Florida Building Permits: Step-by-Step Guide (2026)

Getting a Florida building permit comes down to one rule: the state writes the code, but your city or county issues the permit. Every project that erects, constructs, alters, repairs, moves, or demolishes a structure falls under Chapter 553 of the Florida Statutes, and the Florida Building Code — currently the 8th Edition, in effect since December 31, 2023 — sets the technical bar you have to meet. Which department you apply to, what it costs, and how long it takes, though, are decided locally.

That split confuses a lot of homeowners. Two houses ten minutes apart can face different fees, different portals, and different review timelines because one sits inside city limits and the other in unincorporated county territory. Add hurricane zones, flood maps, and a major new law — House Bill 803, effective July 1, 2026 — and the process can feel like it was designed to trip you up.

This guide walks through the whole thing in order: when a permit is required and when the new $7,500 exemption applies, who issues your permit, the exact application steps, the state deadlines that cap your wait, what fees look like, the hurricane and flood rules unique to Florida, and when you can legally pull the permit yourself. Requirements change at the local level, so always confirm specifics with your building department before work starts — but this is the map.

When Florida Requires a Building Permit

Florida Statute 553.79 is the anchor: no one may "erect, construct, alter, repair, move, demolish, or change the occupancy" of a building without first applying for and receiving a permit from the local enforcement authority. The property owner isn't required to sign a permit application unless they're personally responsible for the construction — whoever pulls the permit carries the legal responsibility for the work.

In practice, that statute covers most projects that touch the structure, the plumbing, the electrical system, or the building envelope. Here's how common homeowner projects shake out under the state code:

The New $7,500 Exemption Under HB 803

The biggest change to Florida's permit rules in years took effect July 1, 2026. Under HB 803, local governments can no longer require a building permit for qualifying residential work valued at less than $7,500 on single-family homes. Cities across the state posted notices about it — Homestead and Palmetto Bay both published explanations for their residents over the summer.

The law did more than create the exemption. It set mandatory permit review deadlines, expanded the authority of private providers to do plan reviews, and limited the conditions homeowners associations can attach before a permit application. We'll come back to the review deadlines in the step-by-step section, because they now work in your favor.

Don't treat the $7,500 exemption as a blank check. The exemption applies to qualifying work — and value documentation matters, since exceeding the threshold puts you back in the permit process entirely. Structural work, additions, and anything involving regulated systems is where local building departments expect you to look carefully before relying on the exemption. The safest habit is simple: before skipping a permit on a smaller job, call your building department, describe the project, and get the answer in writing or by email.

Read the bill itself on the Florida Senate site: HB 803 (2026), and see Homestead's homeowner notice here.

Work Exempt From Permit Under the Florida Building Code

Below the HB 803 threshold, the Florida Building Code has always listed its own exemptions. Section R105.2 of the residential code skips permits for one-story detached accessory structures of 200 square feet or less that aren't built for habitation, fences 6 feet tall or shorter, and cosmetic work like painting and wallcovering. The full list lives in the 2023 FBC, 8th Edition, and it's worth ten minutes of reading before any small project.

Two catches trip homeowners up. First, counties can and do amend the exemption downward — some Florida counties require permits for accessory structures well under the state threshold, and a few cities bolt on their own rules. Second, the exemption usually disappears the moment you add electricity, plumbing, or air conditioning to a "small" structure.

Fences follow the same pattern: the state exemption stops at 6 feet, but height limits, materials, and location rules are local — the details live in fence permit requirements by project type.

If you're weighing a storage shed, the details matter by state and by size — the statewide shed permit rules in plain language walk through the thresholds, and the same logic applies in Florida with the 200 sq ft cap. When in doubt, a five-minute call to the building department settles it.

Who Issues Your Permit: City or County

Florida has 67 counties and more than 400 municipalities, and the permit desk you visit depends purely on your address. Inside city limits, the city's building department handles permits and inspections. In unincorporated areas — most of the land between cities — the county does it. Living two blocks across a boundary line can change your fees, your portal, and your inspector.

Nearly every major jurisdiction has moved applications online. Miami-Dade, Hillsborough's HillsGovHub, Orange County's FastTrack, and Jacksonville's EPICS portal all accept submissions, payments, and inspection requests through the web. Smaller counties accept email or in-person applications, and rural offices often review simple residential permits faster than big-city queues.

The Florida Permit Process, Step by Step

Step 1: Confirm your jurisdiction and check the layers above it

Start with your property's exact address. Call or check the website of the department that covers it — county or city — and confirm they're the enforcement authority for your project. While you're there, ask about zoning: setbacks, lot coverage, and flood zone designation all shape what you can build before anyone reviews a plan.

If you're in an HOA community, remember that architectural approval is private and separate from the public permit. HB 803 now limits the prerequisites local governments may demand, but it doesn't dissolve your HOA's covenants. Run the ARC process in parallel so neither review blocks the other.

