In order to help his clients close on units at the luxury St. Tropez condominium in Sunny Isles Beach, developer Joe Milton recently put up $100 million of his company’s cash to set up a mortgage company to fund loans.

That’s because foreign buyers — a key factor in the recent surge in home sales in South Florida — are often locked out of the market if they don’t have cash in hand.

“Sixty percent of our buyers are foreign,” yet there are no loans being made to foreign nationals, said Milton, president and chief executive of J. Milton & Associates in Coral Gables.

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