Two Approvals in Miami, and One of Them Is Not a Permit

The City of Miami runs its own building department and takes window and door applications through iBuild, with drawings uploaded to ProjectDox. That part is ordinary. What catches owners out is the second review sitting beside it. The city's Historic Preservation Division names window replacement as work needing a Certificate of Appropriateness, in language that leaves nothing to argue about: "This can include small projects like window replacements as well as large projects like new construction." Then it adds the sentence that fixes the order of the whole job: "A COA is not a Building permit, and is only part of the permitting process."

Where that bites is in the paperwork. The COA submittal list asks for "Detailed Drawings Showing Existing and Proposed Dimensions (for windows & door replacement)" and a "Window and Door Schedule Specifying all Openings to be Replaced". A single price for the house cannot become that schedule. Somebody has to write out every opening, with the dimension that is there now and the dimension proposed, before the preservation side will look at it. If the contractor measured three windows and multiplied, that work has not been done and the owner is the one who finds out.

The districts are not obscure corners of the city either. Miami's own pages name Morningside, MiMo/BiBo, Buena Vista East, Palm Grove, Spring Garden, Coconut Grove West, Lummus Park, Bayside, Riverview, Beverly Terrace, South River Drive and the Wynwood NRD-1 among them. Plenty of houses nobody would describe as historic sit inside one, and the rule follows the address rather than the architecture.

The city's residential windows and doors checklist tells an applicant what site parameters the pressures are to be worked out against. Its words, exactly: "Site wind pressures. ASCE 7-22 Chapter 30 and the 2023 FBC, Building sections 1620.2 and 1620.3 (175 mph (3-second gust)/ Exposure C)." That is an instruction about a calculation. It is not a rating you can shop for, and a salesperson who turns it into "your windows must be rated for 175 mph" has changed the meaning into something else entirely.

The question that comes before it is who signs. In a city with this much condominium and rental stock, the person living behind the glass is frequently not the person who decides, and both the Certificate of Appropriateness and the building permit need the party who does. Settling that first — association, landlord, or you — saves more time on a Miami job than any other single step, because every document downstream of it is addressed to whoever that turns out to be.

1. 01Check the address against the city's designated districts before a product is selected.
2. 02Measure every opening and write down both the existing and the proposed dimension.
3. 03Build the window and door schedule the preservation submittal asks for, and reuse the same document for the building application.
4. 04Leave the openings as they are unless there is a reason to change them.
5. 05File through iBuild and ProjectDox, then meet the buck and final inspections on site.

We write the schedule once and use it twice, because the preservation office and the building office are asking for the same information in two places. On the shortcut and its limit the city's residential exterior windows and doors checklist is blunt: work "Shall be existing frame or existing rough opening, changes to the openings are not allowed for Homeowner's Express Reviews, they will need to be part of a remodeling permit." Wanting a wider opening for a view is reasonable. It is also the decision that converts a window permit into a remodeling permit, and it should be made knowingly rather than discovered at intake.

Sources: City of Miami residential permit exterior windows and doors applicant checklist, and the city's Repair or Renovate a Historic Property page — checked 2026-09-24