By the Mountain Cove Homes team · Miami, Florida
Financing a pre-construction home in Florida introduces one variable a resale purchase does not have: months pass between the day you apply and the day you sign, and almost every number quoted at the start has an expiry attached to it. The delivery framework that governs that gap is in your own purchase agreement, not in any statute.
Federal law anticipated the problem anyway. There is a disclosure provision written specifically for new construction, and whether it applies to you was decided by language on a form you received in week one.
Two boundaries before starting. This article is about the buyer’s mortgage on a home a builder is constructing to sell — not about a construction loan for a custom build, which is the subject of the roadmap to home financing in South Florida and its companions. And it describes rules, not any particular lender’s terms.
The transaction around the loan is in how buying pre-construction actually works, and the deposit that preceded it is in the reservation and the deposit.
The Two Disclosures That Set the Clock
Everything in this article hangs off two documents, and both have deadlines expressed in business days.
The Loan Estimate comes first. The creditor must deliver or place it in the mail not later than the third business day after the creditor receives the consumer’s application, and separately not later than the seventh business day before consummation of the transaction.
The Closing Disclosure comes last. The creditor must ensure you receive it no later than three business days before consummation.
Now the detail that trips people, and it does not apply uniformly. Two of those three deadlines run on a special definition, under which business day means all calendar days except Sundays and the legal public holidays specified in federal law — the seven-day rule before consummation, and the Closing Disclosure’s three days.
Saturdays count for those two. The three-day deadline for issuing the Loan Estimate after your application is not on the regulation’s list and runs on the ordinary meaning: days the creditor’s offices are open.
There is a companion presumption for anything not handed over in person. Where the Closing Disclosure is not provided face to face, the consumer is considered to have received the disclosures 3 business days after they are delivered or placed in the mail.
So a mailed Closing Disclosure normally needs six business days of runway rather than three — unless the creditor can document that you received it earlier, which the same paragraph permits. Ask how yours will be delivered, and ask early.
Three Changes That Restart the Waiting Period
Most late changes do not delay a closing. Exactly three do, and the regulation names them.
A new three-business-day wait is triggered where the annual percentage rate becomes inaccurate as defined in the regulation, where the loan product is changed, or where a prepayment penalty is added.
Everything else gets a corrected disclosure at or before closing without moving the date. A fee that rises, a credit that shifts, a per-diem that changes — none of those buys you three more days.
Which is worth knowing in both directions. If someone tells you a small correction forces a week’s delay, that is a scheduling problem rather than a legal requirement.
Which Estimated Costs Are Binding, and Which Are Not
This is the part of the Loan Estimate that most buyers never learn to read, and it is where the money is.
The general rule is that an estimated closing cost is in good faith if the charge paid by or imposed on the consumer does not exceed the amount originally disclosed. That is a zero tolerance: the figure quoted is the figure charged.
A second group may rise, but only together and only by so much. An estimate for a third-party service or a recording fee is in good faith if the aggregate amount of charges for third-party services and recording fees does not exceed the aggregate amount disclosed by more than 10 percent, the charge is not paid to the creditor or an affiliate, and the creditor let you shop for the service.
A third group has no tolerance at all. Estimates are in good faith if consistent with the best information reasonably available, regardless of the final amount, for prepaid interest, property insurance premiums, amounts placed into an escrow, impound, reserve, or similar account, charges to third-party service providers selected by the consumer that are not on the list provided by the creditor, and property taxes.
Read that fourth item carefully, because it is the opposite of what people assume. A provider you picked from the lender’s written list sits in the ten percent bucket. A provider you found yourself, outside that list, has no tolerance protection at all.
Read that third group against a Miami-Dade purchase and the practical lesson appears. Your insurance premium and your tax escrow are the two lines most likely to move, and they are precisely the two the tolerance rules do not protect.
So build those two numbers yourself before the Loan Estimate arrives rather than after. The column to build them from is in the full cost of owning a home in Miami-Dade.
The Provision Written for New Construction
Here is the one that matters most in a long build, and it is conditional in a way almost nobody explains.
Where the creditor reasonably expects settlement to occur more than sixty days after the Loan Estimate was provided, the creditor may provide revised disclosures to the consumer if the original disclosures state clearly and conspicuously that at any time prior to 60 days before consummation, the creditor may issue revised disclosures.
Then the sentence that gives you something. If no such statement is provided, the creditor may not issue revised disclosures, except for the other permitted reasons the regulation lists.
So the question to ask in week one is a narrow, checkable one. Does my Loan Estimate carry that clear and conspicuous statement about revised disclosures?
If it does, your quoted costs are provisional across the build. If it does not, the tolerances above hold, and the lender cannot simply reissue the estimate because the house took a year.
