Buying a condo in Miami is not hard. It is just done in an order, and most of the trouble people have here comes from doing the steps out of order: falling for a view before the budget is real, signing before the documents are read, choosing a building before choosing a life.
This page walks the process from the first search to the keys, in the order it actually happens. It covers both a finished condo and a new building still under construction, because the steps are the same and the timing is not. Contact the desk at Miami Dossier for the current position on any building we cover.
The first decision is not the building. It is how you will use the place. Full time, or winters, or a few weeks a year. Alone, or with children in school, or with parents who visit. On the ocean because you swim every morning, or on the bay because you like to walk to dinner. Every one of those answers removes half the buildings in the city, which is the point.
Then the money, honestly. What you can put down, what you are comfortable carrying every month once the association fee, the property tax and the insurance are added to any mortgage, and whether the money is in cash now or arrives later from a sale. Miami is a market where the monthly cost of owning is a real number, and it is the number that decides whether a building fits, not the price on the listing.
Get those two things straight and the search becomes short. Skip them and it becomes a year of open houses.
Miami Beach is not Brickell, Brickell is not Coconut Grove, and Sunny Isles is not any of them. Each zone has its own water, its own walk, its own school picture and its own kind of building. Choosing the zone first, on the way you want to live, is the single decision that makes everything after it easier.
The zones are laid out one by one on this site, each with what is there, what is being built and who tends to buy. Read three. Walk two. Then the building conversation is about a handful of towers instead of a hundred.
A finished condo is bought the way a house is bought anywhere: an offer, a contract, an inspection, a closing in a matter of weeks. A new building is bought before it exists: a reservation, a contract with the developer, deposits paid in stages through construction, and a closing when the building is finished, which is usually years away.
Neither is better. A finished condo is certain and immediate, and you buy what is there. A new building is a brand new residence at a price fixed today, delivered later, and you buy what the developer states it will be. The desk covers the new buildings in detail because that is where a buyer most needs someone reading the documents, but it will tell you plainly when a finished condo is the better answer to your brief.
On a new condominium Florida gives the buyer fifteen days after signing and receiving the condominium documents to cancel without penalty. On a resale in a building with more than a handful of units the window is three business days. Those days are for a Florida real estate attorney to read the documents: the budget, the rules, the reserves, the pending assessments and, in a new building, the developer’s purchase agreement. They are not for admiring the view again.
Deposits on a new building are staged through construction and held in escrow, with the portion above ten per cent releasable to the developer for construction if the contract allows it. The schedule is set by the developer for each release and it changes, which is why it is quoted on request and never printed. On a finished condo the deposit is smaller and the closing is near.
Closing costs in Florida are modest by the standards of most places buyers come from. There is no state income tax. Property tax is assessed each year on the county’s value and is capped in its annual rise once the home is your homestead. The association fee is the number to read hardest, because it carries the building’s insurance and reserves, and since the 2021 reforms it carries more than it used to.
The desk at Miami Dossier is a licensed Florida brokerage that covers the new buildings across the city and keeps the current position on each: what is available, on what terms, with what schedule and what documents. It reads the developer’s material so that you do not have to take the gallery’s word for it, and it works as your broker, paid by the developer at closing the same as any broker, so there is no fee to you.
Bring the desk the life and the number from the first section. It comes back the same day with the zones that fit, the buildings in them that fit, and the current position on each. The choosing is yours. The reading is ours.
This is the desk at Miami Dossier, a real estate desk covering the Miami market. It reads the developer’s documents, keeps the current position on every new building it covers, and puts the buildings that fit a brief in front of you the same day.
A private report on the Miami market, sent when there is something worth knowing. No noise, no listings, no pressure.
Received. A note from the desk is on its way. If it has not arrived within a few minutes, please check your spam folder and mark it as not spam, so we can reach you.
Nothing on this page is legal, tax or investment advice, and the rules above are the general Florida position, not your position. Contact the desk at Miami Dossier and we will go through the buildings that fit, the current position on each and what the next step actually is. Where a question is legal, tax or immigration, we introduce you to advisers who handle that properly rather than answering it ourselves.
