The deposit schedule is the most negotiated and least understood part of a preconstruction contract, and it tells you more about the developer than the brochure does.
This page covers the mechanics. The schedule for a specific building comes from the desk. Contact the desk at Miami Dossier for the current position on any building we cover.
A Miami preconstruction purchase is paid in stages before you ever close. Total deposits commonly run from around 20% to around 50% of the purchase price, with the balance due at closing on delivery.
A typical structure takes an initial deposit at reservation or contract, a second at a defined interval, a third at groundbreaking or another construction milestone, and sometimes a fourth at topping off.
The important number is not the total. It is how much is due before the building is out of the ground, because that is the money at work for the longest with the least visible progress.
How the developer is financing. A developer relying on buyer deposits to fund construction needs more, earlier. One with a construction loan in place needs less. The schedule is a window into which situation you are in.
Where the project is in its cycle. Early releases often carry heavier schedules and better pricing. Later stages soften as the developer needs the sales less.
The buyer. International buyers are sometimes asked for more, on the reasoning that enforcement across borders is harder.
Market conditions. When absorption slows, schedules soften. That softening is real and it is one of the few genuinely negotiable terms.
A very heavy front-loaded schedule at a project with no visible construction financing is a signal worth taking seriously. It may be fine. It should still prompt the question of what the developer has lined up beyond your money.
A lighter schedule generally indicates a developer with financing in place and less dependence on presales. That is usually the stronger position for a buyer.
Ask what proportion falls due before groundbreaking, and ask what happens to the schedule if the delivery date moves. Delivery dates move.
The timing of the milestones, more often than the total. Moving a payment from month six to month twelve costs the developer little and helps you materially.
The total itself, in a slow release or on a difficult stack.
What is rarely negotiable is where the money sits and under what protection. That is set by Florida statute and by the escrow arrangement, and it is the more important question of the two.
That single proportion tells you more than the headline percentage. Ask the desk at Miami Dossier for the actual schedule on the building you are considering.
We hold no inventory of our own and we are not the developer. Ask the desk at Miami Dossier and we will tell you what applies to your situation, what does not, and where we would not proceed. Here that starts with the proportion due before groundbreaking. Where the question is legal, tax or immigration, we will introduce you to advisers who handle that properly rather than answering it ourselves.