Quick answer: Development is a capital business wearing a design costume. The name on the hoarding is the sponsor; the money is usually somebody else’s, and on a pre-construction purchase your deposit sits in the same structure with the weakest position in it.
This page also records a correction to a claim this site previously made, set out immediately below.
A correction, stated plainly
An earlier version of a page on this site attributed 1428 Brickell to this firm. That attribution was wrong.
We removed it in August 2026, following an audit of every developer-to-building claim in the corpus, which covered all 311 pages then present. That audit found 6 pages making genuine authorship claims and 3 of those claims false. This was one of the 3. We have not substituted an alternative attribution, because we could not verify one to our own standard.
The firm, in outline
| Type | Real estate investment and development firm |
| Associated with | Camilo Miguel Jr. |
| Base | Miami |
| Activity | South Florida residential development |
| On this site | Cipriani Residences Miami, Brickell |
| Attributions removed | 1, in August 2026 |
What a capital stack is, and where a buyer sits in it
Every development project is funded in layers, and the layers have an order of priority when things go well and when they do not.
| Layer | Who it usually is | Position on a loss |
|---|---|---|
| Construction debt | A bank or debt fund | Repaid first, secured by mortgage |
| Preferred or mezzanine capital | An institutional investor | Repaid after the senior lender |
| Third-party equity | An investment partner | Repaid after debt |
| Sponsor equity | The named developer | Last of the capital layers |
| Buyer deposits above statutory escrow | You | Unsecured, with a contractual claim only |
The bottom row is the one this page exists for. Under section 718.202 the first 10% of a Florida condominium sale price is held in escrow; deposits above that may be released to fund construction. Money released in that way has no security, no interest and no priority. It is a contractual claim against an entity whose assets are the project.
We work through the arithmetic of that position in our Property Markets Group profile. This page is about who else is in the structure with you.
Why the identity of the capital matters
Two projects with identical designs and identical sponsors can behave completely differently depending on who funded them.
- Patient capital versus dated capital. An investor with a fixed exit date behaves differently in a slow market from one without.
- Control rights. Equity partners frequently hold approval rights over material decisions, which means the named sponsor is not always the decision-maker.
- Leverage. A highly leveraged project has less room to absorb cost inflation or a delay. A conservatively funded one has more.
- Recapitalisation risk. A project that needs new money mid-build may change hands, and the party finishing it may not be the party that started it.
That last point connects directly to our Strategic Property Partners profile, where a documented change in a district’s ownership occurred mid-project. Ownership changes are normal, and they are only a problem for a buyer who assumed they could not happen.
What can actually be found out
The realistic answer is partial, and partial is much better than nothing.
- The construction lender is generally identifiable and its participation is a professional underwriting judgement.
- Recorded mortgages are public. The county record shows what is secured against the site and by whom.
- The seller entity is in your contract. Establish what else it owns, which is frequently nothing but the project.
- Ask directly. Whether a sponsor will describe its capital structure at all is informative regardless of the answer.
- Watch the pace. Sales pace and construction pace diverging is often the earliest visible sign of a funding issue.
Our due diligence guide covers where the public records are, and our closing costs breakdown what the transaction itself costs once you proceed.
Where to walk away
- No identifiable construction lender on a project selling pre-construction.
- A seller entity nobody will describe.
- A refusal to discuss capital structure combined with an aggressive deposit schedule.
- Construction visibly behind the sales pace with no explanation.
- Any assurance that a partner or brand “stands behind” the funding without a written guarantee, which is the point we make in our BH Group profile.
Our reading: the capital stack is the least glamorous and most predictive thing about a pre-construction project, and buyers examine the finishes instead. Find the lender, read the seller entity, and treat everything above the first 10% of your deposit as money at risk in a structure where you rank last.
Frequently Asked Questions
A Miami real estate investment and development firm associated with Camilo Miguel Jr., active in South Florida residential development including Cipriani Residences Miami in Brickell.
It is the layers of money funding a project: sponsor equity, third-party equity, construction debt and, in Florida, buyer deposits. Who sits in each layer determines who controls decisions and who absorbs a loss first.
Because on a pre-construction purchase your money is in that stack, and it is in the least protected position of anything in it above the statutory escrow.
Yes. An earlier version of a page on this site attributed 1428 Brickell to this firm. That attribution was wrong and was removed in August 2026 following an audit of every developer-to-building claim in the corpus.
Less than they would like and more than they usually try. The construction lender is generally identifiable, recorded mortgages are public, and the contract will disclose the seller entity.
Sources: the firm’s Miami base, its association with Camilo Miguel Jr. and its involvement in Cipriani Residences Miami, from contemporaneous Miami development reporting and our own coverage. The correction recorded above arises from our August 2026 audit of every developer-to-building attribution across the 311 pages then in this site’s corpus. The escrow treatment described is set by Florida Statutes section 718.202. No information about this firm’s actual capital structure on any project is asserted here; the methods above are how a buyer would establish it.
Find the lender before you sign
Send a Florida pre-construction project. We check the recorded mortgages, the seller entity and who is financing construction.