Miami-Dade County building permit search: the permit menu, folio lookups and microfilm

Which office has your permit

The Miami-Dade County Building Department permits unincorporated land: Kendall, Westchester, Fontainebleau, The Hammocks, the Redland and the other areas outside a city. The county's Microfilm Plan Library page says a property in unincorporated Miami-Dade has a folio number starting with "30". Miami, Miami Beach, Hialeah, Coral Gables and the other cities run their own building departments; see the Miami and Miami Beach guides for two of them.

The EPS portal itself says its results are "limited only to applications that require plan review" and sends you to the Building Permit Selection Menu "to search for all permits/applications by address or folio" (EPS, read 24 October 2026).

How to look up the permits on a Miami-Dade address

1. Find the property's 13-digit folio number on the Property Appraiser's site and check that it starts with 30.
2. Open the Building Permit Selection Menu and choose Open Permits by Folio, or Process/Permit Number Cross-Reference to search by address (the page links the address format it expects).
3. Note each permit number. A roof or window job is usually one building permit; a remodel adds separate electrical, plumbing and mechanical permits.
4. Run Permit Inspection History on each number to see which inspections passed, and Permit Project Status for where it stands.
5. To see a contractor's other county permits, use Contractor Permit Inquiry with C or T and the contractor or qualifier number.

What the statuses mean here

The county's open permit file has no status and no final inspection date. Its CO/CC date, filled on 4.5% of permits in the evaluation export, applies only to jobs that end in a certificate of occupancy or completion, and its last approved inspection date can be a rough-in rather than a final. So the inspection history in the permit menu is the place to check that a final inspection passed. Open Master Permits and Permit Inspection Holds show what is still open on an address.

When the record is not online

Older plans and permit records are in the county's Microfilm Plan Library. You need the address or permit number and the folio number. Plans already digitized can be downloaded from E-Microfilm. Otherwise book an appointment online, by phone at 786-315-2340, or in person at the Permitting and Inspection Center, 11805 SW 26 Street, Room 201. The county lists a non-refundable research fee of $18.75 for residential and $46.34 for commercial properties, plus $0.15 per 8½x11 page, $6.25 per 11x17 page and $1 per page to certify (read 24 October 2026).

What our Miami-Dade County pages add

Our Miami-Dade County page counts permits on unincorporated parcels from November 2024 to September 2026:

ZIP 33176 had the most permits, 6,478, and roofing led there. Each kind-of-work page lists the contractors named on the most permits, which is volume, not quality. The permit statistics page has month and ZIP counts, and browse permits lists the rows. To check the license behind a name, see How to check a contractor's license in Florida.

What this does not tell you

The county publishes a rolling file of roughly the last two years, so our pages start in November 2024 and have no earlier year to compare with. With no status or final date we show no finished share or time to final. The value is the estimated cost written on the permit, not what the job cost. A building permit and its electrical, plumbing and mechanical permits are separate rows, so one project can count several times. We have not matched contractor names to state license records, so we don't rate or rank firms.