A Construction Loan May Be Disclosed as One Deal or Two
Worth knowing before you compare offers, because it changes what you are comparing.
Where a multiple-advance loan to finance construction of a dwelling may be permanently financed by the same creditor, the regulation provides that the construction phase and the permanent phase may be treated as either one transaction or more than one transaction.
That is a choice made by the creditor, not by you, and it determines whether you receive one set of disclosures or two. A single-transaction treatment produces one annual percentage rate covering both phases; a two-transaction treatment produces separate rates that are not directly comparable to it.
The regulation carries an appendix on multiple-advance construction loans setting out the estimation method. So when two lenders quote what looks like the same product at different rates, the first question is which structure each used.
Most buyers of a home a builder is constructing to sell are not in this world at all — they are getting an ordinary purchase mortgage that funds at closing.
What Happens When You Lock
A rate lock is a commercial arrangement rather than a regulated instrument, so the disclosure rules describe its consequences rather than its terms.
The consumer regulator describes it as an arrangement under which your interest rate does not change between the offer and closing, as long as you close within the specified time frame and there are no changes to your application. Locks are typically available for 30, 45, or 60 days, and sometimes longer.
Set those numbers against a build measured in quarters and the tension is obvious. The regulator states it directly: it may be expensive to extend if your transaction needs more time, and a lock may lock you out of a lower interest rate if rates fall after the offer.
There is one more limitation worth quoting, because it explains why you must ask rather than read. Your Loan Estimate will not provide you with information about how much it would cost to extend the rate lock, how much you are paying for the specific rate lock time frame, or whether you could pay more or less for a different time frame.
Five other grounds also permit revised disclosures, and a buyer should recognise all of them: a changed circumstance affecting settlement charges, a changed circumstance affecting your eligibility, revisions you request yourself, the rate-lock event described below, and one more that catches people on a long timeline.
That last one is not an expiry in the ordinary sense. The creditor may reissue where the consumer indicates an intent to proceed more than 10 business days, or more than any additional number of days specified by the creditor before the offer expires, after the disclosures were provided — and the creditor may set a longer window on the form itself.
Locking later has its own regulatory consequence. Where points or lender credits change because the rate was not locked when the disclosures were given, the creditor must provide revised disclosures no later than three business days after the date the interest rate is locked.
For context on what you are locking against, the Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey put the thirty-year fixed average at 6.71 percent for the week ending September 3, 2026, up from 6.66 percent the prior week. That figure moves weekly and should be checked rather than remembered.
What a Preferred Lender Arrangement Is Governed By
Builders commonly name one or more lenders and attach an incentive. Mountain Cove Homes names preferred lenders of its own, so read what follows as a description of the rules that apply to every such arrangement including this company’s, and not as a statement about the terms of any particular one.
The legal frame is specific, and it starts with a prohibition.
The prohibition first. No person may give or accept any fee, kickback or other thing of value pursuant to any agreement or understanding that business incident to or part of a settlement service involving a federally related mortgage loan shall be referred to any person.
Where the builder and the lender are affiliated, an exemption exists on three conditions. There must be a written disclosure of the nature of the relationship, explaining the ownership and financial interest, and of an estimated charge or range of charges generally made by such provider.
No person making a referral may have required any person to use any particular provider of settlement services. And the only thing of value received from the arrangement must be a return on an ownership interest or franchise relationship.
Two limits on that second condition are worth naming, because they are usually left out. It governs affiliated arrangements, and it carries express carve-outs — a lender may require a buyer, borrower or seller to pay for the services of an attorney, credit reporting agency, or real estate appraiser chosen by the lender to represent the lender’s interest.
Required is itself a defined term, and it is where the analysis actually happens. It means a situation in which a person must use a particular provider of a settlement service in order to have access to some distinct service or property and will pay for it.
The same definition then protects the ordinary incentive. Offering a package or a discount does not constitute a required use — provided the package is optional to the purchaser, and provided the discount is a true discount below the prices that are otherwise generally available, and must not be made up by higher costs elsewhere in the settlement process.
That last clause is the arithmetic to do. A preferred-lender credit is a real discount if the price of everything else stays where it was, and it is not one if the closing costs quietly absorb it — which is a comparison you can run yourself, with the line items in closing costs on new construction in Miami-Dade, on a full worksheet from each lender.
Whether a specific incentive clears the definition is a legal question about specific documents, and it is one for your own lawyer rather than for an article. What is not in doubt is that you are entitled to a full written cost comparison before you decide, and that asking for one is ordinary.