Step 2: Prepare your plans and documents

Simple projects — a re-roof, a water heater, a like-for-like window swap — usually need a short scope description, a site plan or survey, and contractor information. Bigger projects need drawn plans, and Florida requires those plans to be signed and sealed by a Florida-licensed engineer or architect when the structure or its systems are being designed rather than built to a prescriptive code recipe.

In wind-prone areas, product documentation joins the stack. Windows, doors, shutters, and roofing may need to show an approved product rating — more on how that works in the hurricane section below.

Step 3: Submit the application

Submit through your jurisdiction's portal or counter. You'll list the property owner, the contractor of record with their state license number, the project scope, and the estimated job value — and that valuation drives your fee, so declare it honestly. If you're doing the work yourself as the homeowner, you'll sign an owner-builder affidavit instead of listing a contractor, which is a legal commitment with real obligations attached.

Step 4: Plan review — now on a state clock

This is where 2026 law matters most. Under Florida's review-deadline framework (Statute 553.7921 and related law), once you submit a complete qualifying residential application, the building department generally has 30 business days to complete the first plan review cycle. If reviewers flag corrections, the applicant has 10 business days to respond — Miami-Dade's own notice to applicants uses exactly that window. And under HB 803, when you use a private provider for plan review, the department gets 10 business days to review the plans or issue the permit.

Read that as a floor, not a promise of instant approval. Complex submittals can still take multiple correction cycles, and each cycle restarts parts of the clock. The deadline law caps inaction; it can't force a flawless first submission.

Step 5: Pay the fees and get your permit

Once plans pass, the department invoices the permit fee. Pay it, download the permit, and post it at the job site if you're working on the structure. Work can legally start the moment the permit is issued — not before, and not while review is still open.

Step 6: Pass the inspections

Permits come with a required inspection sequence: typically footing, framing, electrical rough-in, and final inspections, varying by project. You or your contractor schedule each inspection through the portal or by phone, and the inspector signs off before you cover the work — drywall over an uninspected frame is the classic (and expensive) mistake. Failed inspections get corrected and re-inspected; the permit doesn't close until the sequence is complete.

Step 7: Close out the permit

The final inspection triggers a certificate of completion or, for habitable additions, a certificate of occupancy. Keep the closed permit with your house records. Buyers' agents, insurers, and appraisers in Florida routinely check permit histories, and an open or expired permit can surface during a sale at the worst possible time.

How Long Does a Florida Building Permit Take?

With the statutory deadlines in place, a straightforward residential application with clean plans can clear review in a few weeks, and over-the-counter permits — re-roofs, water heaters, fence repairs above 6 feet — are often issued the same day in many jurisdictions. Complex new construction or anything in a coastal flood zone takes longer, especially if correction cycles pile up.

The honest framing: Florida law now caps how long the government can sit on a qualifying application, but your preparation controls most of the real timeline. A complete application with sealed plans and product approvals attached moves at the legal speed. A thin application moves at the speed of your corrections.

Permit timing varies wildly by state, and Florida's new statutory deadlines put it ahead of most of the country — how long building permits take in general puts the Florida framework in context. One more clock matters after issuance: Miami-Dade gives you 180 days to complete permitted work, and the City of Orlando requires renewal of permits that expire before close-out. Don't pull a permit months ahead of the actual work.

What a Florida Building Permit Costs

Florida doesn't set a statewide permit fee — each jurisdiction adopts its own schedule, usually built from a base fee plus a charge per $1,000 of declared project valuation, plus a plan review component. Additions and new construction can also trigger impact fees, which fund roads, schools, and utilities; those are billed separately from the permit itself and can exceed it. Orange County, for example, publishes its impact fee schedules alongside its permit fees.

Small rural counties show the formula in its simplest form. Franklin County's published schedule charges no fee at all for work valued at $1,000 or less (unless an inspection is required, then $50), and for jobs from $1,001 to $50,000 it's $50 for the first $1,000 plus $5 per additional $1,000 of valuation. Bigger jurisdictions scale the same idea with larger minimums and more line items.

As a planning number, small residential jobs (fence, water heater, small deck) commonly land under a few hundred dollars in most Florida jurisdictions, while new-home permits run into the thousands before impact fees. For the bigger picture, see what building permits cost state by state — then price your specific job against your own county's fee schedule, because two neighboring counties genuinely charge different totals.

Hurricane and Flood Rules That Change Your Permit

The High-Velocity Hurricane Zone

Miami-Dade and Broward counties sit inside the High-Velocity Hurricane Zone (HVHZ), the toughest wind zone in the country. Structures there are designed for 175-mph equivalent wind pressures, and the code treats product selection as a permit question: windows, exterior doors, roofing systems, and shutters must carry an approved product rating. Statewide, that's a Florida Product Approval number; in the HVHZ it typically means a Miami-Dade Notice of Acceptance (NOA) or equivalent.

