Real Estate
Every real estate transaction is a series of decisions with consequences that outlast the closing.
What we handle
- Residential purchases and sales
- Commercial acquisitions and dispositions
- Lease agreements and landlord matters
- Investor and portfolio transactions
- Contract review and negotiation
- Title review and protection
We act on residential and commercial purchases and sales, leasing, and investor transactions across Miami-Dade and Broward. We are also the title agent, which means the legal work and the title work sit in the same office.
Do you need an attorney to close in Florida
Not requiredFlorida does not require it. A title company can close a transaction without a lawyer involved. The distinction is what happens when something is wrong.
What a title agent does
Identifies a defect and reports it.
A title agent cannot give you legal advice about the contract you have signed, because doing so would be the practice of law.
What a lawyer does
Identifies the same defect, and can advise you on what it means for your position, negotiate it, or restructure the transaction around it.
For a straightforward cash purchase of a single family home with clean title, the difference may never arise. For anything involving a foreign party, an entity, an estate, a construction defect, a lease, or a title problem, it arises immediately.
What we act on
Transactions- Residential
- Purchases and sales. Contract review before signing, title, closing and disbursement.
- Commercial
- Acquisitions and dispositions. Due diligence, entity structuring, lease review, financing documents.
- Leasing
- Commercial leases from both sides, and residential where the terms warrant it.
- Investor
- Portfolio purchases, entity ownership, 1031 exchange coordination, financing.
- Cross border
- Foreign buyers and sellers, FIRPTA withholding, entity structures for non-resident owners, and closings conducted remotely.
Contract review before you sign
Before signatureThe FAR/BAR contract is standard, which leads people to treat it as unalterable. It is not. It has boxes, blanks and addenda, and each of them allocates risk between the parties.
- Inspection periods
- Financing contingencies
- The closing agent
- Who pays for the owner's title policy
- What happens to the deposit if the deal fails
- What remedies exist if the other side does not perform
All of them are negotiable, and all of them are far easier to negotiate before signature than after. By the time a dispute arises, the contract has already decided most of it.
Foreign buyers and sellers
A significant share of Miami real estate involves at least one party who is not a United States resident, and that changes the transaction in ways that catch people out.
On a purchase, the structure matters. Whether the property is taken personally, through a Florida LLC, or through a foreign entity affects tax treatment, liability, and how the property passes on death.
On a sale, FIRPTA withholding applies. The buyer is required to withhold a percentage of the sale price and remit it to the IRS, and the buyer is personally liable if it is not done. Where a withholding certificate is needed, the application has to be made before closing.
In both cases, timing is the difference between a transaction that works and one that does not. These questions rarely arrive early enough. We work in English, Spanish and Portuguese.
Where we act
ScopeMiami-Dade and Broward counties, and throughout Florida for transactions that require it.
Tell us what you're closing.
Give us the property, the parties, and the date you need to close. We will tell you what the transaction requires and what it will cost.