Can You Sell a House with an Open Permit or Unpermitted Work in Florida? (2026)

Short answer: yes, but it has to be dealt with, because the municipal lien search will find it and title insuranceA policy that protects against financial loss from defects in a property's title, such as undisclosed liens, forgery, or errors in public records, that a title search didn't catch. An owner's title insurance policy protects the buyer for as long as they (or their heirs) own the property, while a separate lender's title policy, required by most mortgage lenders, protects only the lender's interest in the loan amount. does not cover it. Florida law gives owners real remedies, including a six-year close-out path and protection for arms-length purchasers.

This one tends to arrive as a surprise about two weeks before closing, and the surprise is usually not the seller's fault. A permit from a water heater replaced in 2014, or a lanai enclosure the previous owner had done, sits open in a county database that nobody has looked at in a decade. Then a title company runs a search, and suddenly there is a problem with a closing date attached to it.

What an open permit actually is

An open permit means a permit was pulled for work on the property and the permit was never closed out. In the overwhelming majority of cases the work was finished and finished properly. What did not happen was the last step: somebody calling for the final inspection and the building department signing off.

The reasons are mundane. A contractor completed the job, got paid, and moved on to the next one without scheduling the final. A homeowner pulled the permit themselves and did not realize the process had a formal ending. A subcontractor closed their portion and everyone assumed the rest was handled.

So the typical open permit is not a story about dangerous construction. It is a story about paperwork. That is genuinely reassuring, and it is also completely irrelevant to the title company, because from where they sit an unfinished permit is an unfinished permit.

How it surfaces, and why the title search misses it

Here is the part most sellers have never been told: an open permit is not a recorded lien and not a title defect. It does not live in the official county records where a title search looks, and a standard owner title insurance policy does not cover it.

What finds it is a separate product called a municipal lien search, which Florida closing agents order on essentially every transaction. Rather than searching recorded documents, it queries city and county departmental records directly. It is looking for the category of obligations that can attach to a property without ever being recorded anywhere.

• Open and expired building permits
• Code enforcement violations and any fines running against the property
• Unpaid utility balances, including water and solid waste
• Special assessments that have not yet been recorded

The reason this search exists at all is that these obligations can follow the property to the next owner. A buyer who closes without one can inherit somebody else's unpaid code fine. That risk is why title companies treat the search as standard rather than optional, and it is why an open permit that has been dormant for a decade becomes urgent the moment a contract is signed.

Permits expire on their own

The Florida Building Code sets a shelf life on permits. Generally, a permit becomes invalid if the authorized work is not commenced within six months of issuance, or if the work is started and then suspended or abandoned for six months.

If a permit went null and void and the work still needs finishing, the code contemplates obtaining a new permit for the remaining construction, evaluated against the regulations in effect when the original permit lapsed and anything adopted since. In some circumstances a building official has authority to require that work already in place be removed, though that is the far end of the spectrum and not where a routine stale water heater permit lands.

Local jurisdictions amend the building code, so the specific timelines and the process for reinstating a lapsed permit vary between Sarasota County, Manatee County, and the individual cities. Parrish, for instance, is unincorporated, which means Manatee County handles permitting directly with no separate city layer. The department with jurisdiction over your address is the authority on your situation.

The 2019 law that made this much better

Florida addressed this problem directly, and the resulting remedies took effect on October 1, 2019, as amendments to Florida Statute 553.79. If you are reading older advice on this topic, it may predate them.

Two provisions matter most. First, a local enforcement agency may close a building permit six years after the permit was issued, even without a final inspection, if the agency determines that no apparent safety hazard exists. That gives genuinely ancient permits a defined path to resolution rather than leaving them open forever.

Second, and this is the one that keeps deals together: a local enforcement agency may not deny a building permit to, issue a notice of violation to, or fine, penalize, sanction, or assess fees against an arms-length purchaser of a property for value solely because a permit applied for by a previous owner was never closed.

Read that carefully, because it is easy to over-apply. It protects a buyer from being punished for an inherited open permit. It does not automatically erase the permit, it does not close it for you, and it does not stop the item from appearing on the municipal lien search and becoming a negotiating point on your closing. It removes the worst consequence. The seller still has a practical problem to solve.

Unpermitted work is a different animal

An open permit has a record with a loose end. Unpermitted work has no record at all: a room enclosed, an addition built, electrical run, a pool cage put up, and nobody ever went to the county.

That is harder, because there is nothing to simply close. The improvement has to be brought into the system after the fact, and the building department has to be satisfied that work it never inspected meets code. Depending on the jurisdiction and the nature of the work, that can mean opening a permit retroactively, providing engineering documentation, or exposing portions of the work so it can actually be inspected.

