Close out what the last owner left.

Hollywood Lakes hands its permit trouble down with the deed. A 1920s Mediterranean on Harrison Street changes hands three times, and somewhere in that chain a garage became a bedroom, jalousies became impact windows, and a Florida room appeared off the back with nothing in the city file to show for it. Nobody notices until a title search, an appraiser or a lender does, usually with a closing date already on the calendar. On the lots running east toward the Intracoastal, add a dock or a seawall repair built and never inspected. None of it is a construction problem. All of it is a records problem.

Permits come from the Building Division inside Hollywood's Development Services Department. Applications, uploads and inspection requests now run through the city's Accela Citizen Access portal, while anything pulled before that changeover still lives in the older system, where most inherited files turn up. Behind the city sits a countywide code layer: the Broward County Board of Rules and Appeals publishes the county amendments to the Florida Building Code and certifies the plans examiners and inspectors who read your file. Broward is High-Velocity Hurricane Zone territory, so openings and roofing need approved products. On a designated property, a Certificate of Appropriateness comes first.

Twenty-plus years in South Florida and more than 150 permitted, inspected remodels and additions mostly teach you to read a bad file quickly. We start with the record and a walk-through, open whatever has to be opened, and retain the engineer, architect or surveyor the city will want to see rather than claiming those licenses ourselves. Close to the Intracoastal we check the flood side early, since federal substantial improvement limits can reshape a scope before it is priced. The scope is fixed and written, a supervisor is on site daily, and whoever ran the work meets the inspector. Nobody here will offer you a shortcut.