Kendall is the biggest housing market in Miami-Dade — and it has no city hall of its own. The corridor that runs from Kendale Lakes and The Hammocks east through Westchester, Tamiami, and Country Walk is unincorporated Miami-Dade County, which means a fence here isn’t reviewed by a village building department — it’s permitted by Miami-Dade County directly, under the county’s own zoning code. That one fact changes the form you file, the review path, and the height and setback rules compared with the incorporated villages next door. Allday Fence runs the county’s process week in and week out, not once a year — and our license covers more than fences: wood, aluminum, PVC, and chain-link, plus concrete/CBS walls and concrete columns — so we know what the county will approve before we dig a post.
Fence permit rules in unincorporated Kendall (Miami-Dade County)
Everything below is the county framework for residential fences and walls in unincorporated Miami-Dade. Heights, setbacks, and easements shift with the zoning district and the individual parcel, so treat these as the starting point — Allday Fence confirms the current code (Chapter 33 / §33-11) for your exact address before we quote, and we pull the permit. We don’t guess a number for your lot; we read your survey.
A permit is always required — including for a replacement. Miami-Dade has no “small fence” exemption. The county’s own guidance states a permit is required to build, repair, or replace a fence. Which application you file depends on the material and use:
- Building Permit (yellow application, Category 18) — wood fences, concrete/masonry (CBS/block) walls, fences built with concrete columns, and commercial chain-link.
- Zoning Improvement Permit / ZIP (green application) — residential chain-link (Category 10) and picket, iron, aluminum, or other non-wind-resistant “open metal” residential fences (Category 11).
- Aluminum, PVC/vinyl, and other manufactured fences carry their own product-approval (NOA) requirement regardless of track, and a non-wind-resistant fence used as a pool barrier is typically routed through a Building Permit rather than a ZIP. We file the correct application for your specific material.
Height — front, corner, side, and rear. Miami-Dade’s published guidance is that a residential fence “cannot exceed six feet in most cases,” and specifically that fences in front of the building line “may be no taller than six feet max height and no chain link is allowed.” By zoning district under §33-11:
- Front yard (typical RU / EU-M lot): up to 6 ft, but no chain-link forward of the front building line, and dropped to 2½ ft anywhere the fence would block driver sightlines (see the sight rule below).
- Corner lot: the street-side yard is treated like a front — the side-street setback and the sight triangle both apply, so a corner fence usually steps down near the intersection.
- Side and rear: generally up to 6 ft on interior lines in the RU / EU-M districts. Some estate and agricultural districts (EU other than EU-M, AU, GU) read differently — up to 6 ft in the required setback and as much as 8 ft at interior points — which is one reason we verify your specific district.
- Hedges may go higher than fences — up to 7 ft (8 ft on agricultural property) per the county’s hedges guidance.
One myth worth killing: the “4-ft front-yard fence” you’ll see in generic Florida articles is not the rule for a typical Kendall home. In Miami-Dade the 4-foot limit is tied to walls and hedges in the front/side-street setback of business and industrial (BU/IU) land, not residential fences — a single-family Kendall lot generally gets up to 6 ft in front. We confirm the exact §33-11 district limit for your parcel before we quote.
Setback and corner-visibility (“Safe Sight Distance Triangle”). This is the rule that trips up DIY and out-of-market installs, and it’s confirmed word-for-word on the county’s fence-permit addendum: “fences and walls that obstruct vision may not exceed 2½ feet in height when located either within 10 feet of the edge of any driveway leading to a public right-of-way, or within the ‘Safe Sight Distance Triangle’ as defined in Section 33-11(c).” The same form requires you certify the fence is not placed within the rights-of-way identified in §33-133. Those right-of-way and canal-easement widths vary by plat, so we read your recorded survey rather than assume a dimension.
How the fence or wall has to be built (confirmed from the county form):
- Finished side out — §33-11(b) requires the finished side of the fence face the neighboring property or the street.
- Walls (concrete/CBS/block) must be finished with stucco and paint on both sides, and a wall built on a shared property line requires a letter of approval from the adjacent property owner.
- Fences and walls may generally sit on the property line — except most residential chain-link, which has to sit behind the front building line.
HVHZ product approval — the Miami-Dade non-negotiable. All of Miami-Dade sits in the High-Velocity Hurricane Zone, the strictest wind-code jurisdiction in the country. For a building-permit fence or wall, the county requires the current Notice of Acceptance (NOA) or Florida Product Approval for the product (or custom drawings signed and sealed by a design professional), with posts, columns, and footings engineered to wind-load. We build to the current Florida Building Code HVHZ requirement for your product and lot rather than publish a generic wind-pressure or footing-depth figure that may not match your parcel. Skipping product approval is the single most common reason a handyman fence gets rejected at the county — and the reason to hire a licensed Miami-Dade fence contractor.
What the county needs to issue. A completed, notarized application (Building or ZIP); proof of ownership; the fence detail (NOA or signed/sealed drawings); a land survey or site plan with the fence location marked “using ‘X’s’”, showing length, height, and distance to the property line; the Addendum to Fence Permit Application; and an HOA approval letter where applicable. Fences in or near a utility easement also require the Sunshine 811 locate ticket (1-800-432-4770) and a minimum four-working-day field check before final approval, and the county may require an as-built survey at the owner’s expense if encroachment is a concern. Before we ever file, we run a MyHausFax™ property compliance report on the address so we know the folio, the recorded easements, and any open permits before they can hold up your fence.
