"There's An Open Permit On My House" — It Won't Stop Our Closing.

"What is an open permit, and why do I have one?"

Somebody pulled a permit to do work on your house — windows, a roof, an A/C changeout, an addition — and the job never got its final inspection. It may have been you, it may have been an owner before you, and the work itself may be perfectly fine and finished years ago. On the county or city record, it is still open.

Most sellers find out at the worst possible moment: after a contract is signed, when title or the buyer's lender runs the property and the closing stops.

"Why did my sale fall apart over it?"

A retail buyer is nearly always using a mortgage. Their lender and their title company want a clean record. Closing out an old permit means bringing the work up to whatever code applies now, getting an inspector back out, and sometimes hiring an engineer to certify work nobody witnessed. That's weeks, and it's money, and the seller is the one expected to spend both while a buyer waits and eventually walks.

We're buying with cash and we're doing work on the house anyway. Closing permits out is already part of what we do, so it's a line item on our side instead of an emergency on yours.

"Who pays to close the permit out?"

We bought a house in West Little River in 2023 with open permits on window work. Rather than push it back to the seller, we hired an engineer ourselves to inspect and certify the work so the permits could be closed out before we closed on the purchase. The seller didn't pay for it and didn't manage it.

"I have open permits and a tenant — is it unsellable?"

We closed on a house in Allapattah carrying two open permits with violations attached — a roof and an air conditioning changeout — with a month-to-month tenant living in it. Any one of those three things would have been enough to end a conventional sale. All three together, and the house was effectively unsellable on the open market without months of work first.

We bought it as it stood, took the permits on as our problem from the day we closed, and kept the tenant. They seem like good people, and the plan is to improve the house around them so that staying is the easy choice. Buying an occupied property does not have to mean somebody loses their home.

"The city says my building has to come down"

The most severe thing the city can put on a building is an order to demolish it. Faced with one, most buyers either walk away or reprice the property as bare land, and tell the owner that is simply what it is worth now.

Sometimes that is true. Often nobody has checked. We have bought a Little Havana property carrying a demolition order on one of its three buildings, put our own attorney in front of the city before closing, and agreed a plan to repair the building rather than lose it. That plan is what made the purchase safe — we closed knowing exactly what was required rather than discovering it from an inspector afterwards.

The point for an owner is narrow but useful: before you accept that your building has to come down, find out whether anyone has actually asked. And that work belongs on the buyer's side of the table, at the buyer's expense.

"If it does have to come down, should I let the city do it?"

Sometimes a structure genuinely has to go. Even then there is a decision worth understanding, because it is worth real money.

If the city carries out the demolition, the cost of the work and the fines attached to it are charged back against the property, and that total is normally a good deal higher than arranging the work privately would have been. On a Little Haiti parcel with two condemned shells on it, we reached an agreement with the city to demolish privately instead. It cost less, it moved faster, and it took two dangerous buildings down sooner than waiting for the city would have.

If you are sitting on a demolition order and hoping it resolves itself, that is the expensive option quietly becoming the default.

"What about the code enforcement fines?"

Code enforcement fines accrue daily, which is why owners are shocked by the totals. They attach to the property, so they follow the house rather than the person. In practice they get resolved at closing out of the proceeds — often negotiated down — and title clears.

The thing not to do is wait. A violation you ignore for another six months is a larger number, and the same is true of unpaid taxes.

"What should I do first?"

Pull your own permit history before you talk to anyone. Miami-Dade and each city keep it online, and it takes ten minutes. Knowing what's open on your house is the difference between negotiating and being ambushed. If something's there, it doesn't change whether we'll buy — it changes how the closing is scheduled.

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Selling a House in Probate · Inherited a House That Needs Work · When Heirs Disagree · Selling a Hoarder House · Stalled Builds & Unsafe Structures · Spotting a Real Cash Buyer · Inherited a Reverse Mortgage · Behind on an FHA Loan