You can search both on the Florida Building Commission's product approval database before you buy anything. A product approved for the rest of Florida isn't automatically approved for the HVHZ — checking the listing first prevents the most expensive surprise in the process.

Wind-borne debris regions outside the HVHZ

The rest of coastal Florida follows wind speed maps that still exceed most states' requirements. Coastal counties from the Panhandle to the Keys fall within wind-borne debris regions where impact-resistant glazing or shutters are required on new construction. Your plans will show the design wind speed for your address, and inspectors check that installed products match the submitted ratings.

The FEMA 50 percent rule

If your property sits in a Special Flood Hazard Area, flood rules ride on top of everything else. Under the "substantial improvement" rule that local floodplain offices administer, if the cost of a renovation or repair reaches 50 percent of the building's market value, the entire structure must be brought up to current flood code — elevation, foundations, utilities, the works.

Pinellas County administers this through its substantial damage and improvement program, and Fort Myers Beach publishes a plain-English FAQ on the 50 percent rule. FEMA's substantial improvement guidance explains the federal baseline. After a hurricane, this rule shapes what thousands of Florida homeowners are allowed to rebuild — know your building's value relative to your planned costs before you design the project.

Pulling Your Own Permit as an Owner-Builder

Florida is one of the states where a homeowner can legally act as their own contractor. Under the owner-builder exemption in Statute 489.103(7), a property owner can pull permits on their own residence without holding a contractor's license — you build or improve the structure yourself, with your own hands or with workers you directly supervise.

The exemption has strings. You must personally appear and sign the permit application, and you take on the same legal responsibility a licensed contractor would carry: code compliance, inspections, and liability for worker safety on your property. The exemption also narrows if the home is being improved for resale — Florida's contractor-licensing law treats property flipping as contracting, not owner-builder work.

There's a difference between pulling the permit yourself and hiring trades. Even as an owner-builder, anyone you hire to work on your home must hold the appropriate Florida license for the trade. Check licenses through the Department of Business and Professional Regulation before money changes hands — unlicensed work doesn't just risk bad construction, it can void your permit and leave code violations on your property record.

If You Build Without the Permit

Skip the permit and the work doesn't stop being regulated — it just becomes unpermitted. Florida local governments run code enforcement, and unpermitted work gets discovered in mundane ways: a neighbor's complaint, a routine appraisal, an insurance inspection, or the permit history check during a home sale. Enforcement typically starts with a stop-work order and a notice of violation, and fines accrue daily in many jurisdictions.

Fixing it means an after-the-fact permit, which can require opening finished walls for inspection, paying doubled fees in some cities, and sometimes removing work entirely. Unpermitted improvements can also complicate insurance claims and spook buyers, who inherit the violation with the house. The full chain of consequences — fines, resale impacts, and how retroactive permitting works — is covered in what happens if you build without a permit.

Common Questions From Florida Homeowners

Do I need a building permit for a shed in Florida?

Not if it's a one-story detached shed of 200 square feet or less, used for storage, with no plumbing, electrical, or mechanical connections — that combination is exempt under FBC section R105.2. Go over 200 sq ft, add utilities, or attach it to your house, and a permit is required. Zoning setbacks apply either way, and some counties tighten the exemption further.

What is the $7,500 permit exemption in Florida?

A provision of House Bill 803, effective July 1, 2026, that stops local governments from requiring a building permit for qualifying residential work valued under $7,500 on single-family homes. The exemption has conditions, and it doesn't waive zoning or HOA covenants — confirm your specific project with your building department before relying on it.

How long does it take to get a building permit in Florida?

State law caps the first plan review at 30 business days for qualifying residential applications, and 10 business days when a private provider performs the review. Simple over-the-counter permits can be issued same-day; complex projects take longer, especially through correction cycles.

Can a homeowner pull their own building permit in Florida?

Yes. The owner-builder exemption in Statute 489.103(7) lets you pull permits on your own residence without a contractor license, provided you personally sign the application, supervise the work, and don't treat the home as resale inventory. Any hired tradespeople still must be state-licensed.

Do I need a permit to replace my roof in Florida?

Yes. Roof replacement requires a permit everywhere in Florida, and the new roofing must use products with an approved rating — a Florida Product Approval, or a Miami-Dade NOA inside the HVHZ. The permit also covers the inspection of underlayment and decking, which is why re-roofing without one causes problems at sale time.

What is the FEMA 50 percent rule in Florida?

In a Special Flood Hazard Area, if your renovation or repair costs equal or exceed 50 percent of your building's market value, the structure is a "substantial improvement" and the whole building must be brought to current flood standards. Local floodplain offices administer it — Pinellas and Fort Myers Beach both publish homeowner guidance on the math.