Do I need a permit for interior remodeling in Mexico Beach?

Local and county notes for Mexico Beach

Electrical, plumbing, mechanical, gas, and structural work still need a permit regardless of cost. HB 803 bars splitting a project to stay under $7,500 and does not apply in flood-hazard areas. Local departments implement HB 803 individually, so confirm the policy in your jurisdiction. A remodel that moves walls or includes electrical, plumbing, or mechanical work falls outside cosmetic exemptions, which cover finishes such as paint, flooring, trim, and cabinets. Each trade normally needs its own permit and inspection on top of the building permit, and removing or altering a load bearing wall usually requires a beam detail or engineering before the work is approved. Opening walls in an older home can trigger separate lead paint, asbestos, and smoke alarm requirements, so raise those with your department at application time. Bay County's own permitting office is the Bay County Building Safety Division, reachable on 850-248-8350 at https://www.baycountyfl.gov/154/Building-Safety, which runs an online permit portal. It issues permits for the unincorporated county. If your city does not run its own building department, this is the office that will handle the job. Bay County has published how it runs the HB 803 $7,500 permit exemption, which matters because the statute leaves the process to each building official. The county handles it as a dedicated PREX-EXEMPT record type with its own Permit Exemption Form, and the Building Official's bulletin confirms the exemption needs a written request rather than simply not applying. The county states every one of these must be true: the work is on a single-family home, the property is not partly or entirely in a flood hazard area or special flood hazard area, the full scope includes no electrical, plumbing, mechanical, gas or structural work, the full scope is under $7,500, and you submit a written request to the Building Official. Miss any one and you need a normal permit. Use current forms. The county states its permit documents are tagged for the Florida Building Code Eighth Edition (2023) and that all previous 6th and 7th Edition forms should be discarded, which is a common cause of a rejected submittal here. Mexico Beach permits are handled by the Mexico Beach Building Department, reachable on 850-648-2033 at https://mexicobeachfl.gov/residents/building-department/. Bay County also issues permits for the unincorporated county, and many smaller Florida municipalities contract building services to it rather than running a department of their own, so confirm which office covers your address before you apply. Each trade normally needs its own permit on top of the building permit, so ask which trade permits your scope will require.