Over the Counter in Boca Raton, and the Checking Moves to Your Driveway

The city's own form for this work is headed Windows, Doors, or Impact Shutters — Single Family Residence, and it says plainly that "Plans examination under certain conditions is not required as stated in Section 107.1 Florida Building Code 8th Edition (2023) & Section 19-106 (2) of the Boca Raton Building Regulations." Homeowners read that as a formality and contractors sell it as speed. What it actually means is that nobody sits down with your product approvals before the work starts, so the first person to read them is the inspector standing in your driveway after the units are already in the wall.

The affidavit is explicit about what happens then. In the city's words: "Applicant understands that complete and legible Product Approval or Notice of Acceptance (NOA) of all products installed are to be on site for inspection purposes, failure to provide Product Approval or Notice of Acceptance (NOA) may result in a failed inspection with re-inspection fees assessed." A missing page is not a filing problem at that stage. It is a failed inspection on a finished wall, and the fee is the smaller half of the cost.

Then there is the second signature. Boca Raton requires a separately notarized HOA Regulations Notification Affidavit for permits on property governed by an association, and it states: "I understand that the issuance of a building permit by the City of Boca Raton does not exempt me from all other regulations imposed by my HOA." The city will not referee that argument. It has made you sign that you know the argument is available, and finding a notary becomes one more errand on a job that was described as over-the-counter.

Look at what the city's form is actually for. It is limited to windows, doors or impact shutters of a single-family residence, which is to say a replacement, like for like, into an opening somebody else built. There is no version of this permit for a new wall. Almost every window job in this city is a retrofit, and the affidavit you put your name to is an affidavit about another contractor's work.

A retrofit inherits whatever the last contractor did. A buck that was never sealed properly, a sill with no drainage path, stucco returns cut to suit a frame profile nobody makes any more. None of that appears on a product approval, and on a permit issued over the counter none of it gets looked at until the inspection. That is why we survey the opening rather than the existing frame, and why we would rather find the surprise at the measure than at the final.

1. 01Read the address against the city's designated districts of Old Floresta and Pearl City before selecting a product, because a Certificate of Appropriateness runs on its own monthly calendar.
2. 02Assemble the product approval set as a job document rather than as a filing copy, so the pages the inspector asks for are on site, complete and legible.
3. 03Settle the door specification against the water infiltration language on the city's own form before anything is ordered.
4. 04Get the association affidavit notarized and the board's approval letter in hand before the permit package goes in, not after.

The over-the-counter route is genuinely quicker and we use it. What we do not do is treat it as a lighter standard. Every opening on the schedule carries its approval number and every approval sits in the folder on site, because the whole design of this permit type is that verification happens once, at the end, in front of somebody with the authority to fail it. A crew that has never worked in this city tends to discover that on the wrong morning.

Source: City of Boca Raton Single Family Windows, Doors, Shutters Affidavit, HOA Regulations Notification Affidavit and Certificate of Appropriateness checklist — checked 2026-09-24