You live in New York and you’re buying in Santo Domingo. Or you live in Santiago and you’re buying in Miami.

Either way you can’t be there for every showing, and you’re being asked to make one of the largest decisions of your life through a screen. This is normal now. It works. But only if you’re strict about a few things.

Photos are marketing. Video is evidence.

Listing photos are taken with a wide lens by someone paid to make the room look bigger. They aren’t lying exactly. They’re just not information.

What you want is an unedited walkthrough. One continuous take, phone held normally, no music. Front door to back, every room, and the parts nobody photographs — the electrical panel, under the sinks, the ceiling in the corners, the view from the window that isn’t in the listing.

The point isn’t beauty. It’s continuity. A cut in the video is a room you didn’t see.

Ask for it before you get emotionally involved, not after.

Go outside the property

Half of what’s wrong with a place is not inside it.

Ask for video of the street at two different times of day. The building entrance. The parking. What’s directly next door and directly across. How far the walk really is to the thing the listing called “minutes away.”

Noise is the one nobody checks remotely and everybody regrets.

Someone has to physically be there

Not to sell you anything. To look.

A remote purchase needs one person on the ground whose job is to see the property with their own eyes and tell you the truth about it — working for you, not for the seller. And separately, an inspector. Not the same person, and not a friend of the listing agent.

If nobody has stood inside that property on your behalf before you send money, you’re not buying remotely. You’re guessing remotely. (→ jb-note)

Wire fraud is the real danger, and it’s boring

Not the property. The money.

Wire fraud in real estate follows one pattern almost every time. Someone gets into an email thread, waits until closing is close, and sends new wiring instructions that look exactly like the real ones.

The rule that defeats it: never accept wiring instructions from email. Not from your agent, not from the attorney, not from me. Call the office on a number you already had not one printed in the email and confirm the account out loud before anything moves.

Do it every single time, including when you’re in a hurry. Especially then.

Cross-border adds one more layer

If the property is in another country, add three things.

Your own attorney in that country. Confirmation of the title before any deposit leaves your account. And clarity about who is holding your deposit and under what terms.

Escrow is not automatic everywhere. Ask directly where your money sits between deposit and closing. A straight answer is a good sign. A vague one is information too.

What I do differently

I work across South Florida and the Dominican Republic, residential and commercial, and a lot of my clients are buying in a country they’re not standing in.

So I film properly. Unedited walkthroughs, the street, the parts you’d want to see if you were there. I say when a place doesn’t match its photos, which happens more than anyone likes to admit. And I work in English or Spanish, whichever you’d rather have this conversation in.

Buying from a distance and want someone to actually go and look before you commit? Message me. I’ll go, and I’ll tell you what’s really there.