INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — At today’s County Commission meeting Community Development Director Bob Keating demonstrated a new part of the county’s website that enables contractors, homeowners and real estate agents to check the status of building permits online by typing in a property address.
He said the service will help people know ahead of time if a house or other building being sold has open permits attached to it that would stop or delay a real estate transaction.
“In most cases, with a single family home, the open permit has to be resolved before a real estate closing,” Keating told the commissioners.
An open permit results when a contractor pulls a permit to put on a new roof or install windows or perform some other construction or remodeling task and fails to get the final inspection of work required by the building code.
Open permits can sit unnoticed on the record books for years or decades and then pop up during due diligence by a buyer or financial institution.
The prevalence of open permits was demonstrated when Keating used county properties as examples to show how the search process works and found permits attached to them that had never been closed, including one from the 1990s.
Resolving an open permit typically requires taking out a new permit for the task performed, scheduling an inspection and correcting code violations, if any.
In some cases, codes may have changed since the original permit was issued so work is no longer in compliance even if it was done correctly to begin with.
Now, anyone interested will be able to find out if an open permit exists for particular property. The online display also shows current open permits and closed permits, providing a record of work underway and work done in the past, giving a clearer picture of the history and status of a house or commercial building.
“This is up and running,” Keating said of the easy-to-use system that can be accessed by clicking a “permit search” link on the county’s home page.
Commissioner Wesley Davis followed along on his computer as Keating gave the demonstration and made several suggestions for simplifying the search process.
“We tried to design it with a lot of common sense and then had it tested by plan examiners who don’t have any common sense,” said County Administrator Joe Baird, joking with Keating about the system’s effectiveness.
Keating said the county has also added a link and backend structure that allows residents or contractors to report a code violation or check on enforcement of a previously reported violation.
Davis suggested expanding that portion of the website to allow reports of unlicensed contractors at work.
Baird agreed with the idea and said it can be incorporated into the system in short order.
Keating said Indian River County is working with St. Lucie County and the Treasure Coast Builders Association to put permit application and issuance services and inspection scheduling online.
“We are working toward a fully automated system,” he said.