Buying before it exists.

New-development purchases in Miami-Dade follow a different mechanism from resale. You are buying from a developer's contract rather than a homeowner's, on a deposit schedule that typically stages payments through construction, against a delivery date that is a projection. The unit you tour is a rendering and a model, and the finishes you are shown are a specification you should read rather than a promise you can assume.

The things worth scrutinising before signing are consistent: the deposit structure and what protects your money at each stage, what the developer may substitute and on what notice, how the association is funded in the first years before reserves have built, and what the contract says about delays and about your ability to assign or resell before closing. Those clauses vary considerably between projects and they are where the real difference between two similar-looking buildings sits.

Jonathan represents buyers through that process: reading the contract, comparing it against what other projects on the same stretch are offering, and holding the developer to what was agreed at delivery. Developer sales staff work for the developer; on a pre-construction purchase, having someone on your side of the table costs the buyer nothing.