Miami pre-construction: 10/10/10/70 deposits explained

South Florida pre-construction deals commonly collect deposits in four instalments totalling around 30% of the price, with the remaining 70% due at closing. Most of those deposits are triggered by dates or contract events rather than by construction milestones, so a building running years late does not automatically delay any of your payments.

What the four payments usually are

Splits vary. Some developers take 20% at contract, some add a fourth deposit, and foreign buyers are occasionally asked for more. What is consistent is that most of the price falls at closing and the deposits come long before there is a building.

Payment	Typically when	What it is tied to
10%	At reservation or contract signing	The contract, not the building
10%	A set period after signing	A date
10%	Groundbreaking or a stated milestone	Sometimes construction, often a date
70%	At closing	Completion and the certificate of occupancy

The part worth reading twice

Whether each deposit is triggered by a date or by construction. Where it is a date, the money is due whether or not the project has broken ground, and a two-year delay does not move it.

That is not unusual and it is not hidden. It is in the purchase agreement, and it is the clause buyers most often discover after the second deposit rather than before the first.

Where the deposits sit

Florida law provides for deposits on pre-construction condominium sales to be held in escrow, with defined circumstances in which a developer may draw on part of them. The detail differs by transaction and the agreement states it.

Read who holds the escrow, what portion may be released to the developer before closing, and what happens to your deposits if the project does not complete. Those three answers are the whole of your exposure between contract and closing.

Before the second deposit

1. Confirm what each remaining payment is triggered by, date or construction.
2. Confirm what portion of your deposits is releasable to the developer, and when.
3. Find the outside completion date and what your remedy is if it passes.
4. Establish what is physically built, on a stated date, and keep the record.
5. Take advice from a Florida attorney of your own, not one introduced by the sales office.

The 10/10/10/70 split itself is not the risk; what each instalment is tied to is. A date-based deposit falls due regardless of progress on site, which is why reading the trigger for each payment, and where the escrow sits, matters more than the percentages.