Investing in a Miami condo

Four things decide whether a Miami condo works as an investment, and only one of them is the price. Can you let it, and on what terms. What it costs to hold every month, including the things that are not the mortgage. What the association is going to bill you that nobody has voted on yet. And what the tax position looks like if you are not a Florida resident. This page is the route through all four, and every figure behind it is sourced.

Published August 30, 2026

Most Miami condo listings are written for someone who is going to live in the unit. If you are buying to let it, almost none of what makes a listing attractive is what makes the investment work — and two of the four things that decide your return are not in the listing at all. They are in documents you have to ask for.

1. Whether you can let it, and for how short a term

This is the first question and it kills more Miami investment cases than price does. Every condominium sets its own minimum lease term in its recorded declaration, and the range across the buildings on this site runs from one month to twelve. A building with a twelve-month minimum cannot run short-stay income at all, whatever the city allows. A building with a one-month minimum is a different asset class.

City rules sit on top of that, and the stricter of the two governs. Miami Beach, for example, treats anything under six months and one day as a short-term rental, prohibits it outright in several zoning districts, and requires the specific building to appear on the City's authorized list — so being in a permitted district is necessary but not sufficient.

• Which Miami buildings allow short-term rentals — how the question is answered across the market
• Miami Beach and South of Fifth — the strictest regime in the county, building by building
• The association is the other landlord — approval, screening and what the board can refuse
• Edgewater approval and lease rules

2. What it actually costs to hold

The mortgage is the part everyone models. The association fee, the non-homestead tax position and the insurance are the parts that move the answer, and on a Miami condo the fee alone can be the difference between a working investment and a break-even one.

• Rental yield calculator — gross and net, with the fee and the vacancy in it
• Carrying cost calculator — what the month costs before a tenant pays anything
• Why the fees went up, and how to read a budget
• Edgewater HOA fees, tower by tower — real figures, per building

3. The bill nobody has voted on yet

This is the section that reads as paperwork to an owner-occupier and as the central risk to an investor. Florida changed its condominium law after Surfside, and the change has a direct financial consequence: associations must now hold a structural integrity reserve study and, for budgets adopted on or after December 31, 2024, owners can no longer vote to waive reserves for the components it covers. Buildings that spent two decades keeping fees low by deferring reserves are now funding them, and the money comes from owners.

A low fee in a building that has not completed its study is not a saving. It is a bill that has not arrived. The documents below are how you find out which one you are looking at, before the assessment is levied rather than after.

• What a reserve study is and how to read one
• Buying with a pending special assessment — who pays, and when it attaches
• Board minutes: what to look for before you buy
• Milestone inspections and Miami-Dade recertification — where a building sits on its clock
• Florida condo law in 2026 — what changed and what it costs

4. The tax position if you are not a Florida resident

An out-of-state or overseas investor faces a different set of rules from a local buyer, and two of them are expensive to discover late: the withholding on eventual sale, and the estate exposure on the way the title is held.

• FIRPTA — the withholding on sale, and how to reduce it before closing
• Buying as a foreign national — the full sequence
• Buying without a US Social Security number
• Financing without a US credit file, and the estate exposure that comes with owning
• La même chose en français — the cross-border material for Canadian and European investors, including the 871(d) election and form 8288-B
• Letting it out as a Canadian owner — 30% of gross by default, or the section 871(d) election on the net
• What it will actually cost in property tax — the seller's bill is not your bill, and the cap misses roughly half of it
• Who is allowed to manage it for you — letting is a Chapter 475 act, the association is Chapter 468, and the on-site manager may be exempt from both
• Everything here for Canadian owners, in English and French

The two costs this page used to leave out

Both were listed here for months as missing, because saying so was better than pretending. Both are now written up, and both are larger than most buyers assume.

• Non-homestead property tax. The seller's bill is not your bill — the assessment resets to just value the January after you buy, the cap is 10 percent rather than 3, and it does not apply to the school levy at all.
• Insurance, and where the statutory line falls. The association insures the building as originally installed; your floors, appliances, cabinets and every renovation are on your side of a list written into statute.

The calculators above still exclude both. Run them, then add these two.