It also has knock-on effects that an open permit usually does not. An appraiser may decline to assign value to square footage that was never permitted, which can leave the appraised value short of the contract price. Some lenders take a hard line on financing a property with unpermitted living space. A buyer insuring the home may run into questions about it. And discrepancies between what the property appraiser has on record and what the building department has on record are precisely the kind of thing a careful buyer agent notices.

Your disclosure duty does not bend

Florida sellers must disclose known facts that materially affect the value of the property and are not readily observable. Unpermitted work generally qualifies, and so does an open permit you are aware of.

The as-is contract that dominates this market does not change this. As-is governs whether you are obligated to make repairs. It has nothing to do with whether you have to tell the truth about what you know. That distinction gets blurred constantly, and blurring it is how sellers end up in litigation after a closing they thought was behind them.

The practical version of the rule is short: if you know about it, put it on the disclosure. A buyer who learns about unpermitted work from you during the inspection period is a buyer negotiating. A buyer who learns about it after closing is a buyer calling a lawyer.

How sellers actually resolve it

Most of these situations have a straightforward path, and the paths differ in cost and in how long they take.

• Request the final inspection. If the work was completed properly and the permit is still active, this is sometimes all it takes, and it can resolve in days rather than weeks
• Reinstate or re-pull a lapsed permit, then complete the inspection. More steps, still routine
• Bring the original contractor back. If they are still licensed and in business, the company that pulled the permit is often the fastest route to closing it
• Pursue the six-year close-out under the statute where the permit is old enough and no safety hazard is present
• For unpermitted work, apply for a permit after the fact and go through whatever inspection or documentation the building department requires
• Negotiate. Where the fix genuinely cannot be completed before the closing date, sellers and buyers regularly agree on a credit or an escrowAn arrangement where a neutral third party holds funds or documents on behalf of both the buyer and seller until the specific conditions of a transaction are met. During a home purchase, the title company typically holds the earnest money deposit in escrow; after closing, many mortgage lenders also maintain an ongoing escrow account to collect and pay the homeowner's property taxes and insurance as part of the monthly mortgage payment. holdback so the transaction can proceed

Why this belongs before the listing, not during the contract

Everything above is manageable. What makes it painful is timing. Discovered before you list, an open permit is an errand. Discovered on day 12 of a 15 day inspection period, it is leverage in someone else's hands, and you are negotiating against a clock.

The fix is to look first. Building department records for Sarasota County, Manatee County, and the cities in the region are searchable, and a closing agent or title company can run a municipal lien search on your own property before it goes on the market. That is not a common step, and it should be more common, particularly on homes that have had a roof replaced, windows or a water heater changed out, a lanai enclosed, a pool added, or any renovation under a prior owner.

Knowing about a problem early converts it from a crisis into a line item, and it lets you price and disclose from a position of knowledge rather than reacting to something a buyer found first.

A checklist before you list

• Make a list of every improvement you know about, including work done by previous owners if you are aware of it
• Pull your address in the building department records for the jurisdiction that covers it, and look for permits with no final inspection
• Ask your closing agent about running a municipal lien search before listing rather than after going under contractMLS status terms describing a property's stage in the sales process. "Under contract" (sometimes shown as active-under-contract) generally means a signed contract exists but the listing may still accept backup offers or show contingency status. "Pending" typically means all contingencies have been satisfied and the sale is proceeding to closing, with the property effectively off the market. Exact usage can vary slightly by MLS and by listing agent.
• Gather any permit paperwork, inspection cards, and contractor invoices you still have
• If something is open, call the building department and ask what specifically is required to close it. The answer is often smaller than you fear
• Disclose what you know, in writing, on the seller disclosure
• If a fix will not finish before closing, raise the credit or escrow holdback option early instead of at the table

Not sure what is sitting on your property record?

If you are thinking about selling and you have any suspicion that a past permit was never closed, or that a previous owner improved something without going through the county, that is a solvable problem and a much cheaper one to solve now than in the middle of a contract. Send me your address and I will help you figure out what is actually on record and who to call about it.

It is also worth saying plainly: an open permit almost never means your house is unsafe or unsellable. In most cases it means a form was never signed. Treat it as an errand with a deadline, not a catastrophe.

Nothing here is legal advice. Statutes and building codes are amended, local jurisdictions adopt their own amendments, and your situation depends on the specific records for your property. Confirm the requirements with the building department that has jurisdiction, your closing agent, or a Florida real estate attorney.