Timeline and fee — from the department, not from us. The county states fence permits are “typically issued within 1-2 business days if all required information is correct” — easement, canal, and utility-hold cases run longer. The fee is set by the county’s Building Fee Schedule by linear footage and fence type; the county publishes no flat dollar amount, so we confirm the current figure with the department for your run rather than quote a number that isn’t real.
Don’t get ticketed. An unpermitted or non-compliant fence in unincorporated Miami-Dade can draw a code-enforcement penalty of up to $500.00 per day under Chapter 8CC — confirmed on the county’s own fence addendum. If a prior owner or a walk-off contractor left you an unpermitted fence, we can legalize it after the fact instead of tearing it out — see after-the-fact fence resolution.
Concrete walls and columns — inside our license
Allday Fence is a licensed specialty fence contractor, and that license covers any fence type plus concrete walls and concrete columns — so a Kendall project that mixes an aluminum or PVC run with CBS/block privacy walls or concrete entry columns stays with one contractor of record instead of getting split between trades.
A concrete or masonry wall is not just a taller fence, and Miami-Dade treats it that way. A CBS/block wall — especially a taller one — generally needs structural engineering, a poured footing, and its own wind-load / product approval beyond what a standard fence requires, and §33-11 adds the county’s own wall rules: finished with stucco and paint on both sides, and a neighbor approval letter when the wall sits on a shared property line. Allday handles the engineering and the permit together, so the wall is designed to pass RER’s structural and zoning review the first time. (Our fence-contractor license covers freestanding concrete walls and columns — not retaining walls or structural building walls, which are a different scope.)
The permitting authority: Miami-Dade County RER
Because Kendall is unincorporated, there is no local building department — your fence or wall is permitted through Miami-Dade County Regulatory & Economic Resources (RER) at the Herbert S. Saffir Permitting and Inspection Center, 11805 SW 26th Street, Miami, FL 33175 (786-315-2000, miamidade.gov/permits). The review runs zoning first (setbacks, height, sight triangle, chain-link placement), plus structural/product-approval review for building-permit fences and walls, then issuance and a final inspection. Allday Fence is a licensed specialty fence contractor — fences, concrete walls, and columns — and pulls the permit as Allday Fence: the contractor of record on the county application, on your Notice of Commencement, and on the closed permit.
County-approved is not HOA-approved (this matters in Kendall)
Few parts of the county are as heavily deed-restricted as Kendall. Between The Hammocks, Country Walk, the Kendale Lakes associations, and the long list of gated subdivisions off Kendall Drive and SW 137th Avenue, most homeowners answer to an architectural review board that is often stricter than the county code — black aluminum only, a fixed picket profile, a set color, a lower height than §33-11 would otherwise allow. A county permit does not override those covenants, and the association’s blessing does not satisfy the county. You need both, and they review on different clocks. We build the fence or wall to clear the architectural committee and the county code in one design, and we submit to each so your project doesn’t stall waiting on the other.
Pool-barrier fences on a Kendall lot
If your new fence also serves as the barrier for a swimming pool, it has to satisfy Florida’s Residential Swimming Pool Safety Act (Chapter 515) in addition to the county fence code — and Miami-Dade routes a non-wind-resistant pool-barrier fence through a Building Permit, not a ZIP. Under §515.29, the barrier must be at least 4 feet high on the outside, with no gaps, openings, indentations, protrusions, or structural components that could let a young child crawl under, squeeze through, or climb over it, and any gate must open outward away from the pool, be self-closing, and be self-latching with the release mechanism on the pool side so a small child can’t reach it. We build and permit these to clear the barrier inspection on the first visit — see pool-code fence installation.
Neighborhoods we fence across unincorporated Kendall
Kendall · Kendale Lakes · The Hammocks · Westchester · Tamiami · Country Walk · Richmond Heights — all unincorporated, all permitted through Miami-Dade County RER rather than a city hall. A quick jurisdiction note: bordering communities like Pinecrest and Palmetto Bay are incorporated municipalities that permit their own fences through their own village halls, so if your lot sits just over one of those lines the process is different — we confirm jurisdiction by folio/address on any borderline parcel before we quote. If you’re on the other side of the line, start here: Pinecrest fence contractor · Palmetto Bay fence contractor.
Why Kendall homeowners call Allday Fence
20 years of experience and 500+ fences installed across Miami-Dade, run out of South Dade — the county’s RER process is our home turf, not an occasional detour. As a licensed specialty fence contractor — fences, concrete walls, and columns — we’ve pulled and closed permits against parcels all through the Kendall corridor, from Kendale Lakes canal lots to gated Country Walk streets, so there’s nothing open on your property record when you refinance or sell. If you’ve inherited an unpermitted fence, our sister company Permit Solutions Services handles the after-the-fact legalization paperwork alongside our install crew, so one team closes the whole file.
Explore what we build for residential properties and commercial sites, or the two jobs Kendall calls us for most — fence repair & storm-damage restoration and permit-tied fence installs.