Miami Pre Construction Condos: 10 Things to Know Before You Sign

How Does Buying a Pre Construction Condo Work?

This is a different process from buying a finished Miami condo, which we cover in our checklist for buying a finished Miami condo. California buyers are used to familiar resale contracts. In Miami preconstruction, you are generally dealing with a developer's agreement and offering documents. Those documents can cover the deposit, construction, the developer's right to make changes, dimensions, finishes, amenities, the association budget, closing and default.

Do not treat them as paperwork you sign to reserve a residence. They define the transaction.

A client selling in Newport Coast is used to a California purchase agreement that arrives in a handful of pages with a disclosure package behind it. A Miami developer's offering package arrives as a binder. The volume is not the problem. The problem is that the parts a buyer most needs to read are rarely the parts the sales team walks them through, and nobody in that room is being paid to slow you down.

1. The 15 Day Window Is Real, and It Can Reopen

Florida condominium law gives buyers specific disclosures and cancellation rights in developer sales. Under Florida Statutes section 718.503, any contract for the sale of a residential unit has to carry a legend in conspicuous type stating that the agreement is voidable by the buyer, by delivering written notice of the intention to cancel, within 15 days after the date the buyer executes the agreement and receives all of the items the developer is required to deliver.[1]

The part most buyers miss sits in the same legend. A second 15 day window opens if the developer later delivers an amendment that materially alters or modifies the offering in a manner that is adverse to the buyer.[1] So an amendment that lands eighteen months into construction is not a formality to file away. It is a clock starting.

The legend closes by saying the buyer's right to void terminates at closing.[1] The statute also bars the developer from closing during those 15 days unless the buyer is informed of the voidability period and separately agrees to close before it expires.[1] My position on that is not neutral: an out-of-state buyer should not sign the early closing agreement. It converts the one stretch of time the law builds in for reading into a convenience for somebody else's calendar.

Know when you received the documents and when you signed. Write both dates down. Then have your Florida attorney review everything promptly, rather than in the week you are wiring the balance.

2. If It Matters, Find It in Writing

The sales gallery and the model residence are designed to help you imagine your life there. If something influences your decision, such as the view, the appliances, ceiling heights, terraces, parking, storage, amenities or rental rights, ask where it appears in the documents.

The brochure sells the dream. The documents define what you are buying.

Paula Aragone, Aragone & Associates

Florida does not leave this one to common sense. Section 718.503 requires a caveat in conspicuous type on the first page of the contract telling the buyer that oral representations cannot be relied upon as correctly stating the representations of the developer, and that for correct representations the buyer should refer to the documents.[1] That sentence is printed on page one because the legislature expected the gap between the gallery and the paperwork to be exactly where buyers get hurt.

Rental rights deserve a paragraph of their own. Buyers who plan to put the residence on a short term platform for part of the year sometimes find out after closing that the building's own rules will not allow it, and we have written separately about what actually governs renting out a Miami condo.

Before the deposit, ask the sales team to point to the page where each of these appears:

• The ceiling height for your specific floor plan, not the marketing average for the building
• Whether the parking space is deeded or merely assigned, and whether it conveys with the residence
• Whether storage is included or sold separately
• Which appliance and fixture brands are specified, and what the substitution language permits
• Whether terrace area is counted in the price per square foot you were quoted
• The building's rental rules, including any minimum lease term and any cap on leases per year
• Which amenities are delivered with your tower and which are planned for a later phase

3. Know the Deposit Schedule and Where the Money Sits

Deposits are usually paid in stages, and the structure varies from one development to another. Ask how much is due at contract, when the next payment is due, whether future deposits are tied to calendar dates or to construction milestones, and where the funds are held.

Florida Statutes section 718.202 answers that last question in a way worth understanding before you wire anything. Payments up to 10 percent of the sale price go into an escrow account held by an escrow agent.[2] Payments above 10 percent go into a special escrow account too, and the developer may not use them before closing, except for a refund to you, unless the contract provides otherwise.[2] Where the contract does provide otherwise, the developer may withdraw that money once construction of improvements has begun, and only for actual costs of construction and development.[2]

The statute then does something I wish more laws did. It names what the money may never touch: salaries, commissions or expenses of salespersons, advertising, marketing or promotional purposes, loan fees and costs, principal and interest on loans, attorney fees, accounting fees and insurance costs.[2] Your deposit above 10 percent can pay for demolition, site clearing, permit fees, impact fees, utility reservation fees and the architectural and engineering drawings.[2]

It cannot pay the person who sold you the residence.

There is a tell for all of this, and it is easy to check. Where a contract permits the developer to use the money above 10 percent for construction, section 718.202 requires a legend printed or stamped in boldfaced type on the first page, immediately above the place for your signature, saying that any payment in excess of 10 percent of the purchase price made to the developer prior to closing may be used for construction purposes by the developer.[2] Look immediately above where you sign. If that sentence is there, your later deposits are not sitting in a bank waiting for you. They are being spent.

Source: Florida Statutes section 718.202 (2026), subsections (1), (2) and (3).[2]

4. Treat the Delivery Date as an Estimate

Expected completion and projected delivery matter, but permits, inspections, weather and supply issues can all move them. If your plan is to sell the California house in March and move into the new residence in April, build in flexibility. Your relocation should not depend on a marketing estimate.

