EarlyFloor

Miami-Dade permit search, run against the county's own data

Miami-Dade County publishes its building-permit records as a free, open, no-key public API. This page shows you the endpoint, the field names, and a query you can paste into a browser right now. It also says plainly what the record does not contain, which is the part most "permit search" pages leave out.

ENDPOINT RE-CHECKED 2026-07-30 · HTTP 200

1. The endpoint

Miami-Dade's permit data sits on an ArcGIS FeatureServer layer. This is the layer EarlyFloor reads, and it is the same one you can read:

https://services.arcgis.com/8Pc9XBTAsYuxx9Ny/arcgis/rest/services/miamidade_permit_data/FeatureServer/0

Append ?f=pjson to that URL to see the layer's own field list and record count straight from the county: layer metadata.

2. A query you can paste into a browser

Everything issued since a date, with the fields that matter for remodel work. Change the date and you have a different week:

https://services.arcgis.com/8Pc9XBTAsYuxx9Ny/arcgis/rest/services/miamidade_permit_data/FeatureServer/0/query
  ?where=PermitIssuedDate >= DATE '2026-07-23'
  &outFields=PermitNumber,PermitIssuedDate,PropertyAddress,City,EstimatedValue,
             ContractorName,ContractorPhone,ContractorNumber,SquareFootage,
             FolioNumber,DetailDescriptionComments,ProposedUseDescription
  &orderByFields=PermitIssuedDate DESC
  &resultRecordCount=100
  &f=json

Paste it as one line (browsers will encode the spaces for you). Swap f=json for f=html if you would rather read it as a table than as JSON.

3. What the fields mean

County field	What it actually is
PermitNumber	The permit ID. This is your receipt — anything anyone tells you about a Miami-Dade permit can be checked against this number.
PermitIssuedDate	Epoch milliseconds, not a date string. Divide by 1000 to get a Unix timestamp.
PropertyAddress	The job site.
City	The county's own city label on the permit record. It is often the mailing city rather than the incorporated municipality — see the caveat below.
EstimatedValue	The declared value of the whole permitted job, not of any one trade's share.
ContractorName / ContractorPhone	The firm that filed the permit, and a phone number where the county has one. On alteration and repair permits this is frequently a trade sub, not the general contractor.
ContractorNumber	The Florida DBPR licence number, e.g. CGC1524060. You can look this up on DBPR's public licensee search to see the class and status.
SquareFootage	Square footage as declared on the permit.
FolioNumber	The parcel folio. This is the join key into Miami-Dade's free parcel layer, which is where year built, true municipality and owner of record live.
DetailDescriptionComments	The free-text scope. This is the only place the actual work is described, and it is inconsistent by design — different filers write it differently.

4. The City of Miami is a separate search

Miami-Dade County is 34 municipalities plus unincorporated county, and the City of Miami runs its own permit system on its own endpoint. If you only query the county layer you will miss City of Miami permits, and vice versa. The City of Miami layer is:

https://services1.arcgis.com/CvuPhqcTQpZPT9qY/arcgis/rest/services/Building_Permits_Since_2014/FeatureServer/0

Its date field is IssuedDate and its scope text is in WorkItems and ScopeofWork. Its records carry BuildingPermitStatusDescription and IsPermitFinal, which the county layer does not publish at all. It publishes no contractor phone number on any record — it publishes the filer's company mailing address instead.

5. The parcel layer, if you want to know what the building is

The permit record tells you almost nothing about the property. Miami-Dade publishes a separate free parcel layer keyed on FOLIO, and that is where you find year built, the true incorporated municipality, building area, and the owner of record:

https://services.arcgis.com/8Pc9XBTAsYuxx9Ny/arcgis/rest/services/ParcelsView_gdb/FeatureServer/0

Useful fields: TRUE_SITE_CITY, YEAR_BUILT, BUILDING_ACTUAL_AREA, TRUE_OWNER1, TRUE_MAILING_ADDR1.

6. Four things the permit record will not tell you

Whether the job is still open. The Miami-Dade county layer publishes no status field at all. The City of Miami layer does. If a page tells you a county permit's status, ask where it came from.
Which trade the work is. There is no trade code. "Interior remodel" is something you infer from the free-text description, and every inference is arguable.
Whether the phone belongs to a decision-maker. It is the number on file for the filing firm. On a large job that is a receptionist.
Whether the flooring is already subcontracted. Nothing in the public record says this. It is the single biggest unknown in permit-based prospecting and nobody selling you permit data can answer it.

The honest version of the pitch: this query is free, and if you run it yourself you have most of what EarlyFloor sells. What we do is run it every day, filter it to interior-remodel work, drop the rows where the filer is a flooring firm, keep the rows that carry a phone, and publish the count so you can check it. If that is worth $79 a month to you, the sample is below. If it is not, the endpoint above is genuinely yours — take it.

See a real week of filtered rows →

Ground truth about this product: EarlyFloor has never had a paying subscriber. Nothing is billable yet. Everything on this site is a published dataset and an argument, not a track record.