A pre-construction buyer does not pay at closing. The money goes in stages, years before the keys. At Ocean House Surfside, here is the schedule and what each payment means.
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Miami pre-construction contracts typically call for staged deposits totalling 30 to 40 percent of the purchase price before closing: an initial deposit at contract, a second at groundbreaking, a third at top-off, and the balance at closing. The exact percentages and trigger events are in the purchase agreement, and they vary by developer.
Ocean House Surfside: The deposit schedule is held by the desk and read with you before contract.
Read it against the Kempinski Residences Miami Design District dossier for the nearest comparison.
Florida law requires the developer to hold buyer deposits in a segregated escrow account, separate from construction funds. The escrow agent is named in the contract. The money earns no interest for the buyer in most contracts, and it cannot be touched by the developer’s creditors while it sits there. Ask who the escrow agent is and confirm the account before the first wire.
If a buyer defaults, the contract usually lets the developer keep the deposits paid so far as liquidated damages. That means the risk grows with every stage: the contract deposit is the smallest exposure, the top-off deposit the largest. There is generally no financing contingency to fall back on, which is why buyers plan to close in cash if the loan fails.
Send me the exact deposit schedule with the trigger events, and tell me what the contract says the developer keeps if I cannot close. The desk reads the agreement with you before anything is signed.
Every deposit is a decision. Read the schedule like one.
Developer materials for Ocean House Surfside as carried on the live dossier, verified 28 Sep 2026. Compiled by the desk at Miami Dossier; figures are approximate and the developer’s.
Contact the desk at Miami Dossier for the documents behind this note, read one to one with you and your advisers.
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We hold no listings and we are not the developer. Contact the desk at Miami Dossier and we will tell you what applies to your situation, what does not, and where we would not proceed. On this topic that means the document before the opinion. Where a question is legal, tax or structuring, we introduce you to advisers who handle that properly rather than answering it ourselves.
Samuel Strauch is the owner of Metrik Real Estate. His team of agents represents buyers in Miami pre-construction.
A person replies within 24 hours, usually much sooner. On weekends, back on Monday morning.
