buying and selling used vehicles in Florida. Everything below comes from FLHSMV's own pages and forms, listed at the bottom. Where FLHSMV does not publish a figure, this page says so instead of guessing.

The three-car line

FLHSMV states the threshold plainly: an entity dealing in three or more motor vehicles within any 12-month period needs a dealer licence. Two in a rolling year is the most you can do without one, and the window rolls, so it is not a calendar-year allowance you get back every January.

That is a lower bar than most states. If you are flipping at all seriously in Florida, the licence question arrives early.

The site visit comes first

This is the part that makes Florida different from Texas, and the part worth planning around.

The location must be approved by a Division of Motorist Services representative before the application is submitted. The first step FLHSMV lists is to find your nearest compliance examiner by county, under Motorist Services Regional Offices, and the booklet repeats twice that it is recommended you do not sign a lease until the site has been approved by the department.

So the sequence that works is: find the site, get the examiner to look at it, then sign, then apply. The sequence that costs money is the obvious one.

The office

FLHSMV reproduces Florida Administrative Code 15C-7.003 in the application booklet. The office rules:

• Not a residence. "No office shall be operated from or maintained in any residence"
• A permanent structure at the licensed location
• At least 100 square feet of interior floor space, "exclusive of any hallways, closets or restrooms"
• A ceiling at least seven feet high
• Clearly separated from any other business operating in the same structure or building
• A real postal address assigned by the United States Postal Service. Address changes have to be reported, and a relocation needs approval before you move

One more line that catches people running the dealership alongside something else: the dealership "must be the principal business conducted at the licensed location". A desk in the corner of a repair shop is not the arrangement the rule describes.

The display space

Florida does not name a number of cars. It describes a standard instead, and the standard is stricter than it first sounds.

• Big enough to store and display every vehicle you offer for sale
• Yours exclusively. It may not include customer, employee or public parking, and no part of a public right-of-way
• Indoors is allowed. The rule says the display space "may be located within a building"
• Contiguous to the office, or situated so as to allow easy access
• Immediate and direct access to a public street or highway, or on property you own or lease where public access has been granted
• A permanent barrier no less than three feet in height where your display space sits next to another dealer's

The exclusivity clause is the one that fails inspections. A strip of a shared plaza lot that customers of the other units park in is not display space, however many cars fit on it.

The sign and the posted hours

A permanent sign identifying the dealership at its place of business, with lettering or graphics "visible and readable at a distance of 50 yards from the public right-of-way serving the dealership". Fifty yards is 150 feet, which is a larger sign than most people picture.

Hours of operation have to be posted at or near the main entrance on a placard or sign, and maintained. Unlike Texas, FLHSMV does not publish a minimum number of hours or days you must be open. It requires that you post hours and then keep them.

The bond and the insurance

Two separate requirements, and the insurance one is where Florida asks for more than most states.

Requirement	Published figure
Surety bond, form HSMV 86020	$25,000, original document, state wording
Or an irrevocable letter of credit, form HSMV 86057	$25,000, from a Florida bank
Garage liability, combined single-limit	$25,000, bodily injury and property damage
Personal injury protection	$10,000

Independent, auction and wholesale applicants may use a general liability policy coupled with a business automobile policy instead of a garage liability certificate, at the same minimums. Whichever you use, the certificate has to state the number of dealer licence plates the insurer authorises for the dealership.

The bond itself must be on the state's form or carry the exact language of it, and the original has to be submitted. A copy will not do.

The course

A pre-licensing dealer training course from an FLHSMV-approved dealer training school is required for every licence category, and the certificate of completion goes in with the application.

The Dealer FAQ puts the VI course at 16 hours, alongside VA, VW and SD, with franchise dealers at eight. The dealer training school page describes the same requirement as a statutory cap instead: up to eight hours for required FLHSMV topics, plus up to 24 additional hours for topics relating to other regulatory agencies. The two pages are not reconciled, so 16 hours is the figure to plan around and the FAQ is where it comes from.

Content is specified: titling and registration, laws on unfair and deceptive trade practices, laws on buy-here pay-here financing, and other information that promotes good business practices. Online delivery exists as a category on the approved-school list.

There is an exemption. An applicant who has held a valid motor vehicle dealer licence continuously within the past two years and is in good standing does not have to repeat the course, under section 320.27(4)(b).

What you will actually pay FLHSMV

Line	Published figure
Application fee, main location	$300
Each additional location	$50
Electronic fingerprinting	$54.25 per person
Surety bond premium	A percentage of $25,000, set by your credit
Pre-licensing course	Set by the school, not published by FLHSMV

Fingerprints are required for all officers of the dealership, through a Florida Department of Law Enforcement approved provider, and the results are retained for six months only. Apply well inside that window or you pay to be printed twice.

What FLHSMV does not publish

Five things other guides state confidently and FLHSMV's own pages do not:

• The licence term. No expiry date, licence year or renewal cadence appears on the pages checked
• The renewal fee
• How long the application takes to process. The booklet says only that your application "will be graded and processed" by the regional office
• Whether the pre-licensing course ends in an exam, and any passing score
• How long the course completion certificate stays valid

If a page gives you a confident number for any of those, check where it came from before you budget on it.

Before the licence arrives

Four things that are not FLHSMV paperwork but have to exist first:

• A federal employer identification number from the IRS
• A sales tax number from the Florida Department of Revenue
• Registration of the business entity, and the fictitious name if you use one, with the Florida Division of Corporations
• Local zoning and occupational licence requirements, which the application makes you certify you have met

And one rule worth reading twice: you are not allowed to conduct business until you have the licence in hand. Licences are also not transferable, so buying an existing lot does not mean buying its licence.

What this costs you before the first car

Using only the figures FLHSMV publishes, the state's share is small: $300, plus $54.25 a head for fingerprints, plus the bond premium and the course. Rent and the sign are the real numbers, and both are local.

Which is the part most new dealers get wrong. The licence is a fixed cost you pay once. The money is decided car by car, by costs that arrive one receipt at a time and are almost never all written down. What a good gross profit per car looks like works through why the headline figure overstates what a small lot actually keeps, and Deelary keeps every cost on the car it belongs to, so the margin on screen is the margin you bank.

Comparing states? Dealer license requirements by state puts the bond, the office, the sign and the course side by side. The Texas GDN requirements cover a state where the bond is twice as large and a minimum number of open hours is published, and the California rules cover the one state with an exam you can fail. How to get a dealer license sets several states side by side, and do you need a dealer license to flip cars covers the threshold question first.