- Find out which code governs your parcel. Unincorporated Miami-Dade runs on the county's industrial districts. Miami, Hialeah, Medley, Doral and the other cities write their own.
- Price off closed industrial sales in your own submarket. Airport West, Hialeah and South Dade trade on different numbers.
- Check for a wellfield protection area and an overdue building recertification before the buyer's consultants find them.
- Budget for the deed tax. Miami-Dade adds a surtax on commercial transfers that no other Florida county charges.
- Keep a second buyer warm until the deposit goes hard.
This guide is written for Miami-Dade. For Broward, read how to sell a warehouse in Fort Lauderdale. For the statewide process and how the buyer pool shifts between markets, start with how to sell a warehouse in Florida.
The seven steps
The order matters. An owner who starts with a price in mind and a sign on the fence spends the next four months negotiating down from a number nothing supported.
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Get a real number
Research houses report Miami-Dade industrial by submarket: Airport and Doral, Medley, Hialeah, North Central Dade, South Dade and more. Rents and buyers differ across them. A 3,000 foot bay in Hialeah and a distribution building in Airport West sit on different curves.
A real number comes from closed industrial sales near you over the last two years, the rent your building would draw today, what your zoning permits, and which buyers are active this quarter. Brokerages hold most of that data. You will not find it on the MLS.
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Clear the paperwork
Pull the survey, the title commitment, permits and the certificate of occupancy, environmental history, roof and structural records, and every lease with every amendment. Add the certificate of use for the business on site where your jurisdiction issues one.
Then check the recertification clock. Miami-Dade requires a recertification inspection once most buildings reach 30 years, and every 10 years after that. A buyer who finds an overdue recertification prices the repair list at the worst case. Buildings of 2,000 square feet or less with a small occupant load are exempt.
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Decide off-market or open market
A lot of Miami-Dade small bay stock belongs to families who have owned it for decades, with tenants who have stayed as long. Those owners often sell to a named list of buyers under NDA, and the tenants hear nothing until closing.
A stabilised building with clean leases can do better with wide exposure and the competition it brings. Pick one on purpose.
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Price it, then market it
Build the marketing around the buyer who will pay the most for your building. An importer near the airport who wants to occupy reads a different package than a fund underwriting a rent roll.
Ask above what the underwriting supports and you buy sixty days of silence, followed by the offers you would have had on day one.
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Run the buyers against each other
Set a date for offers. Compare the whole offer: the deposit and when it goes hard, the length of the inspection period, any financing contingency, proof of funds, and what the buyer has closed before.
A slightly lower price with a hard deposit and a short study period will usually beat a record price with a ninety day way out.
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Survive due diligence
Expect the buyer's environmental consultant to pull county records from DERM, the Division of Environmental Resources Management. An old fuel tank, an industrial waste permit or a past violation on the site will surface there, so read your own file first.
If the site sits in a wellfield protection area, the uses a buyer can run on it narrow, and the county's own records describe the Northwest Wellfield, west of the Turnpike between Okeechobee Road and SW 12th Street, as subject to the strictest rules. Know where you stand before the buyer does, answer a retrade with evidence, and keep your backup buyer informed until the deposit goes hard.
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Close
Estoppels from every tenant, tax and rent prorations, the lender payoff, security deposit transfers, and the documentary stamp tax on the deed. In Miami-Dade that tax runs 60 cents per $100 of price plus a 45 cent surtax on any transfer other than a single family home, so a commercial deed carries $1.05 per $100. Your attorney runs the closing. The broker makes sure none of it arrives as a surprise.
What sets the price on a Miami industrial building
Six things move the number, and a residential model measures none of them.
- Clear height. Tenants rack up. An 18 foot clear and a 28 foot clear serve different users.
- Loading and the truck court. Dock high and grade level doors, and whether a 53 foot trailer can make the turn on your site. Old Hialeah and Allapattah stock often loses here.
- Power. Food processors, cold storage and fabricators pay for amps. Adding service later is slow.
- The yard, and the paper behind it. Paved, fenced outside area, and a recorded right to store on it. Around the airport and the port, the yard can outprice the building.
- Position against the freight network. PortMiami, Miami International Airport, SR 826, SR 836, the Turnpike, I-75 and Okeechobee Road. MIA handles more international freight than any other US airport, and the buildings near it trade on that.
- The lease. Remaining term, escalations, who pays taxes and insurance, and whether a lender will underwrite the tenant.
The county absorbed 815,759 square feet net that quarter and had 2.9 million square feet under construction, most of it due in 2027. Those are county figures for buildings. Use them for one job: when a buyer hands you a market report to justify a low offer, check which market and which quarter it measures.
County code or city code: the Miami-Dade question
Miami-Dade runs two layers. Land outside any city falls under the county zoning code, which has four industrial districts: IU-1 for light manufacturing, warehousing and storage, IU-2 and IU-3 for heavier industry, and IU-C, industrial conditional. Inside a city, the city's own code governs. Miami, Hialeah, Medley, Doral and Homestead each write their own.
Outdoor storage is where this bites. The county code does not name truck parking, trailer storage or container storage as permitted uses in its industrial districts. The county's zoning director decides whether a use like that counts as similar to one the code does permit. A yard that has run for twenty years with nothing on record is a different asset from a yard with a written determination, and the buyer's lender knows the difference.
Get written zoning verification from whichever government controls your parcel before the buyer's attorney asks for it.
Three mistakes that cost the most
- Pricing off the wrong submarket. A Doral comparable does not price a Homestead building, and a countywide average prices neither. Owners who anchor on the wrong number either leave money behind or sit for a year.
- Ignoring the recertification clock. An overdue 30 year inspection turns into a credit at the closing table, sized by the buyer's engineer. Getting ahead of it costs less.
- Letting the buyer set the timetable. An open-ended inspection period with a refundable deposit hands the buyer a free option on your building. Deadlines and a deposit that goes hard turn interest into a closing.
Who is buying industrial in Miami-Dade
Four pools, and your building probably belongs to one of them.
- Owner users. Importers, freight forwarders, food distributors and contractors buying their own premises, often with SBA financing. They pay for possession, location and loading.
- Private investors and 1031 buyers. On a clock and looking for stable income. Speed matters to them more than to anyone else.
- Funds and institutional capital. Buying distribution product in Airport West, Medley and the Gratigny corridor. They pay well for clean files and retrade hard on messy ones.
- Yard, fleet and land buyers. Logistics operators, truck fleets and developers buying ground and entitlement. On an older low-clear building with a big lot, this pool can outbid everyone else.
What a valuation needs from you
Six things. Gathering them costs nothing.
- The address and the folio number, so the governing code can be read off the county record.
- Building size and lot size, with usable yard separated from the total.
- Clear height, door counts by type, and the electrical service.
- The leases, with term, rent, escalations, options and who pays what.
- Roof age, paving, sprinkler and HVAC, the permit history, and the recertification date.
- Anything recorded against the property, including covenants and any DERM permit.
Phil concludes every valuation himself after he has seen the site. It costs nothing, carries no obligation to list, and you keep the number and the comparable closings whether you sell this year or never.
Read next: What is my industrial property worth, then how to choose an industrial broker in South Florida.