
Houses along a canal
Matt Strickland is a retired Navy officer, a Florida broker, and the owner of Military Realty of Florida. He is also a Florida registered building contractor. The file stays in this office. It does not get handed to a call center that pastes a local phone number on a national script.
This page is how a PCS purchase actually runs here: who does what, what the contractor license is for, and what the transaction coordinator keeps on the calendar. The base comparison and the week-by-week countdown are other pages. Call (904) 309-0609 and start with the report date.
You can work with Matt directly. He is the broker. If another agent in the office is the better fit for the file, he will say so, and the file still does not leave the shop. A lender is a separate company. The transportation office is a separate office. We do not issue the Certificate of Eligibility and we do not book the moving truck.
Once you are under contract, a transaction coordinator tracks the dates so you are not the person chasing title from the ship. Matt still owns the advice. The coordinator owns the inside of the file: which deadline is Tuesday, which document the lender still wants, and whether the estoppel has actually been ordered. Call (904) 309-0609 if you want a name on the file before you tour.
A lot of the inventory around the gates is an older ranch, a flood-zone lot, or a roof that a VA appraiser will not ignore. Matt reads that house the way a registered building contractor reads it: roof, HVAC, electrical, moisture, wind mitigation. Then he runs the contract the way a broker runs it. The license is not a hobby line on a bio.
He is not your repair contractor on your own purchase. The point of the license in this office is to tell a real defect from a scary sentence in an inspection report, and to tell a VA minimum property issue from a wish list. You still hire the inspector. You still hire the trades if you agree to repairs. We do not pull a permit and swing a hammer on the house you are buying from us.
Florida contract dates are hard dates. The inspection period ends when it ends. The financing deadline ends when it ends. Closing is a day on a calendar, not a mood. The coordinator puts those dates where the agent and the client can both see them, and follows title, the lender conditions, the HOA or condo estoppel, and the walkthrough.
You should get a plain update, not a portal you have to decode at midnight. If a survey, a payoff, or an insurance binder is the thing holding the file, you hear that early. If you are already at the next command and the only phone you answer is a duty phone, say so. We build the check-in around that. The number is (904) 309-0609.
The first call is orders, report date, which gate, who is moving, pets, and whether you have to buy or can rent for a year. Send the ZIP you think you want. Matt will tell you if that ZIP is the wrong side of the river for the command before you burn a Saturday on it. The gate map is its own page. We do not re-teach it on every purchase call.
Next is a Certificate of Eligibility, requested on VA.gov or through the lender, and a pre-approval from that lender. The COE shows entitlement. The pre-approval is the lender saying what they will actually lend. We do not write either document. Full VA entitlement has no VA-set county cap. If entitlement is partial because another VA loan is still open, the math uses the 2026 FHFA one-unit conforming limit for Duval, Clay, St. Johns, and Nassau, which is $832,750, not an FHA limit. Ask the lender to run your numbers. Do not let a blog invent the leftover entitlement.
Then a short list, a live look, an offer written so a VA appraisal and a repair request will not surprise you, and a closing. Homestead is not a form at the closing table. You own and occupy on January 1, then you file. If your dates do not hit January 1, we will not pretend the exemption starts at the walkthrough.
If you are still at the old duty station, the showing is a live walkthrough. We are on a video call. You see the panel, the street, and the roof from the yard. A polished listing video is marketing. It will not show you the ditch or the age of the electrical. You can write the offer from out of state. You do not skip the home inspection because of that.
The VA appraisal is the lender's valuation, and it checks VA minimum property requirements. Tidewater is the notice when that value may come in short. The home inspection is your look at the house under the contract. Those are different appointments. Do not merge them. On occupancy, a VA buyer generally certifies an intent to occupy within 60 days. Active-duty PCS timing has its own rules. I will not invent a 12-month waiver. The lender and the occupancy certification control.
There is no star rating on this page and no review count. There is no promised rebate percent. Homes for Heroes is a national program. Military Realty is not claiming enrollment here. Call (904) 309-0609 and ask whether that file can be run through it. If the answer is no, the answer is no.
Florida Housing Finance Corporation, at floridahousing.org, runs down-payment programs that open and close. Hometown Heroes has been one of them. Confirm the program is open before anyone counts on it. This page will not quote an income cap or a purchase-price cap. We also will not quote a mortgage rate. The lender does that on your file, on the day they do it.
Call or text (904) 309-0609. Send the orders if you have them, the COE if you have one, and the ZIP you think you want. If you have a report date, send that in the first sentence. Everything else in the file hangs off that date.
If you are selling a house you already own here, say that too. The purchase and the sale can run in one office, on two calendars, without two brokerages inventing two different closing days. Bring the payoff lender's name if you know it. We will tell you what is missing before we ask you to pick a house.
Call (904) 309-0609.