Buying a South Florida Condo, Make a list of your Wants, Needs, and Must Haves

By: Melissa & Denise Stewart

Buying a Condo in South Florida, make a list of your needs.

If you are a buyer of a condo in the South Florida area, whether or not you are on a budget, you need to make a determination of what your wants are, what your needs are, and what are on your must-haves list.

If you have kids or pets, your must-have list will be a little different, only because you cannot sacrifice family and pets. If you are an investor, your list will be different than if you are looking for a condo as a full time or even a vacation residence. If you are wanting an Ocean View, your list will certainly be a little different that if you are a golfer. So, what are you to do if you are starting a search?

The first thing you need to do is make a list of your must-haves. In other words, if you need a 3 bedroom, and 2 full bathrooms, with a gas stove, tennis court, and parking for a truck, you want to make sure that you tell your Realtor these criteria, just so that your Realtor does not waste their time looking for condos that will not meet your needs.  If you have decided that you want to purchase a condo that has an Ocean view, and you are willing to pay the extra cost that is necessary, and you consider this to be a deal breaker, then you will want to let your Realtor know so that you do not look at condos that do not meet your expectations. Additionally, if you need a 3 bedroom condo but a 2 bedroom condo with a den will work, you need to let your Realtor know.  

Before Buying a Condo, consider these items.

The following are a list of items that you may want to consider in your quest to search for the condo that meets your requirements:

-          # of Bedroom

-          # of Bathrooms, and half baths. If you need 2 bedrooms, and 2 full bath rooms, and the bedrooms must  be separated, again, let your Realtor know.  

-          Square Footage

-          Restrictions on children, pets, leasing, trucks, motorcycles, age, and # of Parking spaced for your vehicles.

-          Views, including Ocean, Intracoastal, city, golf  and  other views

-          Size of condo- if you believe that you need 1,500 Sq Ft, let your Realtor know this.

-          If you have something specific, that you consider to be very important to your lifestyle, you need to determine how important these features are to you, and whether or not these are must-haves. This will include: Pool, hot tub, spa, tennis court, exercise room, underground parking and other amenities.

-          Interior improvements like gas stove, tile, marble, carpeting, wood floors. Hurricane-proof windows, size of closets

-          Other items like condition of kitchen and bathrooms & appliances

The bottom line is that you need to make a list, and you need to make priorities and you need to figure out what is important and what is something that you want but can do without depending on the cost. You may run into a situation where a condo building simply does not have all of the amenities or other requirements that you want. For instance, if you need a boat slip, and the condos you are looking at only have a limited number of boat slips, your demands may not be able to be met because of this limitation. If you are looking for condos that have 2 permanent parking spaces, and you look at a building that has enough total parking spaces, but you must purchase a second parking space, the price of this space is something that you will need to consider in your decision.

Some of the items that you are considering will not really be the type items that will be deal breakers, especially if they are things like flooring, cabinets and other DIY type items. The items like Hurricane proof windows are items that are difficult, especially since some of these features may be items that the association is in charge of installing. Another similar  item is an electrical charging system in a garage for your car charger. If this is something that is an absolute necessity, then you need to make sure that your Realtor knows this information.

So, make a list, determine what is important, what is necessary, and what is an absolute requirement, and send the list to your Realtor, so they can get to work for you….