This is genuinely most of what we get paid to do, written out for free. If your property is straightforward you can do this yourself in an afternoon. If it isn't, at least you'll know what you're dealing with before you call anyone.
The trap here is that the county and the cities keep separate records. Searching one and stopping is how people miss half their permit history.
Start at the Miami-Dade Property Appraiser and search your address. The 13-digit folio is the number every permit record is tied to. Addresses get typed inconsistently over 40 years; folios don't.
Open the official portal ↗Miami-Dade's permit search covers permits issued by the county, which is what you need for unincorporated addresses and for county-level reviews like DERM.
Open the official portal ↗This is the step people skip. If your property is in the City of Miami, Miami Beach, Hialeah, or any other municipality, that city issued its own permits and the county search won't show them. Go to that city's portal separately.
Open the official portal ↗For multi-family and commercial buildings, Miami-Dade publishes recertification status separately from permit records.
Open the official portal ↗Easier than Miami-Dade, because the county and its municipalities share one submission and review portal.
Broward County Property Appraiser. Same idea: search the address, get the folio, and use that as your key.
Open the official portal ↗Broward and its municipalities share this portal, which is a real advantage over Miami-Dade. It covers municipal building permits alongside Broward County Building Code Division permits.
Open the official portal ↗Some cities run their own front end as well. Fort Lauderdale uses LauderBuild, for example, and some records are easier to read there.
Open the official portal ↗| Status | What it means for you |
|---|---|
| Issued but never finaled | The most common open permit. Work was permitted, maybe even done, but nobody called for the final inspection. The record stays open indefinitely. Often closable with an inspection, sometimes administratively. |
| Expired | Permits expire if no inspection activity happens within the jurisdiction's window. An expired permit is still an open record on the property, and it usually needs to be renewed or re-permitted to close. |
| Applied, never issued | Someone started an application and abandoned it. These are usually the easiest to resolve and sometimes clear on their own, but check rather than assume. |
| No permit at all | The hardest case, and you find it by comparing what's physically there against what the record shows. A converted garage, an enclosed patio, or an extra bathroom with nothing in the permit history means unpermitted work. |
| Closed / finaled | What you want to see. Work was permitted, inspected, and closed out properly. |
Open permits inside a 30-day window are not a DIY project. The research is easy; the closure work has queue times you can't compress by yourself.
Closing a permit pulled by a company that no longer exists requires a specific path, and it differs by jurisdiction and permit type.
If there's a bedroom, bathroom, or enclosed space that no permit ever mentions, you're in after-the-fact territory. Get an honest assessment before you spend anything.
Sometimes that means a clean property. Sometimes it means you searched the wrong jurisdiction. Those two look identical from the outside.
Official portal addresses change from time to time. If a link above no longer resolves, search for the department by name on the jurisdiction's own site rather than trusting a third-party mirror.
A full written permit history report takes 3 to 5 business days, with rush available. Flat quote, free to ask.