Sponsored content by PermitVista 

Eleven days before closing, the title company sends an email with the subject line “issue found.” A water heater replaced in 2019. Permit pulled, never finaled. Nobody knew it was there. 

This is one of the most common — and most preventable — ways South Florida deals fall apart. 

What an open permit actually is 

An open permit was issued but never closed out with a final inspection. The work may have been done perfectly. The contractor may be long gone. The permit stays attached to the property, not the person who pulled it. 

Three variations you’ll encounter: 

Open — issued, work possibly complete, no final inspection recorded. 

Expired — the permit aged out before final inspection. Common when a job stalled or a contractor moved on. 

Revoked — the jurisdiction pulled the permit, often after failed inspections or code violations. 

All three create the same problem at closing: a cloud on the property someone has to clear before the deal proceeds. 

Why it surfaces at the worst possible time 

Open permits typically appear during the title search — 10 to 14 days out. By then every option is bad. 

The seller can rush a close-out, which means hiring a contractor and scheduling inspection with a Miami-Dade, Broward or Palm Beach building department in the summer. Or the parties negotiate a holdback, renegotiating a deal already agreed. Or the buyer walks. 

None of it is your fault. All of it becomes your problem. 

The frustrating part: the information was public the whole time. Every Florida jurisdiction maintains permit records. They’re just scattered across dozens of separate municipal portals, each with its own interface and its own quirks. 

The condo wrinkle 

South Florida agents face a complication most of the country doesn’t: unit-level addresses. 

Search “1000 Ocean Drive, Unit 802” in a city portal and you’ll often get nothing. That doesn’t mean the building is clean — it means permits were filed at the base building address. Structural work, roof, elevator, electrical and 40-year recertification work all live at the building level. 

For a condo buyer, that history matters more than anything filed against their individual unit. A unit can be immaculate while the structure around it carries an open recertification permit. 

If a unit address returns nothing, strip the unit number and search the base address before concluding there’s nothing there. 

Checking early costs almost nothing 

The fix isn’t complicated. It’s a matter of when. 

Run the address at listing or before writing the offer. If something’s open, you have 60 days to resolve it instead of 11. A seller can close out a permit without drama when there’s runway. The same conversation two weeks out is a crisis. 

For listing agents, this is a differentiator. Walking into a listing appointment already knowing the property’s permit history — and telling a seller what to handle before it becomes a buyer’s leverage — is a materially different conversation than your competition is having. 

For buyer’s agents, it’s due diligence that costs less than a coffee and occasionally saves the transaction. 

How PermitVista helps 

We built PermitVista because pulling this manually meant a different city portal for every property, and most agents reasonably decided it wasn’t worth the time. 

Enter any Florida address and get a permit history report in seconds — every permit on record, with open, expired and revoked items flagged, in plain English rather than municipal shorthand. Condo addresses are handled at the building level. Reports link back to the official jurisdiction record so you can verify anything or hand it to a client. 

Search is free. You’ll see how many permits exist and how many are flagged before deciding whether you need the full report. 

South Florida Agent readers: use code AGENT50 at checkout for 50% off your first report at permitvista.com/?promo=AGENT50. 

PermitVista generates permit history reports from public records maintained by Florida municipalities and counties. Reports are informational and not a substitute for legal advice or an official municipal records search.