With a potential impact fee hike of nearly $12,000 per home looming, homebuilders submitted a deluge of building permits last week to Osceola County, making May one of the busiest months ever in the county’s permitting office.
The county received 879 building permits this month through Monday, the last day to submit an application and still qualify for the current mobility fee rates. That number includes 414 single-family homes and 411 townhomes, mostly from national production homebuilders. They came in batches, with over 500 permits filed last Thursday and Friday alone.
Deputy County Administrator Ken Brown said most of the applications were submitted electronically. The real challenge starts now, with trying to review and approve hundreds of building permits over the next four weeks.
“Technically, they have to be issued by June 18 to qualify for the old fees,” Brown said. “We should be able to get it done. We went through them fairly quickly before. It all just depends on the quality of the application and whether it gets sent back for revisions. It will be on a case-by-case basis.”
County commissioners adopted the new mobility fees last September but agreed to wait nine months before implementing the higher rates. The fee for new homes will more than double from the current rate of $10,000 to $21,710. The rate for new apartments goes from $7,754 per unit to $14,040, representing an 81% increase.
Millions of dollars are on the line. That’s why D.R. Horton rushed to get its building permits in for the 315-unit townhouse community on Fish Lake before the mobility fees more than double in June. Beating the deadline could save the homeowner $3.1 million for the project. Last week, D.R. Horton filed 92 permit applications. The company’s multifamily division, DHI Communities, also filed building permits for Phase 2 of its Ascend at Kindred apartments on May 15.
Lennar Homes filed 34 new home permits and 70 townhome permits last week for Phase 2 of Bridgewalk. If they get approved in time, the homebuilder could save over $1.1 million in mobility fees.
Pulte Homes filed 64 building permits last week for townhomes and villas at Del Webb Twin Lakes. Other homebuilders that filed dozens of applications in March and April, and already have permits issued, include Meritage, Taylor Morrison, Mattamy Homes, Highland Homes, LGI Homes, AMI and Resibuilt.
For production builders, the approvals rarely take more than a week or two, because they’re building the same plans that were previously approved by the county. But for commercial and multifamily projects, the reviews can take months. The county is still waiting for revisions on some apartment complex applications that were submitted in 2014.
In the last two months, the county has received permit applications for another 24 apartment buildings and 6 condo buildings. That includes Embrey Partners’ Live Local apartments on Boggy Creek Road (300 units) and Bahama Bay (167 units). They will get added to the backlog that includes pending permits for:
- Phase 2 of Lucent at Sunrise City (465 units)
- Lantower at Sunrise City (332 units)
Other notable projects that submitted building permits this month include the Nickelodeon Hotel at Everest Place Resort and Sunray Junction West near the Poinciana SunRail station, for five commercial buildings totaling 73,620 square feet.
The City of St. Cloud is also raising its mobility fees on June 18, but the City Council opted to accept applications up until then under the current rates.
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