Tampa Bay construction records: permits, deeds, mortgages and notices of commencement across Hillsborough and Pinellas

Tampa Bay publishes most of what Miami does, across two counties and four permit systems. The Hillsborough and Pinellas Clerks record the deed with its price and the notice of commencement that says work starts this week. Tampa, the county, Pinellas and Clearwater each publish their permits with the contractor and usually a phone. Here is where each record lives, what it carries, and how to read the set from either side of the bay.

Four permit portals

Each jurisdiction runs its own Accela portal, and each publishes the permit record with the address, the parcel, the permit type and work description, the declared value, the contractor and, on most records, a phone.

• City of Tampa. Downtown, Channelside, Water Street, Westshore, Seminole Heights, the city's share of the metro's towers.
• Hillsborough County. Everything in the county outside Tampa, Temple Terrace and Plant City: Brandon, Riverview, Wesley Chapel's southern edge, the industrial corridors along I-4 and I-75.
• Pinellas County. The county's portal covers St. Petersburg and the unincorporated county, which is how St. Pete's downtown towers reach the feed.
• City of Clearwater. Its own portal and its own agendas.

Groundbreak reads all four every six hours; the last 90 days carried about 780 permits from the four portals and about 2,600 notices of commencement from the two clerks. The phone is on the permit where the applicant gave one, which in these portals is most of the time. See the glossary on building permits.

Two clerks, three instruments

The Hillsborough County Clerk and the Pinellas County Clerk each publish a daily official records index, and three document types on it are the market.

The deed. Florida states the consideration through the documentary stamp tax on the recorded deed, so the index carries the buyer, the seller and the price. A Tampa Bay land sale is fully public within a day. See deeds.

The mortgage. Florida uses a mortgage, not a deed of trust, and the recorded instrument names the lender and the borrower and states the amount. A mortgage on a development parcel is the construction loan. Be aware that the Pinellas index carries them and the Hillsborough export, as Groundbreak reads it today, carries few, so the Tampa Bay loan layer is thinner than Miami's; the coverage page has the current count. See construction loan.

The notice of commencement. The same Florida statute as Miami-Dade (section 713.13): the owner records a notice before starting work worth more than $5,000, naming the contractor, the lender and the surety, and posts it at the site before the first inspection. The notice is the "work starts now" record, and both clerks index it the day it records. The Miami guide to notices of commencement explains the form; the mechanics are identical across the bay. See notice of commencement.

The clerks also index the liens and lis pendens that say a job has gone wrong. See mechanic's lien.

The owner of record

The Hillsborough County Property Appraiser and the Pinellas County Property Appraiser publish the roll: close to a million parcels between them, each with the owner of record and the last sale. Groundbreak reads both. A parcel with nothing filed still has a name on it, and in Florida that name comes with the price the owner paid. See owner of record.

Reading it as a lead

The order on a Tampa Bay project, from the record:

1. The deed, with the price. The land sold. Developers, brokers and lenders read this one.
2. The land-use hearing. Hillsborough County's land use hearings and Clearwater's agendas are read daily; Tampa's rezonings run through City Council. The applicant and the agent are named. Architects, engineers and pre-construction read this one. See zoning cases.
3. The mortgage. The lender is named and the amount is stated. Lenders, insurers and sureties read this one, and subs should too: a funded job is a job.
4. The notice of commencement. Owner, contractor, lender, surety, days before mobilization. The trades and their suppliers read this one.
5. The permit. Contractor, value, phone. The job is sized and the GC is reachable.
6. The trade permits. Each jurisdiction issues them, but Tampa Bay does not publish the sub on each trade the way Miami-Dade does, so the sequence is read from the master permit and the inspections.

A project at step 3 or 4 with no step 5 is one where the trades are open and the start is weeks away. A project at step 1 or 2 is one where the design team is still forming.

Who this is for, and who it is not

If you are a lender who wants Tampa Bay's mortgage market by lender and by week, this data is thin today: the Pinellas index carries mortgages, the Hillsborough export as Groundbreak reads it carries few, and the coverage page shows the count. A Miami lender's table is solid; a Tampa one is not yet.

If you need one address, each clerk's records search and each Accela portal are free. The records become worth having as a database when you sell into jobs on both sides of the bay and want the deed, the notice, the permit and the owner on one project the day each records. For that reader, the Tampa Bay development database carries all of it, with the parties and the phones on the Pro plan. The largest permits this month and most active contractors tables are free.