Department of Regulatory and Economic Resources, Building and Neighborhood Compliance
- Phone
- 786-315-2000
Florida
Miami-Dade County, FL permit fees and requirements
Miami-Dade County prices a building permit per square foot rather than from a valuation:
$0.96 for a new detached single-family house or duplex, $0.40 for a townhome, $0.40 for the first 100,000 square feet of anything else and $0.15 above that, and $0.50 per square foot to alter a house, capped at $847.95. Its trade permits are priced from forms the applicant files a row at a time — a service per 100 amperes, an outlet box, a fixture, a ton of cooling, a sewer connection, a water meter — with a $227.90 floor on the permit. A $65.00 up-front fee and three surcharges are added to everything: the County's own 7.5% and the state's 1% and 1.5%, the last two with $2.00 minimums.
Permit costs we have worked out
Each page shows the fee components, the formula the jurisdiction uses, and a worked example you can follow by hand.
Estimate your potential Miami-Dade County permit fee with our Building Permit Fee Calculator.
| Permit | Category | Last reviewed |
|---|---|---|
| Miami-Dade County building permit cost | structural | 2026-09-24 |
| Miami-Dade County electrical permit cost | electrical | 2026-09-24 |
| Miami-Dade County plumbing permit cost | plumbing | 2026-09-24 |
Local context
What is specific to Miami-Dade County
Two things make this county different from the rest of the dataset. The first is the basis: there is no valuation anywhere in the building section. A house is 2,500 square feet at $0.96 and the fee is $2,400.00 whether the contract says $400,000 or $4,000,000; the alternative rows are all named items — a pool, a screen enclosure, a slab, a shed, a sign, a tent, a temporary platform — each with its own flat or per-area price. That makes the fee a measurement rather than a negotiation.
The second is whose paperwork the fee comes from. For electrical, mechanical and plumbing permits the County requires the applicant to submit a fee sheet, and the sheet is a table of fee codes with a units column: `G034` permanent service, $7.26 per 100 amperes; `G005` outlet box, $2.59 per outlet; `G045` panel board, $32.21 per board; `P032` fixture, $9.66; `P003` sewer connection, $48.31. The permit is the sum of the lines the applicant claims, which is why the pages here price several rows at once and only treat genuinely alternative rows as a choice.
Both sheets state a floor in words rather than in arithmetic: "Minimum fee for electrical permits is $227.90". That number is the County's own minimum of $147.00, plus its $65.00 up-front fee, plus 7.5% of both — the one place on this site where the arrangement of a surcharge is checkable against a figure the County prints, and this site reproduces it exactly.
None of that is the whole cost of a permit, and the County says so on the page that links all of it: "Permit fees include other fees assessed by other service areas, agencies and/or departments involved in the permitting process" — the Department of Transportation and Public Works, Development Services' impact fees, DERM, Fire Rescue, Water and Sewer, and the state for septic tanks.
Valuation
How valuation is determined here
None. The building section charges by area in square feet, and the trade sections charge by count — amperes, outlets, fixtures, tons, connections, meters, gallons and horsepower. Nothing on any of the three pages is computed from a project's value.
Who to contact
The office that issues the permit, with the details we have verified. Confirm current hours before travelling.
Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Department
Division of Environmental Resources Management (DERM)
What these fees do not include
The list is not a disclaimer: on a new house the fees left out can outweigh the permit fee several times over. Every entry here is stated on the permit page as well.
Not included in our estimates
These pages price the fee rows of the building, electrical and plumbing schedules, the permits' own minimums, the $65.00 up-front fee and the three surcharges. They exclude:
- Everything the County collects for another agency, in its own words: "Permit fees include other fees assessed by other service areas, agencies and/or departments involved in the permitting process" — Transportation and Public Works, Development Services impact fees for road, fire and emergency services, police, parks and education, DERM's environmental fees and tree removal permits, Fire Rescue's Fire Prevention Fee Schedule, Water and Sewer's connection charges, and the state's septic tank fee.
- The mechanical permit, priced per ton, per horsepower and per unit of equipment on the County's own Mechanical Fee Sheet.
- The per-square-foot "up-front" processing fee at $0.60 for a new house, $0.30 for alterations and $0.26 for commercial work, because the order states it "is not refundable but shall be credited toward the final building permit fee" — it is a deposit, not an additional cost.
- The expedited and programme routes: Concierge permitting, the Cookie Cutter master model programme at $0.82 per square foot in place of $0.96, the owner-builder process, residential hardening permits under Subsection P, the after-hours optional plan review and the electronic concurrent plan processing fee.
