Miami is a vertical city on a low, wet coast, and that shapes every building question here. The skyline and the barrier islands are lined with concrete condominium towers, and along this coast the reinforcing steel inside that concrete fights a constant battle with salt air and moisture. When steel corrodes it expands and cracks the concrete around it, and left unaddressed that process reduces the capacity a building was designed for. Since the requirements that followed the Surfside collapse, that is not just an engineering concern, it is a legal deadline.
The ground is the other half of the story. Miami sits only a few feet above sea level on porous limestone, so the water table is high and the drainage is limited. King tides push seawater up through the storm drains and into the streets on clear days, and a hurricane brings surge on top of that.
From an oceanfront tower to an Art Deco building in South Beach to a single-family home in a low-lying neighborhood, we read each property for what it actually is, rather than as generic construction. That is how we approach every property here.