Buyers Beware: Buying ‘sight unseen’ has it’s downside!
Stopped over at Apogee South Beach the other day to see how the building was coming along. I overheard a buyer compaining to their agent that they didn’t like their unit, and wished they had picked a corner unit. Uh…DUH! Of course the corner unit is better than the flow-through unit.
Flow through units have been “all the rage” in Miami Beach condo floor plans in the last four or five years. I would describe these units as typically having exposure on the ‘prime’ side of the building and exposure on the street-side as well. When a building goes up for sale in the pre-construction phase, these are usually the best selling units in the building for a couple of reasons:
1. they are less expensive $ psf than compared to units which enjoy more exposure on the “prime” side of the building
2. the developer “highlights” the fact that you have “both views”, thus making you feel like these units are steals compared to the corner units.
APOGEE SOUTH BEACH FLOOR PLATE
The problem with flow-through units is that they look great on paper, but in reality they are not. Though they do have two exposures, the units tend to be narrow and dark. Whenever one of my clients thinks something looks really great…on paper..I try to take them to a similar unit in an existing building. This way they get a chance to see what I already know: some things look a whole lot better on paper than they do when they are completed.
