Every property in Miami-Dade and Broward has a permit history attached to it. Open permits, closed permits, voided permits, plan revisions, inspection records — all of it lives in publicly accessible municipal databases. You can pull most of it yourself for free in about 20 minutes, and every Miami-Dade or Broward homeowner should know how.
This article walks through the exact step-by-step method for pulling your property's permit history in Miami-Dade and Broward. It also covers the limitations of the do-it-yourself approach and when paying for professional research saves enough time and risk to be worth it.
What you'll need before you start
- Your property's folio number (Miami-Dade) or property ID (Broward) — a 13-digit number unique to every parcel. Find it on your most recent tax bill, or look it up using the Property Appraiser's address search.
- The municipality your property is in — this matters because every city in Miami-Dade and Broward keeps its own permit database. Unincorporated properties go through the county. Coral Gables, Doral, Miami Beach, and most other cities maintain their own systems.
- Your address — backup identifier if folio search fails.
Miami-Dade County (unincorporated areas)
For properties in unincorporated Miami-Dade — most of Kendall, Cutler Bay (some areas), Country Walk, Hammocks, parts of West Kendall and South Dade — permits run through the county's RER (Regulatory and Economic Resources) system.
- Go to www.miamidade.gov/permits
- Click "Permit Lookup" or "Search Permits"
- Enter your folio number or address
- The results page lists every permit ever filed on the property, with permit number, type, status, dates, and applicant information
- Click each permit to see inspection records, plan revisions, and any associated code-enforcement actions
City of Miami
- Go to iBuild.miamigov.com — the City of Miami's online permit portal
- Use the address or folio search
- Click into each permit for full inspection history and document downloads
City of Miami permits often include scanned PDFs of the original plans, inspection sign-offs, and Certificate of Occupancy where issued. This is one of the more transparent municipal portals in South Florida.
Coral Gables, Doral, Miami Beach, and other municipalities
Each city has its own portal. Common patterns:
- Coral Gables — accessible through coralgables.com → Departments → Development Services → Permit Search
- Doral — cityofdoral.com → Services → Building → Permit Search
- Miami Beach — miamibeachfl.gov → Online Services → Permit & Plan Tracking
- Pinecrest — pinecrest-fl.gov → Building & Planning → Permit Lookup
- Hialeah — hialeahfl.gov → City Services → Permits
- Homestead — cityofhomestead.com → Departments → Building → Permit Inquiry
Each portal works slightly differently. Some require account creation; most allow anonymous search. Each shows the same general data: permit number, application date, work type, status (open/closed/expired/voided), inspection history, and the applicant.
Broward County
- For unincorporated Broward: broward.org/permits
- For Fort Lauderdale: fortlauderdale.gov → Departments → Sustainable Development → Permit Search
- For Hollywood: hollywoodfl.org → Departments → Building → Online Permit Search
- For other Broward cities: each maintains its own portal — check the city's official website
How to read what you find
Once you have the list of permits on your property, look for these patterns:
Open permits
Any permit with status "Open," "In Progress," "Active," or anything other than "Closed," "Finaled," or "Voided." Open permits stay on the property record indefinitely until they're either finaled (passed final inspection) or voided (administratively closed). They surface during title searches, refinance underwriting, and four-point inspections, and they routinely block real estate transactions until resolved.
Expired permits
Permits that lapsed without final inspection. Many municipalities don't auto-close expired permits — they sit on the record indefinitely. Florida HB 803 (effective July 1, 2026) introduces uniform expiration rules for some county permits — see our HB 803 guide for details — but the legacy backlog of expired-but-not-closed permits is significant.
Permit gaps
This is what most people miss. Compare the permit list against the visible structures and improvements on your property. If you have a pergola, deck, screen enclosure, room addition, garage conversion, pool, or any meaningful structure that doesn't appear in the permit list — that's a permit gap. It may indicate unpermitted work. Permit gaps are the single most common issue we surface during MyHausFax research.
Inspection failures
Within each permit, the inspection history shows passed and failed inspections. A pattern of failed inspections on a closed permit isn't necessarily a problem — but a failed inspection on an open permit is the reason the permit never closed and is the issue you'll need to resolve to get it closed.
What the public portals don't show you
The DIY method has real limitations:
- Code-enforcement files are usually in a separate database from building permits. You have to check both. Code-enforcement liens may be recorded against the property even when the permit history looks clean.
- Recorded liens live in the Clerk of Courts records (different system again). Mortgages, judgments, lis pendens, federal tax liens, construction liens — none of these show up in the building permit search.
- 40-year recertification status in Miami-Dade is tracked in a separate system from building permits. A building 40+ years old with no recertification record may be on a Notice of Required Inspection that doesn't appear in standard permit search.
- Flood zone, coastal control line, hurricane evacuation designations are in FEMA and Miami-Dade Emergency Management systems.
- UCC filings and tax-deed cases live in state and county courts systems.
- Cross-municipal history — if your property has been annexed or rezoned over decades, some permit history may be in the previous jurisdiction's records, not the current one.
For a complete property compliance picture, you'd need to check 6–8 different government databases, cross-reference them, and interpret the legal status of each finding. That's roughly 4–8 hours of focused work for a single property if you know exactly where to look.
When the DIY method is enough
The free public-portal method works well for:
- A quick sanity check on your property before a small project
- Verifying a single permit is properly closed
- Researching the previous owner's history for context
- Confirming an inspection date you remember from years ago
When professional research is worth it
The free method falls short when you need:
- A complete compliance picture across permit, code enforcement, recorded liens, recertification status, and environmental flags
- A documented report you can hand to a title company, lender, attorney, or insurance underwriter
- Identification of permit gaps — work that should have been permitted but wasn't (you can't easily find this yourself; it requires comparing the permit list against on-the-ground reality)
- A reproducible score that quantifies the property's compliance posture for before/after comparison
For this we built the MyHausFax™ Property Compliance Report. We pull from every relevant government database, cross-reference everything, identify the permit gaps, and deliver it as a one-page report with a 0-to-100 HauScore™ on the cover. The report includes the line-item findings, links to the source records, and the resolution path for any issues identified.
It's free with every Permit Solutions Services consultation. If you'd rather not spend an afternoon on six government portals, request a Snapshot and we'll deliver the same picture (and more) within one business day.
Permit Solutions Services is a Miami-based specialist firm resolving permit violations, after-the-fact permits, open permits, and complex compliance cases across Miami-Dade and Broward counties. Request a free MyHausFax™ Snapshot or call 305-600-9422.