The headline number and the money you can actually spend are two different figures.
This page is about the gap between the sale price and the cash. What a specific developer will agree to on dates is not published anywhere. Contact the desk at Miami Dossier for the current position on any building we cover.
Very few business sales pay in full at closing. A portion is commonly held in escrow against warranty claims for a year or two. A further portion may be tied to performance after the sale. Some sellers stay on and are paid across several years.
So the figure in the announcement and the figure available for a deposit schedule are rarely the same, and the gap is measured in years rather than weeks.
A Miami preconstruction contract also pays across years. The work is checking that the two calendars survive contact with each other.
The holdback. A slice of the price sits in escrow against claims, typically released after a set period. It is usually paid, but it is not available in the meantime and it is not guaranteed.
The performance portion. Where part of the price depends on results after the sale, that money is both later and uncertain. Planning a fixed obligation against it is the most common error in this whole situation.
The instalments. Where the price is paid over years, the schedule is in the sale agreement and it does not flex because a deposit is due.
The useful exercise is short. Write out what arrives, and when, at the confidence level of each piece. Only the certain money should be matched against contractual dates.
A preconstruction purchase pays a piece at contract, a piece at groundbreaking, a piece at one or more construction milestones, and the balance at closing.
Those dates are negotiable before signing and fixed afterward. On a larger unit in a building still selling, there is usually room to move a date or attach it to a different construction milestone.
Almost nobody asks. Where sale proceeds arrive in tranches with different levels of certainty, that conversation is worth more than any discount on the price.
Most large Miami towers deliver later than first announced, with slippage of ~12 to 24 months common rather than exceptional.
A payment tied to a construction milestone moves when the building moves. A payment tied to a calendar date does not. For a seller whose own money is arriving on someone else’s schedule, that difference is the whole exposure.
The final and largest payment falls at closing, which follows the certificate of occupancy. Anything timed to that date has to tolerate the date changing.
Proceeds often land in a holding entity, a trust, or personally, depending on how the sale was structured. Which one buys the property changes liability, estate treatment, disclosure at closing, and how borrowing works.
This is decided with counsel rather than by preference, and the right answer varies enough that a general one is worth nothing.
It is also worth settling early, because the entity decision and any borrowing decision are effectively the same decision, and doing them in the wrong order costs money.
Where a meaningful part of the price depends on performance after the sale, a contract with fixed deposit dates converts a good outcome into an obligation that has to be carried through a poor one.
Resale removes that completely: one payment, an apartment that exists today, a higher price per foot, no calendar to manage.
And there is no cost to waiting until the holdback releases. The money will still be there. A signed contract is much harder to undo.
The mistake is almost never the building. It is committing to fixed dates against money that has not cleared its conditions yet. Contact the desk at Miami Dossier and we will tell you what a specific developer has actually agreed to on deposit timing, including when the answer is that they will not move. Where a question is legal, tax or compliance, we introduce you to advisers who handle that properly rather than answering it ourselves.
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Nothing here is advice on a sale, a structure, or what to do with proceeds, and nothing here says to buy. It describes how two payment calendars interact so the question gets asked while it can still be answered. Contact the desk at Miami Dossier for the current position on any building we cover. Where a question is legal, tax or compliance, we introduce you to advisers who handle that properly rather than answering it ourselves.
