Open/Inactive Permits.
Cut Rate Construction provides open/inactive permit resolution services for owners of commercial and residential properties located within Palm Beach County. If you have an open permit issue or would like to obtain a research report on possible inactive/open permits for your current or prospective property then call us at 561-215-1447 or fill out the contact form.
Unfortunately, a lot of property owners don’t even suspect they may have inactive permits tied to their address till they are served with a “Notice of Violation” issued by the Code Enforcement Division. 
One of the reasons for that may be summed up in a phrase I heard from a building department clerk while submitting a set of documents in regards to some old open permit issues: “Well, sometimes Title companies don’t do such a good job.”

Often times things like inactive permits just don’t surface during a regular title search, thus leaving new home owners potentially liable for costly procedures to correct building code violations.

Normally the issue may be resolved through:
  1. reactivating the permit(s) and passing general inspection.
  2. reactivating the permit(s), performing construction work to bring it to Building Code Standards, Successfully passing the final inspection. 
However there were and still are precedents where property owners were ordered to undo previous construction alterations that didn’t pass or were never scheduled for inspection to comply with Code Requirements.
Another way to become the unhappy owner of an inactive permit on your property is to hire a licensed contractor who applies for a permit then finishes the proposed work but fails (or never schedules?) a final inspection. It takes only 6 months since the last action on the permit for it to go inactive.

Owners themselves should also be careful when applying for owner builder permits. Once you start the process it has to come to a logical conclusion eventually ( read “final inspection”). Your abandonment of the construction project/process will most likely result in an inactive permit status issuance.

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