Miami Real Estate: 10 Things to Check Before Buying a Condo

Start With the Building, Not the Residence

How many residences share the building? How many elevators serve them? How does security work, and what does arrival actually feel like, valet only or a space you park in yourself?

Then ask about the owner mix. Full time residents, second homeowners, long term renters, short term guests: a building weighted toward any one of those behaves differently from the others, and the difference shows up in the lobby at six on a Friday. None of these is the wrong answer. They are just different buildings, and you want the one that matches how you intend to use the place.

A beautiful building can still be completely wrong for the way you want to live. I would rather put a client in a plain unit inside a well run building than in a spectacular unit inside a badly run one, and I will say that out loud during a showing. Finishes you can change in eight weeks. The way four hundred neighbors use two elevators, you cannot.

I would rather put a client in a plain unit inside a well run building than in a spectacular unit inside a badly run one.

Paula Aragone

The four questions that sort buildings fastest

Ask the listing agent how many units are owner occupied, what the minimum lease term is, whether the building has completed its milestone inspection, and what the association's reserve position looks like. An agent who can answer all four from memory is representing a well run building. An agent who has to go and ask is telling you something too, and it is usually worth waiting for the written answer rather than the verbal one.

The Hallway Nobody Markets

Luxury is not only how a building looks. It is how well it operates: staffing, maintenance, security, traffic and noise.

Then walk the hallway.

There is no photograph of it in the brochure and no mention of it in the listing remarks, which is exactly why it earns two minutes of your attention. How quiet is it? How many doors share your floor? Is there a private elevator landing, or a common corridor where every arrival on the floor walks past your door? The hallway tells you things the model residence never will, and it costs nothing to look.

While you are there, look up and look down. Stained ceiling tiles mean water has come through at some point. Carpet that has been patched rather than replaced means the association is deferring cosmetic work, which raises a fair question about what else is being deferred.

The Floor Plan Before the Finishes

Where do your eyes go when you walk in? How much of the square footage is circulation you are paying for and will never use? Are the bedrooms private enough that a houseguest is not crossing your living room at seven in the morning?

Furniture is the honest test. Take the floor plan and put a real sofa and a real dining table on it, at the dimensions of the ones you actually own, not the undersized pieces the staging company brought in to make the room photograph larger. A model residence is designed to photograph beautifully. What matters is whether it still works once it becomes your actual life, with coats, groceries, beach equipment and a suitcase that has to live somewhere between trips.

A Beautiful View and a Protected View Are Not the Same Thing

Can anything be built in front of you? That question has an answer, and it lives in the zoning on whatever parcel sits between you and the water. It does not live in the sales office.

Then there is orientation. West light in Miami is not the same proposition as west light in Laguna Beach. It arrives hot and it arrives late, and it decides whether your terrace is usable at six in the evening from May through September. Sun, heat, wind and noise all follow from which way the building faces, and none of them are visible in a photograph taken at ten in the morning.

If the view is the reason you are buying, and for plenty of Miami buyers it honestly is, then protecting it is worth an afternoon of research before you write the offer rather than a lawsuit after someone breaks ground.

The Rooms Where Buyers Get It Wrong

Look past the brand names on the appliances. Is there storage for the way you actually cook? Can two people work in that kitchen at the same time without one of them standing in a doorway? Will the finishes still read as current in ten years, or are they going to date this unit the way the last cycle's finishes dated the one before it?

In the primary suite the question is simpler than people expect: could you live in this room for three months? Where does the luggage go? Where do two people's clothes go when neither of you is travelling? A suite that works beautifully for a long weekend can be miserable by week six, and nobody discovers that at a showing.

The Terrace Test

Square footage on a floor plan is not enough. A terrace that measures well on paper can still be unusable in practice.

Is it deep enough to seat a table and still walk behind the chairs? Is it private, or does the neighbouring terrace look straight into yours? Is it sheltered enough that the wind is not taking the umbrella at four in the afternoon? On a high floor the wind is a real constraint, and it is the thing buyers forget to test, because showings tend to get scheduled for the calm part of the day.

