Home Inspections
Miami-Dade County

Miami has a concentration of pre-1940 construction that is unlike anything you encounter in Broward or Palm Beach County. We have inspected homes from 1915, 1925, 1935, and throughout the 1940s and 1950s in neighborhoods including Little Havana, Flagami, Liberty City, and along the Upper East Side near NE 62nd Street and NE 81st Street. These properties carry conditions that are genuinely rare in modern home inspection work.

Some of these older buildings are original wood-frame construction, which is uncommon in South Florida where most of the housing stock shifted to concrete masonry after the 1940s. On a 1925 wood-frame property we inspected in Miami, we found termite frass throughout the structure, no soffit vents for the roof system, and service drop wiring that had been damaged and needed FPL attention. The service drop technically belongs to the utility company and not the homeowner, but it is a condition we document so the appropriate party is notified.

In older multifamily properties from this era, what we find most frequently is buildings that have grown over time — additions and efficiency units grafted onto an original structure over decades. One property we inspected presented four different roof types transitioning from one to the next: architectural shingle, modified bitumen, three-tab, and then modified bitumen again, going up and down as each addition was built and each section was later repaired or re-covered. These properties often have extremely limited permit history, which compounds the complexity of any insurance conversation. Electrical configurations in these buildings frequently reflect decades of tenant modifications rather than professional work. We have found situations where power to a primary bedroom was actually being drawn from the electrical panel of a separate efficiency unit rather than the main panel — the result of a tenant-era wiring change that went undocumented and uncorrected.

No central air conditioning is common in these oldest properties, and exterior outlets are frequently absent, particularly in older multifamily and efficiency buildings. These are not oversight items on our reports. They are conditions that affect insurability and habitability and require documentation.

H3: Kendall and Southwest Miami-Dade Condo Communities

The Kendall corridor and the surrounding southwest Miami-Dade zip codes — 33173, 33183, 33186 — contain a large inventory of condo and townhouse communities built primarily between 1973 and 1994. Snapper Creek Townhouses, an 884-unit community spread across 100 acres near the Palmetto Expressway in the 33173 zip code, is one we have inspected multiple times. The defining finding in these communities is exterior wood siding — specifically board and batten wood cladding — that was installed when the buildings were constructed and has been deteriorating ever since. Board and batten wood siding in South Florida’s climate is not a maintenance issue. It is a slow-motion problem that accumulates over decades. By the time units in these communities are being bought and sold, the wood is often visibly rotted in multiple locations and requires significant replacement.

Inside these units, windows and doors that no longer close and seal properly are a consistent finding. When window and door seals fail in a South Florida climate, humidity enters freely, and mold follows. We have found elevated mold conditions in these units tied directly to the failure of aging windows and sliding glass doors rather than any active leak. The seal is the leak.