Section 718.202 defines completion of construction as the issuance of a certificate of occupancy for the entire building or improvement, or the equivalent authorization issued by the governmental body with jurisdiction.[2] That is a useful anchor to hold onto, because it is a date a public agency controls rather than a date the sales office projects.

I have watched this one play out from the Orange County side more than once. A seller in Corona del Mar lists in the spring because delivery is projected for summer. Delivery slides two quarters. Now there is a family in a short term rental with their furniture in storage. They are carrying a cost nobody put in the plan. The fix is unglamorous: do not line the two closings up nose to tail, and price the cost of a gap into the decision before you make it rather than after.

5. Ask How Square Footage Is Measured

Do not assume the number in a Miami sales presentation is calculated the way a California MLS calculates it. Ask whether it includes interior space only, exterior measurements, terraces, columns or mechanical chases, and which methodology is being used.

The difference is not academic. A residence quoted at 2,400 square feet measured to the outside face of the exterior wall is a smaller home than 2,400 square feet of air conditioned interior, and the price per square foot you are comparing across two buildings may not be measuring the same thing at all. Ask both buildings the same question and write down both answers.

6. Understand What the Developer Can Change

You are buying something that is not built yet. Ask what the documents allow the developer to modify: materials, finishes, plans, dimensions, amenities, specifications, even certain brand relationships. That does not mean they will change anything, only that you should know the flexibility before you sign.

Brand relationships deserve a closer look when the premium you are paying is attached to a name. We have written about whether branded residences in Miami are worth the premium, and the honest answer is that it depends on what the documents say happens if the brand walks away. Ask that question out loud in the sales gallery and pay attention to how precise the answer is.

This is also where the amendment rule earns its place. A change the developer is permitted to make under the contract is one thing. A change that materially alters the offering in a manner adverse to you is a change that reopens your 15 day right to cancel.[1] Those two sentences are doing very different work, and sorting out which one you are looking at is what a Florida attorney is for.

7. Read the Association Budget as a Projection

A new building has no operating history, so the first association budget is built on projected expenses. Actual costs can differ once the building is fully running. Understand what the fees include and do not assume the first number is the number forever.

Florida is unusually blunt about this. Section 718.503 requires the contract to state that figures in any budget delivered to the buyer are estimates only and that actual costs may exceed them. It then adds a clause worth reading slowly: such changes in cost do not constitute material adverse changes in the offering.[1]

Read it again, because it tells you something. A fee that lands well above the projection is not, by itself, a door the law opens for you to walk back out through. The time to be skeptical about the budget is before you sign, not after the first assessment arrives.

8. Ask About Assignment and Resale Before Closing

Completion may be years away, and life changes. Ask whether the contract can be assigned, whether the developer must approve it, whether there is a fee, whether there are restrictions on timing, and whether the developer may still be selling competing residences when you want to sell yours.

That last one is the question I would ask first. A developer still holding 40 unsold residences in your building is a competitor with deeper inventory, a staffed sales gallery, a marketing budget and no emotional attachment to the price. You would be selling one residence against all of that. If there is any real chance you will want out before closing, the assignment language is the most important paragraph in your contract, and in most contracts it is nowhere near the front.

9. Look Past Your Own Building

You are buying a position in a neighborhood. Ask what parcels surround the property, what could be developed, whether another tower could affect your view, and what has already been announced. If you are paying a premium for a view, understand what protects it.

Orange County buyers are used to a different set of rules here, and the difference matters more than it sounds. A buyer in Newport Coast or Shady Canyon is used to views protected by topography and by height restrictions that are genuinely hard to change. Much of coastal Miami is flat and zoned for height.

The lot across the street is not scenery. It is a development site that has not been developed yet.

So before you pay a view premium, find out who owns the parcels in your sight lines and what the zoning permits there. If the answer is that a 40-story building is allowed and nobody has announced one, that is a risk you can price into what you offer. If nobody will give you an answer at all, that is an answer too.

10. Is Buying a Pre Construction Condo a Good Idea?

It can be, when excitement and due diligence happen together. The biggest mistake in preconstruction is falling in love with the vision before understanding the commitment. Many buyers comparing Miami new construction condos choose the first beautiful sales gallery they walk into. The better approach is to compare projects side by side and ask whether each one fits the way you actually intend to use the property.

I have seen it work both ways. Buyers who went in early on a building that delivered close to schedule did well, and some did very well. Buyers who went in the same way on a project that slid badly and then revised its finish package had a hard few years, with very little mechanism to do anything about it. The difference was rarely luck. It was usually how much reading happened before the deposit went out.

If you do nothing else from this article, do these five things:

1. Get the complete offering package in writing, and write down the date you received it alongside the date you signed.
2. Send all of it to a Florida real estate attorney that same week, not the month before closing.
3. Ask the sales team to show you, on the page, where each thing that influenced your decision actually appears.
4. Map the deposit schedule against your own cash flow and against the sale of the California house, with a gap built in on purpose.
5. Open every amendment the day it arrives and check whether it changes anything that matters to you.

Talk to Paula Before You Sign

Paula Aragone can help you compare select Miami developments side by side, and obtain current pricing, availability and floor plans, so that you understand the differences before you register with any one project. Who you register with first can shape who is able to represent you later, which is a small administrative detail with a long tail, and it is worth a conversation before you walk into a sales gallery.

Start with the free Orange County to Miami Buyer Guide, or book a free strategy call.

This article is educational and is not legal advice. For contract interpretation, work with a Florida attorney.

We maximize value and minimize stress. Strategy is what we do.