Permit history

Definition

The record of permits the company pulled, and which of them were never closed out.

Why It Matters

Florida legislated the split, and it is the opposite of what most buyers assume. An arms-length purchaser of a property for value may not be denied a permit, cited, fined or penalized solely because a permit a previous owner applied for was never closed, and the agency keeps all its rights and remedies against the property owner and the contractor named on the permit. So an open permit follows the license and not the house. It is license exposure as well as rework, because proceeding on a job without the applicable permits and inspections is its own ground for discipline. And the legislature had to forbid agencies from denying a contractor a new permit merely because other permits in its name were still open, which tells you agencies were doing exactly that. Ask for the open list by permit number, by year, before pricing the license.