What the Seller Must Hand You, in Writing

This is the part of a Miami purchase that buyers from California tend to underestimate, and it is the part where Florida law is most clearly on your side.

Under section 718.503 of the Florida Statutes, a buyer who has signed a contract for a resale condominium unit is entitled, at the seller's expense, to a current copy of a specific list of documents [1]. That list is not a courtesy and it is not negotiable. It includes the declaration of condominium, the articles of incorporation, the bylaws and rules, an annual financial statement and annual budget, the inspector-prepared summary of the milestone inspection report where one applies, the association's most recent structural integrity reserve study or a statement that it has not completed one, and the question and answer sheet the association is required to maintain.

Read that list again, because two entries on it did not exist before the 2022 reforms. The milestone summary and the reserve study are the two documents that tell you what the building is going to cost you in the years ahead, and Florida now puts them in a buyer's hands by default.

There is a consequence attached to all this. Section 718.503 gives a resale buyer a contract that is voidable by written notice within seven days, excluding weekends and legal holidays, after the buyer signs [1]. A contract that does not meet the section's requirements is voidable at the purchaser's option before closing. Ask for the documents the day you go under contract, not the week before you close, because the clock and the room to negotiate both run early.

Milestone Inspections, Reserves and the Miami-Dade Clock

Three separate rules govern the physical condition of a Miami condominium building, and buyers routinely confuse them. They are worth separating, because each one produces a different document and a different cost.

The milestone inspection

Florida requires an owner of a building that is three habitable stories or more in height, and subject to the condominium form of ownership, to have a milestone inspection performed by December 31 of the year the building reaches 30 years of age, and every 10 years after that [2]. A local enforcement agency may decide that local circumstances, including proximity to salt water, require that inspection at 25 years instead. Phase one is a visual examination by a licensed architect or engineer. Phase two is only triggered if phase one finds substantial structural deterioration, and it can involve destructive testing. Within 45 days of receiving the report, the association must distribute the inspector-prepared summary to every unit owner.

The structural integrity reserve study

Separately, a residential condominium association must have a structural integrity reserve study completed at least every 10 years for each building of three habitable stories or higher [3]. The study has to cover the roof, the load-bearing structure, fire protection equipment and fireproofing, plumbing, electrical systems, waterproofing and exterior coatings, windows and exterior doors, and any other item whose deferred maintenance or replacement cost exceeds twenty five thousand dollars and whose neglect would damage the items above. Associations in existence on or before July 2022 and controlled by unit owners were required to complete the study by December 31 2025, and the statute states that in no event may it be completed after December 31 2026.

Here is the part that changes the arithmetic for a buyer. For budgets adopted on or after December 31 2024, the members of a unit owner controlled association that must obtain a reserve study may no longer vote to provide no reserves, or less reserves than required, for the components covered by that study [3]. The old habit of voting reserves down to keep monthly dues artificially low has been closed off for exactly the items that cost the most to replace.

Miami-Dade recertification, which is a separate obligation

On top of the state rules, Miami-Dade County runs its own building recertification program. Recertification begins at 30 years and repeats at every 10 year interval thereafter for the life of the structure, and the county applies a 25 year trigger to condominium and cooperative buildings of three stories or taller, built on or after 1998 and within three miles of the coastline [4]. The report must certify that the building is structurally and electrically safe for continued occupancy, and the electrical side requires infrared thermography on systems operating at 400 amperes or greater.

Non-compliance is not abstract. The county states that a citation is issued without further notice, with an initial penalty of five hundred and ten dollars, accumulated penalties of up to ten thousand dollars per violation where the violation is not corrected, and the possibility of a lien [4]. Many buyers hear the phrase forty year recertification from older articles. In Miami-Dade the current program is built around 30 years, and 25 for those coastal buildings, so check the county record rather than the folklore.

What the Place Actually Costs to Hold

Amenities sell buildings. They also have to be staffed, insured, cleaned and heated, and all of that arrives in your monthly dues whether or not you ever use the spa. A longer amenity list is not automatically better. Focus on the two or three things you will genuinely use and treat everything else as a line item you are subsidising.

