Deposits are paid in stages, usually at reservation, contract, groundbreaking and top-off, and the total before closing runs somewhere between ~20% and ~50% of the price depending on the project.
Written for buyers arriving from Latin America, Europe and the northern United States who are seeing a Miami deposit schedule for the first time. The desk works in English, Spanish and Portuguese. All notes from the desk.
Every Miami preconstruction contract has a deposit schedule, and it is one of the two or three documents that actually decide whether a purchase suits you. The schedule is not standardized. Each developer sets it, and the same developer can set it differently from one tower to the next. What follows is the shape almost all of them share, and how to read the one in front of you.
A Miami preconstruction deposit is not a single payment. It is spread across milestones in the life of the building. The common ones are reservation, when you hold a residence before the contract is issued; contract, when you sign the purchase agreement; groundbreaking, when construction starts; and top-off, when the structure reaches its final height. Some schedules add a stage at a set number of days after contract, and some skip groundbreaking or top-off entirely.
Between those stages the money accumulates. By the time the building is complete and you close, the total deposited is usually somewhere between ~20% and ~50% of the purchase price, and the balance is paid at closing, in cash or with a mortgage arranged in the months before delivery.
A ~20% total and a ~50% total are different products. The low end tends to appear when a developer has strong construction financing already in place and is using deposits mostly as commitment rather than as capital. The high end tends to appear when deposits are a meaningful part of how the building gets funded, or when a developer is selling to a buyer base that is comfortable with heavier deposits, which in Miami has often meant international buyers.
Neither is wrong. A higher deposit total ties up more of your capital for longer and reduces the amount you need to close. A lower total leaves you more liquid and leaves more to arrange at delivery. What matters is that the schedule fits the way you hold cash, in the currency you hold it in, over the two to four years a tower takes to build.
Florida requires that the first 10% of a preconstruction deposit be held in escrow. Deposits above that first 10% can, if the contract says so, be released to the developer and used for construction. Almost all Miami contracts say so. In practice this means that on a ~40% schedule, ~10% sits in a protected account and ~30% is working inside the project.
This is the single fact most first-time preconstruction buyers do not know when they sign. It is not a reason to avoid the market. It is the reason the identity and record of the developer matter more than the render.
Your situation is specific. Tell the desk in one message and we will say what applies to you, what does not, and who to speak with.
A deposit schedule tells you something about the sponsor before you have met them. A schedule that front-loads heavily at contract, before ground is broken, is asking for more trust than one that stages the money against visible construction progress. A schedule with a large payment at top-off is aligning your capital with a moment you can drive past and see.
The desk reads the schedule alongside two other things: what this developer has delivered before, and how their previous buildings closed. A demanding schedule from a sponsor with a long delivered record is a different proposition from the same schedule from a first-time developer. We say which is which.
A buyer in Bogotá, São Paulo or Mexico City is usually funding deposits from an account in pesos or reais and converting at each stage. The schedule fixes the dollar amounts and the timing, but the local-currency cost of each payment moves with the exchange rate over the life of the build.
Some buyers convert the full deposit total at contract and hold dollars. Some convert stage by stage. Some use the timing of stages to their advantage. This is a planning question, not a real estate question, and it belongs with your own advisers. The desk can say what other buyers from your country have done and introduce the people who handle it.
Preconstruction contracts in Miami are firm. The deposit is generally not refundable once the statutory rescission period has passed, and a buyer who cannot or does not close typically forfeits it. Contracts also usually restrict or prohibit assignment before closing, so the deposit is not easily transferred to another buyer.
Read that clause with your attorney before you sign, not after. The desk will tell you what the assignment terms are on any building we cover, and whether the developer has historically been flexible.
Ask for the schedule in writing with dates or milestone definitions. Ask how the first 10% is held and who the escrow agent is. Ask whether deposits above the first 10% are released to the developer and when. Ask what the developer has delivered, and whether those buildings closed on the original schedule. Ask what the assignment terms are. Ask what happens to your deposit if the building is delayed.
None of these are hostile questions. A serious developer answers all of them without hesitation. If they are not answered, that is also information.
We hold the actual deposit schedules for the buildings we cover. We do not publish them, because they change and because a figure without context is worse than no figure. Tell us which building, or which neighborhood, and the desk will send you the current schedule and say how it compares to the others on the market, in a message, usually the same day.
Your situation is specific. Tell the desk in one message and we will say what applies to you, what does not, and who to speak with.
This note is general information for people considering Miami, written by a real estate desk, not by a law or accounting firm. Nothing here is legal, tax, immigration or investment advice, and it is not a substitute for advice on your own circumstances. Rules change, treaties differ by country, and the right answer for one family is the wrong answer for another.
Speak with your own attorney and CPA before you commit to anything. If you do not have one who works with international buyers in Florida, the desk is glad to recommend an attorney, a CPA or an adviser suited to your situation, and to sit in the first conversation so that nothing is lost in translation.
Structure, financing, currency, timing, the right building and the right line: the desk works through these questions with international buyers every week, and the answer is nearly always that it can be done, in order, without surprises. If Miami is on your mind, as a home or as an allocation, we would be glad to share what we are seeing, privately, and to start with the question this note did not answer.