Florida Stopped Requiring Permits for Some Repairs on July 1. Your Permit Search Now Has a Blind Spot.

Most of my buyers ask for the permit history on a home, and until this summer that history told the whole story. Since July 1, 2026, Florida lets the owner of a single-family home do work valued under $7,500 with no building permit at all. The paper trail does not stop because someone cut a corner. It stops because the law changed.

What Changed on July 1

House Bill 803 took effect July 1, 2026. It exempts work on a single-family residential property from the building permit requirement when the job cost is less than $7,500, measured by a proposal or estimate.

That is a real change to how a home reads on paper. A kitchen refresh, a fence, interior finishes, a re-tile. Work done after July 1 in that range can be legal, complete, and invisible in the permit record.

So the old shortcut no longer works. A clean permit search used to mean nobody had touched the house. Now it can also mean somebody touched it under $7,500.

The Exemption Is Narrower Than It Sounds

Fort Lauderdale publishes its own quick guide to the bill, and the exclusion list is long. The exemption does not apply to:

• Electrical work
• Plumbing work
• Mechanical work, including air conditioning systems
• Gas work
• Structural work
• Work on properties located partially or entirely within a Special Flood Hazard Area
• Work on commercial properties
• Work on multifamily properties, condominiums, or apartments

Read the sixth line again. In Fort Lauderdale the flood map does most of the filtering here. A large share of this city sits in a Special Flood Hazard Area, and a home inside one gets no exemption at any dollar figure. The City's GIS Flood Zones App gives the designation for a specific address. Zones AE, AO and AH are the inland high-risk designations. VE is the coastal high hazard designation. X is low to moderate.

There is also a local step that works in a buyer's favor. Fort Lauderdale requires an applicant to submit an exemption form and wait for a written determination from the City before starting work. So an exempt job still leaves a record with the City. It is just not a permit record, and it will not surface in an ordinary permit search.

Run the Permit Search Anyway

The exemption narrows what a permit search catches. It does not make the search optional. Everything structural, electrical, plumbing, mechanical and gas still runs through the permit system, and that is where the expensive problems live.

Fort Lauderdale's portal is LauderBuild, the City's Accela Citizen Access system, at aca3.accela.com/FTL. Anyone can run a basic record search without creating an account. Search by street number and street name only. Adding the street type narrows it too far and returns nothing.

You are looking for two things. Permits that were issued and never finaled. And a permit history that does not match what you are standing in.

An Open Permit Is Not the Deal Killer People Think

Buyers hear "open permit" and start planning an exit. Florida law has quietly made that reaction outdated.

Section 553.79(16)(a) of the Florida Statutes lets a property owner close a building permit regardless of whether that owner is the one listed on the permit application. You do not have to track down the previous homeowner.

Section 553.79(16)(b) covers the expired permit whose requirements have been substantially completed, as determined by the local enforcement agency. It may be closed without obtaining a new permit, and the work to close it may be done under the building code in effect when the local enforcement agency received the original application. That matters in a state that rewrites its code every three years.

Section 553.79(17)(a) is the one to know at the closing table. A local enforcement agency may not deny a building permit to, issue a notice of violation to, or fine, penalize, sanction or assess fees against an arms-length purchaser of a property for value solely because a building permit applied for by a previous owner was not closed.

An open permit is not a lien. It is a task with a cost attached.

What Cleaning It Up Costs

The City's fee structure is public and simple in shape. A permit renewed before it expires costs 50% of the original permit fee. Renewed after expiration, it is 100% of the original fee. A permit can be renewed once. Beyond that it is the decision of the Building Official.

I am not going to put a total cleanup figure in this post. The renewal fee is the smallest part of it. The real cost depends on what the inspector finds when the work is finally opened up, and that is not a number anyone can quote from a desk.

One more timing detail worth holding. An application for a permit is deemed abandoned 180 days after filing, unless it has been pursued in good faith or a permit was issued. Applications and issued permits are different animals, and people mix them up constantly.

What I Do Before We Write the Offer

I have spent 17 years in this market, and the permit question has moved from a formality to a real piece of diligence this year. Here is the order I work in.

1. Pull the full LauderBuild record by address, not just the last five years
2. Check the flood zone designation first, because it decides whether the exemption could ever have applied
3. Compare the permit history against the square footage and the room count on the Broward County Property Appraiser record
4. Flag any permit issued and never finaled, then price the close-out before we negotiate, not after
5. Ask the homeowner directly, in writing, about any work done since July 1, 2026 under the exemption
6. Ask whether the City issued a written exemption determination, and ask for a copy

That last one is new this year, and almost nobody is asking for it yet.

A permit search is not paperwork. It is the only honest record of what has been done to a house, and this year it reads differently than it did in June. Fort Lauderdale rewards buyers who know which records exist and where they live.

If you are looking at a home here and want the permit history read properly before you commit, reach out to me and the MPH Team. We will pull it together and tell you what it actually says.