- The hourly and per-document charges: additional inspections, overtime inspections, reworked plans, the plan conversion fee for paper submittals, stamping additional sets, and interest on unpaid amounts.
- The increases and the private-provider discount: the order reserves the right to adjust fees, the County's page records the preceding schedule's October 1, 2025 increase as "the first increase in more than 17 years", and private providers have their own arrangements under Florida law that this site does not compute.
- The penalty for unpermitted work, which both trade sheets state on the signature line as "a double fee", and the refund rules, which return nothing on a submittal, licence or recording fee.
- Any permit on land inside a municipality. Miami, Hialeah, Miami Beach, Coral Gables, Doral, Homestead, North Miami, Aventura and the other municipalities in the county issue their own permits; only the unincorporated area is priced here, and the implementing order's own up-front fee says so by naming the "Unincorporated Municipal Service Area jurisdiction applications" it applies to.
Official sources for this jurisdiction
The documents these figures are transcribed from. Where a source contradicts itself we keep both readings and say so on the permit page.
- County websiteCounty
Building Fee Schedules, Refunds & Cancelations
Read 2026-09-24. It is the page that links the implementing order and all three fee sheets, and it states the two facts that organise these pages: that "Permit Fee Sheets must be submitted as part of a permit application when applying for electrical, mechanical or plumbing permits", so a trade permit is a sum over the rows an applicant claims, and that "Permit fees include other fees assessed by other service areas, agencies and/or departments involved in the permitting process" — naming the Department of Transportation and Public Works, Development Services, DERM, Fire Rescue, Water and Sewer, and the state for septic tanks. Neither of the county's two published increases is invisible on it: the October 1, 2025 notice is still at the top of the page, above the schedules the June 2026 order superseded.
- Fee schedule (PDF)CountyPrimary source
Electrical Fee Sheet (form 123_01-57/26)
Sha256 beginning c52d753a6c00f281, re-fetched on 2026-09-24. It prints the same rates as the implementing order with a fee code on every row — `G034` for a permanent service, `G005` for an outlet box, `G045` for a panel board — and every electrical rule on this site quotes its code, which is how a reader can find the row on the form they submit. Its first line is the floor the order never states: "Minimum fee for electrical permits is $227.90."
- OrdinanceCountyPrimary source
Thirty pages, sha256 beginning 7f23cd971ade46be, re-fetched on 2026-09-24 to confirm the URL still serves the file this site was built from, and read in three pdftotext modes. It is an implementing order rather than an ordinance — "Ordered June 16, 2026, Effective June 26, 2026", superseding the order of June 26, 2025 — which is why a fee schedule in this county can be re-ordered inside a year, and why the County's own fee page still carries the notice for the preceding change: "Effective Oct. 1, 2025 the Building Division will be implementing a revised fee schedule adopted by the Board of County Commissioners on June 30, 2025. This is the first increase in more than 17 years." The URL is the one the County's fee page links.
- Fee schedule (PDF)County
Sha256 beginning 921276a654826807, re-fetched on 2026-09-24 and read, not modelled. It is cited here so the gap is a named document rather than an absence: its rows are priced per ton, per horsepower, per unit of refrigeration and per duct run, and no page of this site prices a mechanical permit in any jurisdiction. The implementing order prices the same work separately in its own section, and where the two documents disagree the order is the one that says so explicitly.
- County websiteCounty
Read 2026-09-24. It is where the County explains how the up-front fee these pages charge fits into the process — "To initiate the plan review process, upfront fees will first need to be paid" — and it lists the expedited routes this site does not price: Affordable and Workforce Housing, Concierge, Cookie Cutter, Green Building and Master. It also names a charge with no rate on any schedule: applicants who submit plans on paper "will be assessed a conversion fee based on the current fee schedule".
- Fee schedule (PDF)CountyPrimary source
Plumbing and Gas Fee Sheet (form 123_01-708/26)
Sha256 beginning c4aec030fb2ff505, re-fetched on 2026-09-24. It carries the same floor in the same words — "Minimum fee for plumbing permits is $227.90" — and it is the source for the plumber's rows this site prices: `P051`/`P052` at "0.14x per Sq ft", `P001` at "$9.66 per Outlet", `P032` at "$9.66 per Fixture", `P003`/`P044` at "$48.31 per Sewer", `P010` at "$12.88 per Meter". Its second category is gas, which the County prices on this form rather than separately.