The statute behind those rules says the same thing in three conditions: disclosure of the arrangement with a written estimate of charges, that such person is not required to use any particular provider of settlement services, and that the only thing of value received is a return on the ownership interest.
Note also what the rules expressly permit, so you do not mistake ordinary business for a violation. Permitted payments include a payment to any person of a bona fide salary or compensation or other payment for goods or facilities actually furnished or for services actually performed. Paying someone for real work is not the problem; paying for the referral itself is.
One practical note on who you are dealing with. In Florida, an individual who acts as a loan originator must be licensed under the state’s mortgage statute, and that licence is verifiable.
The Loan Limit, and a Correction Worth Making
A widely repeated assumption about South Florida is wrong, and it changes what loan you are shopping for.
The baseline conforming limit for a one-unit property in 2026 is $832,750, an increase of $26,250 from 2025. A higher ceiling of $1,249,125 exists, but only in designated high-cost areas.
Miami-Dade is not one of them. The regulator’s own county file lists Miami-Dade’s one-unit limit at the baseline $832,750, and within Florida only Monroe County sits above it, at $990,150.
So a Miami-Dade purchase financed above $832,750 is a jumbo loan, with its own underwriting, its own reserve requirements and its own rate. Work out which side of that line your loan amount falls on before comparing any two quotes, because a conforming rate and a jumbo rate are not the same product. If you are still choosing, the price of what is currently selling decides it, including at Golden Park.
Five Questions to Settle in Week One When Financing a Pre-Construction Home in Florida
Whether your Loan Estimate carries the clear and conspicuous statement permitting revised disclosures. That one line decides whether your quoted costs survive the build.
The cost of extending a lock, in writing, because the Loan Estimate will not tell you and the answer is not standard.
Which of your estimated costs sit in the zero-tolerance column and which sit in the untoleranced one. Insurance and escrow are almost always in the second.
Whether a preferred-lender incentive is a true discount or a rearrangement. Compare a full closing cost worksheet from both lenders, not the headline credit.
Whether the loan you are being quoted is conforming at the amount you actually need in Miami-Dade.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long before closing must you receive the Closing Disclosure?
You must receive it no later than three business days before consummation. For this deadline, business day means all calendar days except Sundays and federal legal holidays, so Saturdays count toward the three.
What changes force a new three-day waiting period?
Only three: the annual percentage rate becoming inaccurate, a change in the loan product, or the addition of a prepayment penalty. Other corrections are disclosed without moving the closing date.
Can a lender re-quote your closing costs during a long build?
Only if the original Loan Estimate stated clearly and conspicuously that revised disclosures could be issued at any time prior to sixty days before consummation. Without that statement, the lender may not reissue on that ground.
Which estimated costs can rise before closing?
Third-party services you were permitted to shop for and recording fees may rise, but only by ten percent in aggregate. Prepaid interest, property insurance premiums, escrow deposits and property taxes have no tolerance at all.
How should you evaluate a builder’s preferred lender incentive?
A referral cannot be turned into a requirement, and an incentive is analysed under the regulation’s definition of required use rather than under the referral prohibition. The practical test the definition supplies is whether any discount is a true discount below prices otherwise generally available and is not made up by higher costs elsewhere, which you check with a full cost worksheet from each lender.
Is Miami-Dade a high-cost area for conforming loan limits?
No. The one-unit conforming limit in Miami-Dade for 2026 is the national baseline of $832,750. Within Florida, only Monroe County exceeds the baseline.
The financing side of a pre-construction purchase rewards the buyer who reads week one’s paperwork as carefully as month eighteen’s. Almost every question that becomes expensive at closing had a cheap answer at application.
About Mountain Cove Homes. Mountain Cove Homes is a boutique home builder based in Miami, Florida, building single-family homes and townhomes in small communities across Miami-Dade County — including Golden Park and other communities currently selling. Its personnel have been constructing homes in South Florida since the early 1980s. More about how the company works and where it builds.
This article is general information about mortgage disclosure and settlement rules in Florida. It is not legal, financial or mortgage advice, and it does not describe any particular loan, lender or arrangement. Regulations and published rates change, and what applies to a transaction depends on its own documents. Verify your own numbers with your lender and your closing agent before relying on any of them.
For additional legal disclaimers please see the legal information document.
Talk to Mountain Cove Homes
Mountain Cove Homes is a boutique home builder in Miami, Florida, building single-family homes and townhomes in small communities across Miami-Dade County — most of them with no HOA and no CDD tax. If you want to walk through lot availability, pricing, and what is included at this stage of construction, we will give you the numbers directly.
Office 4878 Southwest 74th Court, Miami, FL 33155 786.458.1805 [email protected]
Florida developer registration DE46760.