The question is whether you find it now or after closing. This is the part a listing photograph is designed to keep you from asking about.
Ownership and motivation, flood, condition and age, and what the words on the listing give away.
One address in — owner and how motivated they look, FEMA flood picture, condition and age risk, and how the ask compares to county value. Works on off-market addresses too.
We read every text field on every listing — not just public remarks — and pull out every dollar figure with the fifteen words either side. Shows what a seller is really collecting versus what the broker claims.
Reads the raw MLS blob for properties that genuinely have rooftop solar or EV charging — the normal feed does not carry it.
We hold records, not X-ray vision. Where we have no evidence we say so rather than fill the gap.
Get the association's financials before anything else. An association that can levy a special assessment can change the price of the home after you own it. There is an upload box for those documents, and the numbers re-read once they are in.
The financials and the reserve study — is money actually set aside, or is every roof a surprise bill split among the owners. Special assessments — not just the ones already passed: ask for recent board minutes, because the one being discussed is the one that lands on you. The milestone inspection — Florida’s post-Surfside rules require older condo buildings to pass a structural ‘milestone’ inspection and to fund their reserves; ask where the building stands, and for the report if one exists. A building that has not faced it yet has the bill still ahead of it.
The board can reject you, and takes its time deciding. Expect to hand over a full financial disclosure — tax returns, statements, references — and build the approval timeline into your plans. Ask for the co-op’s own financials and the underlying mortgage on the building too: you are buying shares in a corporation, so its debts are part of your price.
The condition report is what gives an offer its argument.