What happens if there's an open permit on the property before closing?

A building permit is opened when work is done that needs one. It is closed when the municipality performs a final inspection and signs off. An open permit is one where that last step never happened. The work may be finished and perfectly sound; what is missing is the municipality's record that it was inspected.

Permits stay open for ordinary reasons. A contractor finished the job and moved on without calling for the final. An owner did the work themselves and did not know an inspection was required. A permit was pulled, the job was cancelled, and nobody withdrew the permit.

A title search reads the public records of the county — deeds, mortgages, liens, judgments, anything recorded against the property. An open permit is not recorded there. It sits in the municipality's building department system.

That is why a separate municipal lien search is ordered on a purchase. It queries the city or county for the things that do not appear in the official records: open or expired permits, code enforcement cases, unpaid utility balances, special assessments, and open violations.

We order one on every purchase file, as a matter of course, rather than waiting to be asked or waiting to see whether the contract requires it. The search costs a fraction of what a missed open permit costs, and the whole point of ordering it is that nobody knows in advance which files need it.

Sometimes. Not by itself, and not usually: it is a contract question before it is a title question, and the purchase contract decides who has to resolve it and by when. What stops a closing is the combination — a permit that cannot be closed out in the time available, and no holdback large enough to make the buyer comfortable going ahead without it.

On the FAR/BAR "AS IS" Residential Contract, the provision is paragraph 12(c). The seller has to disclose open or expired building permits, code violations, citations and open cases, and unpermitted work. Closing them out is the buyer's, and the seller's obligation is to cooperate — to sign what has to be signed and give access — without being required to spend money doing it.

That allocation is the default, and it is the one most surprises come from: a buyer who assumed the seller would fix it, reading paragraph 12(c) for the first time in the last week before closing. It is also freely negotiable, and on many files it is negotiated — by addendum, by a credit, or by an escrow holdback against the close-out.

The standard FAR/BAR Residential Contract, the non-"AS IS" form, allocates it the other way. Paragraph 9(a)(iii) sets a Permit Limit — a dollar figure or a percentage of the purchase price, 1.5% if left blank — and paragraph 12 requires the seller, up to that limit and no later than five days before closing, to have open and expired permits closed and to obtain and close permits for unpermitted work. If the cost runs past the limit, either side can elect to absorb the excess or take a credit, or terminate. So which form the parties signed changes the answer. We read the executed contract rather than assume the form.

The practical risk is what happens after closing. An unresolved open permit follows the property, not the seller. A new owner can find themselves needing to close out work they did not do, sometimes for a contractor they never hired, occasionally under a code that has changed since.

It depends on what the permit was for, how old it is, and what the municipality still has outstanding. In the simplest case a final inspection is scheduled, the inspector passes it, and the permit closes — about two weeks, most of it waiting for an inspection slot. Where the work no longer meets current code, the original contractor is gone, or the permit was never pulled at all, it takes longer and the route changes.

Every file is different, but a close-out happens in one of these ways:

• The seller or the contractor completes the outstanding inspections. The permit is live, the work will pass, and what is missing is the inspection nobody called.
• The municipality closes the permit on the documentation already in its file. Where the record is enough to close it, nothing has to be opened up or re-inspected.
• An after-the-fact permit, or legalization of the work. The work was never permitted. Plans, fees and inspection follow, and this is the route that can require the work to be opened up or redone. Where the jurisdiction offers one, a contractor affidavit or a municipal amnesty program is part of how this route is worked.
• Corrective work, then inspection. The work will not pass as built, so something changes before the inspector comes back.
• An escrow or other contractual arrangement, where that is appropriate and permitted by the underwriter and the applicable requirements. This lets the transaction close; it does not close the permit, which still has to be closed afterwards.

What any of that costs is not one number, and the part that is published is the smallest part of it. Boca Raton charges $79 for a re-inspection and caps the renewal or reapplication of an expired permit at the original permit fee or $182 (user fee schedule, effective 1 October 2025). Unincorporated Palm Beach County charges $50 for a first re-inspection, $100 for a second and $200 for a third, and $67 for an individual open permit search (fee schedule, as printed 2 March 2026). Every municipality publishes its own and the figures move, so the schedule in force on the day is the one that governs — and the rules differ as much as the fees do, which is why the jurisdiction is established before anything is promised.

What no schedule contains is the work itself — the contractor, and a design professional where the route needs one. That is why the permit type, the jurisdiction, the status of the work and the inspections outstanding get established before anyone is given an estimate.

Some situations are not a clearance step at all. Where a file is one of those, we refer it to an attorney or another qualified professional rather than working it as a title item.

If the parties disagree about who bears the cost, if a code enforcement case has already been opened, or if there is a lien attached to the violation, that is a dispute rather than a clearance step. A Florida real estate attorney should be advising on it.