The Crossings Homes for Sale — Kendall

The Crossings lies 16 miles southwest of downtown Miami. Its borders are exact because the Census Bureau draws them: Kendall Drive (SW 88th Street) on the north, SW 120th Street on the south, Florida's Turnpike on the east and SW 137th Avenue on the west. Inside are 3.44 square miles of land and 0.13 of water, at an elevation of about seven feet, in ZIP 33186. Three Lakes sits directly south across SW 120th Street, and Kendall proper lies east of the Turnpike.

It is a census-designated place, not a city, and it is not part of the Kendall CDP either. That distinction matters mostly on paper: The Crossings is unincorporated Miami-Dade County, so the County Commission is its local government, Miami-Dade Police and Fire Rescue answer calls, and the tax bill carries a county UMSA line rather than a city millage. Three neighborhoods make up the CDP: The Crossings itself, Devon Aire and Calusa.

The communities were developed in the 1970s and 1980s, and the census counts show the buildout: 11,986 residents in 1980, 22,290 by 1990, and 23,276 in 2020 across 8,917 housing units. In other words, the place was essentially finished thirty-five years ago, and what you buy today is that first generation of houses and townhomes, many since re-roofed and re-windowed after Hurricane Andrew in 1992.

Listing portals date the housing from 1976 to 1987 and list it from about 1,010 to 2,800 square feet, with two to six bedrooms and two to five baths. The stock splits into two products. Detached concrete-block houses, most single-story, sit on the interior streets and around the small lakes. Townhome and villa sections, sold under names such as Devon-Aire Villas and Devon-Aire Estates, cluster nearer Kendall Drive and SW 137th Avenue, with shared parking courts and, in some villages, a pool and clubhouse.

Because everything predates the mid-1990s, the year the roof and windows were replaced matters more than the year the house was built. Portals note that townhome villages here are in the middle of roof replacement programs, which shows up as either a special assessment already paid or one still coming. Ask which.

There is no single Crossings homeowners association. Each village carries its own declaration, and the spread is wide: portals list monthly dues from under a hundred dollars on some detached-house streets to several hundred in townhome sections that maintain roofs, exterior paint, pools, a gym and a clubhouse. Boat and RV storage and visitor parking are governed village by village.

For a townhome, request the budget, the reserve schedule, the master insurance policy and the minutes from the last year of meetings; the roof program will be in them. For a detached house, confirm whether the association is mandatory and what it actually maintains. None of the villages is gated, so security and streets are county matters.

The public park is Devon Aire Park at 10411 SW 122nd Avenue, a county park of 11.83 acres with baseball, softball, soccer and basketball facilities, tennis courts with pickleball lines, a playground and restrooms; everything but the tennis courts is lighted, and the county runs its Fit2Play summer camp there. The schools listed for the CDP are Calusa Elementary, Devon Aire K-8 Center, Arvida Middle School and Miami Killian Senior High. Arvida Middle, at 10900 SW 127th Avenue, opened in 1975 and runs two magnet tracks, a Global Academy and a forensic science and fine arts program that was the first of its kind in the county.

Kendall Drive is the commute road: east to the Turnpike interchange and on to SR 874, Dadeland and the Metrorail. Shopping is the strip centers along Kendall Drive and SW 137th Avenue. Confirm any school assignment with the district boundary tool rather than the listing.

Order wind mitigation and four-point inspections on anything here; every house predates the 1994 South Florida code revisions and the 2002 statewide code, and the insurer will price the roof, the openings and the electrical panel. Pull the county permit history for enclosed patios, converted garages and roof replacements, which are common in 1970s subdivisions and often unpermitted.

Pull the FEMA flood zone for the exact address. The Crossings is inland at about seven feet of elevation, but Kendall's lakes and canals put many parcels in Zone AH or AE, and flood insurance is required for any federally backed mortgage in a Special Flood Hazard Area. The county hotline is 305-372-6466. Then read the village association's documents before your inspection period closes.

Buyers in The Crossings compare on the age of the roof and windows, on whether the lot backs onto a lake or a road, and, for townhomes, on the dues and whether the roof assessment is behind the seller or ahead of the buyer. Lead with documents: a wind mitigation report, permit-closed roof and window work, and the association's current budget.

Price against the same village and product. A 1980s lake-lot house in The Crossings is not a comparable for a Devon-Aire townhome, and neither compares to a gated 1990s community west of SW 137th Avenue. Name the village and the nearest Kendall Drive intersection in the first line of the listing; that is how buyers here search.