Treasure Coast specifics · Three Counties, Three Rules
Stuart and Vero Beach Are Not the Same Process
The Treasure Coast is one market to a buyer and three jurisdictions to a permit. Martin, St. Lucie and Indian River each run their own building department, and several municipalities inside them run their own on top of that.
Tell us the address and whether the house is occupied year round. On this coast the second answer changes the recommendation more than the first.
2004
Two landfalls, three weeks apart, on the same stretch of coast
Empty
Glass protects a house when nobody is there to close a shutter
Our crews
We measure, we schedule, and our own people install
Licensed
A licensed Florida general contractor
Assuming the county line does not matter
A homeowner comparing quotes reasonably assumes that a window is a window and a permit is a permit. Contractors working across the region can make the same assumption in the other direction, quoting a process they know from the county next door. Submittal requirements, review times and inspection practice are not identical across three departments, and the place this shows up is not the quote — it is the schedule.
What actually varies
- Submittal requirements and what the package must contain.
- Review times, which move with workload and season.
- Inspection scheduling and how far ahead it books.
- Whether a municipality inside the county handles its own permitting.
- Whether the property sits in a coastal or special flood designation.
Why buyers reasonably get this wrong
The Treasure Coast reads as a single place. It has a shared name, a shared coastline and a shared economy, and people move between Stuart, Port St. Lucie, Fort Pierce and Vero Beach without thinking about boundaries. Nothing about daily life signals that three separate permitting authorities are involved.
It only becomes visible at the point of a permit, which is after the decision has been made and the deposit has been paid. That is a poor moment to discover that the timeline you were given belonged to a different county.
How we handle it
- 01Confirm which authority actually has jurisdiction over the address.
- 02Prepare the package that department asks for rather than a generic one.
- 03Build realistic review time into the program.
- 04Coordinate inspections rather than leaving them with the homeowner.
We handle the permit rather than handing a homeowner a folder and wishing them luck. On a job that crosses our schedule with three separate departments, knowing which one is slow this month is the difference between a date we can keep and a date we hoped for.
Said plainly
Where we stop
We cannot make a building department move faster and we will not quote a timeline that assumes they will. Where review is running long in a jurisdiction, the honest answer is a later start date rather than an optimistic one that slips.
FAQ
Common questions
- Does the county change what product I can use?
- Not in the way the HVHZ boundary does further south. All three of these counties work from statewide product approval. What varies is process — submittal, review and inspection — rather than what may be installed.
- Who pulls the permit?
- We do, as contractor of record. Be cautious of any contractor who asks a homeowner to pull an owner-builder permit for work the contractor is performing; that shifts responsibility onto you in a way most people do not realize they have agreed to.
- How long does review take?
- It varies by department and by workload, and it moves through the year. We will give you the current picture for your jurisdiction rather than a single number for the region, because a single number for the region would be wrong somewhere.
What we install
Impact Windows
The core product, and on this coast the argument for it is different from the one made further south. Here the deciding factor is usually not cost or code — it is whether anyone will be at the house when a storm is named.
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Sliding Glass Doors
Sliders here are large, they face water, and they have usually been sitting in salt air for decades. All three of those change what has to be checked before anything is ordered.
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Impact Entry Doors
An approved entry door is an assembly — slab, frame, hinges, lock, threshold and glazing approved together. On a seasonal property it is also the one opening that gets used all year by somebody who does not live there.
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Impact Garage Doors
A double garage door is usually the largest single opening in the envelope. On a seasonal property it is also the one that sits shut and untouched in salt air for months, which ages it differently from one in daily use.
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French & Specialty Shapes
Arched heads, radius tops, oversized fixed glass and French pairs are fabricated for one opening in one house. They set the finish date, and on a seasonal property the finish date is the whole negotiation.
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Glazing Into Existing Frames
Where the existing frames are sound and an approval exists for glazing into them, changing only the glass is cheaper, faster and far less disruptive. On this coast the deciding factor is almost always corrosion rather than age.
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More treasure coast specifics
The 2004 Rebuild
Frances and Jeanne came ashore at almost the same point on this coast three weeks apart in September 2004. The rebuilding that followed happened at speed, during a shortage, and it left a distinctive housing stock behind.
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A House Nobody Is In
Approved shutters meet the requirement and cost less. They also need somebody at the house to deploy them. On a coast where a large share of properties are empty through hurricane season, that single fact decides most of these jobs.
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Island & Lagoon
The barrier islands here are narrow, with ocean on one side and the Indian River Lagoon on the other. There is very little distance from water in any direction, and that shows up in the fixings long before it shows up in the frames.
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Next step
Find out what is actually wrong with it.
An inspection, photographs of what we found, and a written scope. If the honest answer is that it can wait another season, that is the answer you will get.