Florida just took the permit desk out of a lot of small home projects. HB 803, in effect since July 1, exempts residential work valued under $7,500 from building permit requirements, a change that touches thousands of cosmetic jobs across the state.
What’s exempt now
The exemption covers the simple stuff: installing cabinets, replacing flooring, finishing drywall and similar improvements, as long as the total value stays under $7,500. Local governments can’t require a permit for that qualifying work anymore. The bill also stretches permit validity to one year after issuance, or until the next edition of the Florida Building Code takes effect, whichever lands later.
The HOA piece
There’s a quieter provision that homeowners will feel. HB 803 bars homeowners’ associations from demanding a building permit as a prerequisite for their own architectural review. That removes a common chicken-and-egg problem where an owner couldn’t get board sign-off without a permit and couldn’t justify a permit without sign-off.
What contractors should watch
Dropping the permit doesn’t drop the liability. A contractor who botches exempt work still owns the defect, and there’s no inspection record to lean on when a dispute lands. The threshold also invites the obvious temptation to split a bigger job into sub-$7,500 pieces, which regulators will be watching. For the volume-driven residential market, though, the change is real friction removed. Fewer trips to the counter for the kind of work that fills a remodeler’s week, from the small towers rising in markets like the Sun Belt down to a single kitchen.