Then do the arithmetic properly. The purchase price is the number everyone negotiates for weeks. The carrying cost is the number that decides whether you still want the place in year four.

That last row is worth its own homework. We wrote a whole piece on the rules to check before you count on renting a Miami condo, because buyers regularly build a rental assumption into their budget that the building's documents do not actually permit.

The Red Flags That Cost the Most

The expensive problems are rarely visible at a showing. They live in the paperwork and in the way the building answers questions.

An amenity list far longer than what owners actually use

Every amenity is staffed and insured out of your dues. A building with a spa nobody books and a theatre nobody watches is charging four hundred households for two hobbies.

An owner mix that has quietly shifted toward short term guests

This changes the lobby, the elevators, the parking and the wear on everything. It also changes who votes on your assessments, because an investor owner and a resident owner want different things from a budget.

An association that cannot produce its own paperwork

You are entitled to the budget, the reserve study, the insurance certificate and the milestone summary. A building that needs a week to find documents it is legally required to maintain is telling you how it handles everything else.

Low dues with no completed reserve study

Covered above, and worth repeating because it is the single most common trap for a buyer coming from a market where reserves are not a statutory concept.

A phase two inspection with no scheduled repair

Phase one finding nothing is good news. Phase two finding something and the association having no funded plan is the opposite, and it is the clearest signal to walk that exists in this market.

The Ten Checks, in Order

1. Size up the building itself: how many residences share it and how many elevators serve them.
2. Establish the owner mix, and whether short term guests are part of daily life there.
3. Judge the operation rather than the decor: staffing, maintenance, cleanliness, security, arrival, noise and traffic at peak hours.
4. Walk the hallway on your actual floor and listen.
5. Test the floor plan with real furniture dimensions before you react to the finishes.
6. Find out what can be built in front of you, and which way the unit faces.
7. Pressure test the kitchen and the primary suite against three months of living, not a weekend.
8. Measure the terrace for depth, privacy, shade and wind, at the hour you would actually use it.
9. Request the full statutory document package the day you go under contract, and read the reserve study before anything else in it.
10. Build the full carrying cost in writing, every line of the table above, before your contingency period ends.

Doing This From Orange County

Most of the people we do this for are not leaving Orange County. They are adding Miami to it, usually with a Newport Coast or Corona del Mar house staying in the family and a Florida condo carrying the winters. The same conversation comes up with Laguna Beach sellers who want some of that equity working somewhere warmer without giving up the coast they already have.

The sequencing matters more than the search does. How the California sale funds the Florida purchase, what you can qualify for while carrying both, how long you are prepared to own two properties if a closing slips: those are the questions that decide whether this goes smoothly. I have seen it work both ways, buying first and selling first, and the right order depends on your financing and your tolerance for overlap rather than on a rule.

One practical note for California owners. Florida condominium documents are longer and more consequential than the disclosure package you are used to, and the seven day voidability window runs on business days from signature. Put a reminder in your calendar the day you go under contract, because nobody else will.

If you want a sense of what the money does in each market before you go any further, we put the two side by side in what two million dollars actually buys in Miami compared with Orange County.

Your Pre-Offer Checklist

Print this, or send it to whoever is touring with you.

• Unit count, elevator count, parking arrangement and storage confirmed
• Owner occupancy percentage and minimum lease term confirmed in writing
• Hallway and elevator lobby walked on the actual floor, at a busy hour
• Floor plan tested against your real furniture dimensions
• Zoning checked on any parcel between the unit and the view
• Terrace measured for depth and tested for wind
• Full section 718.503 document package requested in writing
• Milestone inspection summary read, including whether phase two was triggered
• Structural integrity reserve study read, with the roof and waterproofing lines noted
• Miami-Dade recertification status checked against the county record
• Three years of dues history obtained
• Insurance quoted for your own unit, not estimated
• Any pending or voted special assessment identified in writing
• Full monthly carrying cost written down and compared against your budget