City of Miami Building Department — Local services in Miami

I am so surprised when I see any positive review here. I'm here to vent about my overall experience. So to sum it up, yes everyone is the lower levels, the administration, the clerks are friendly... HOWEVER the system itself is SOOO flawed that no wonder nothing gets done in a timely fashion. Back in 2016 when I bought my house I submitted a permit to replace my shed. It took 3 weeks for someone to notice the survey I had had a small error in the address and so I would need to restart the whole process. I gave up! Then I wanted to do updated roof and central AC install. After seeing that the inspectors would find ANY excuse to not approve the work which was fine and up to code, I realized they played a different game called... HOW LONG CAN WE EXTENT THE PROCESS. Now it's been 2 years since I received a letter from the city about an "unsafe" structure and I've LOVE nothing more than to just demo the DAMN thing BUT still waiting on the City to approve drawings. These drawings have now been revised 3-4 times and YES it takes that long for the city's 100 departments to review and write notes and then for my architect to respond back! Then you call the unsafe structure people and though they are lovely, they are USELESS because they don't have access to the unsafe emails, or the ProjectDox. and they can't confirm whether my architect sent in the info, the correct info, or any info for that matter. Nor can they confirm the City is actively reviewing anything.... Now my process number is INACTIVE, whatever my architect sent to ProjectDox doesn't show up in IBuild, and I have to contact my architect directly to see what the city of miami has sent (IF they have sent anything at all they can't tell me)...How is it that the owner of a property cannot get a direct answer but is stuck playing telephone. The bureaucracy that is this Building Department has me looking forward to the day I put a for sale sign on my house. I can't wait to be done with them. I don't want to update a single thing in my 1949 house again! Let the thing dilapidate because I am done! No Wonder no one in my neighborhood improves anything. It's not the money, it's the time it takes to open and then...

It becomes impossible for property owners to do any work, the entire process becomes very difficult when it should be the opposite, they force you to find an engineer for the simplest things. In most cases the engineers do not want to do that type of work, even they are amazed at the stupidities that the city demands, however the inspectors walk down the street looking like hawks in search of work that is being done so that they can immediately entangle you. in their bureaucracy, please don't dare touch the oldest houses in the area, they are going to have them demolished, this city is allegedly on that plan, they don't want any more old properties, they are looking for a way to displace the poor from the area, especially the areas near wynwood and the arts district, the offices are intimidating with the attitude of the employees, it seems like you are in an immigration office or some type of military unit, please take care of yourselves and avoid getting involved with these people, they are very bad and they are not there to help you, on the contrary, they screw you as much as they can, it doesn't matter what damage they cause, they enjoy what...

The City of Miami reviewers often get a bad rap, but there are some good people that go a step above and beyond to help and understand. This review is for them.

Veronica Olivares with Structural met with me and helped me to understand what corrections needed to be done on a sub permit and processed it fast once I uploaded it. I could tell she cared, had great communication, and to me that meant a lot. Mrs. Albelo was able to approve quickly after Veronica’s help, thank you. Jorge Iglesias with Building diligently processed a same day correction in conjunction with Veronica’s help. Georgina with Zoning and Alicia have also been incredibly helpful. Karen Facey with Environmental is a very warm person and offered help before with questions I’ve had, thank you. And of course, everyone loves Rashika, she’s extremely helpful, kind, and quick to fix any issues with plans/docs.

As long as the City of Miami continues having people like this, permits will get processed diligently, helping homeowners greatly. Thanks again to all mentioned, I...