Living in Key Biscayne

One road on, one road off: plan for it

The causeway is the only vehicle route to the island, and it is a toll road. That shapes daily life, from the school run to a service call, and it shapes hurricane season: the island is in an evacuation zone, and when an order is issued the causeway is the way out for everyone at once.

Keep your evacuation plan, your insurance file and your important documents in a form you can take with you. Know your building's or your street's zone and what an order means for you before the season starts.

Flood and wind: two policies, both expensive to get wrong

Homeowners and flood insurance are separate policies in Florida. On a barrier island nearly every address sits in a mapped FEMA flood zone, so flood coverage is a lender requirement for most financed properties and a sensible one for the rest. Wind coverage pricing depends heavily on the mitigation features of the structure.

Documents to keep current:

• Elevation certificate for the property.
• Wind mitigation inspection recording roof deck attachment, roof-to-wall connections, opening protection and roof shape.
• Roof permit, installation date and final inspection.
• Impact window and door or shutter documentation with permits.
• Current homeowners and flood declarations pages, and for condominiums the master policy summary.

Condominium owners: recertification, reserves and the ocean

Florida requires condominium buildings of three or more stories to complete a milestone structural inspection once they reach a set age, with earlier deadlines in some coastal locations, and to fund reserves according to a structural integrity reserve study. Oceanfront and bayfront buildings on the island are squarely inside these rules.

Ask your association for the milestone inspection status and report, the reserve study and funding plan, the current budget and reserve balances, any planned special assessment, and the master insurance summary including wind and flood. A buyer's lender will ask for the same.

Houses and condominiums, reported separately

Key Biscayne is one of the county's smaller markets by count, so sample sizes matter. The Key Biscayne market data page reports single-family houses and condominiums and townhouses separately, with active counts, closed sales for the reporting month and year to date, median days on market and median percent of list received, each with its sample size and retrieval date. Medians are suppressed where the sample is too small to be meaningful.

If you are considering selling, read the sample size beside every figure before drawing a conclusion from it.

If your mortgage or assessment situation has changed

If you owe more than the property would sell for, or a special assessment has changed the picture, a short sale is one of the routes owners consider. It requires lender approval and has legal and tax consequences that a licensed attorney and a tax professional should address for your situation. PBP does not give legal or tax advice.

What a real estate brokerage can do is explain the process, the documentation a lender typically requires and how the timeline usually runs. If that is where you are, say so when you contact us, and a PBP agent who works short sales will take it from there.

How PBP works in Key Biscayne

PBP Real Estate is a Florida licensed brokerage (CQ1064615) with agents based in Miami-Dade as well as Palm Beach and Broward, under Gia Freer, Broker of Record. Tell us what you are weighing and a licensed PBP agent will respond directly. Your information stays with PBP.

This guide is general process information. It is not legal, tax or insurance advice, and it is not an opinion of value on any particular property. Market figures are drawn from BeachesMLS, listings permitted for internet display, with the reporting window and retrieval date shown.

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