The Out-of-Market Problem
Miami attracts capital from everywhere, which is generally good for a seller's price and specifically bad for their certainty. A meaningful share of the parties who contact you after a fire have never built in this county, and two local realities catch them out consistently.
The first is the rebuild standard. Miami-Dade sits in the High-Velocity Hurricane Zone, and replacement construction has to meet it. A buyer using a national cost-per-square-foot figure has understated their own build cost, sometimes badly.
The second is the surtax. A buyer who has priced a condo or duplex transfer at the single-family rate has understated the closing costs by a wide margin, because the Miami-Dade discretionary surtax exempts only single-family dwellings.
Neither error shows up in an offer letter. Both show up three weeks later as a renegotiation.
Why Do Miami Offers Get Renegotiated So Often?
Who Is Actually Calling
Local builders and rehabbers. They know the zone, the product approval requirements and the municipal departments. Private capital and construction lending, and they price a code-compliant rebuild accurately because they do it repeatedly.
Cash acquirers. Capital held to buy in damaged condition. Balance sheet funding, title in their own name, their own timetable. Fastest, rarely highest.
Out-of-state and offshore funds. Very heavily represented here. Fast, formula-driven and inflexible, and the two errors above are theirs to make.
Contract assigners. They sign to buy and sell the contract on before closing. The question is whether the party will own your property or introduce someone who will.
Land buyers. On a detached house in an area where the lot supports substantially more, they price the dirt rather than the structure and can outbid everyone.
Three Records, Fifteen Minutes
The Official Records. The Miami-Dade Clerk of the Court and Comptroller maintains the public record of deeds and mortgages. Search the buyer's exact legal entity as grantee. A firm that buys property here has recorded deeds here, and the record also shows what they buy — a company whose entire history is detached single-family houses is not necessarily the right buyer for a burned duplex, whatever they say.
How Do I Check Whether a Miami Cash Buyer Is Real?
The licence lookup. Florida licenses real estate and construction professionals through the Department of Business and Professional Regulation, and the lookup is public. A principal buyer taking title needs no licence. A party marketing your property to others is doing something else.
The Property Appraiser. Pull your own folio record first. It confirms the parcel, the ownership, the year built, the property use classification and the assessed value. That last one matters more than usual here, because the use classification is what determines whether the surtax applies to your sale.
The Two Questions That Sort Them
Both cost nothing to ask and both are unanswerable by anyone who has not worked in this county.
"What are you assuming for the rebuild per square foot, and does that number reflect the hurricane zone?" A local builder answers immediately and explains the difference. Somebody working a national spreadsheet either does not know the zone exists or gives you a figure that is plainly too low.
"Have you allowed for the surtax on this property type?" If your property is anything other than a single-family dwelling and the answer is a pause, they have not costed the deal.
Beyond those, the usual applies. Anyone pressing you to sign before your insurer has responded is acting against your interest, and Florida binds carriers to short deadlines set out on our page covering Florida claim deadlines and disclosure rules. Anyone vague about which entity signs the contract has told you something. And anyone who has not asked when the fire happened has not thought about whether the claim is still reportable, which is the first thing a competent buyer here checks.
Where We Fit, and Where We Do Not
We buy as principal, in our own entity, with our own funds, and we take title. We do not assign contracts. Run the checks above on us — search our entity in the Official Records and see what we actually buy.
We are frequently not the right answer. On a detached house where the lot supports substantially more, a land buyer will beat us. Where the damage is contained and the structure is sound, a local rehabber can pay closer to finished value than a buyer pricing a full code-compliant rebuild. And where restoring and listing nets more than any cash offer, our written figure says so. What happens from there is on our page about how the process actually runs.
Questions About Buyers
I Have a Dozen Offers. How Do I Narrow Them?
Ask the two questions above. They eliminate most of the list in a single phone call, and what remains is worth checking in the Official Records.
Does a Buyer Need a Licence to Buy My Property?
Not to buy as a principal and take title. Marketing property on behalf of others requires a licence, and the state lookup will confirm whether a party holds one.
An Offer Arrived Within a Day of the Fire.
Common here and not automatically sinister, though speed is not the same as substance. Apply the same checks you would to an offer that arrived in week three.