I entered into a preconstruction contract in Miami about two years ago. We were recently told that one of the developers had backed out of the deal and as such, the project as originally described would not be going forward.

The developers offered to refund us our initial 15% deposit with interest, however, when the settlement letter came, it included a less than 1% interest payment.

I have two questions:

1) what are the legal rules concerning how much interest is supposed to be paid on such a deposit? The contract is silent to this effect.

2) the developer did mention that they might go through with a different project, a hotel in its place. If we were to leave our money with the developers and try to get into this new project, are there any laws governing how we would get an equitable amount of the project? For example, in the original project we were at $700 a square foot for a two bedroom unit.

Thanks.

I don't think you have any rights. Basically you entered into a speculation by buying pre-construction. You are lucky to get your deposit back.