Video Transcript

Well, to start with, you need to determine that your property is a water front property. It is a riparian property. That your property line touches the water. Once that is determined, you would need, typically, state permits, state authorizations, to use state owned land beneath the water. Federal permits and in many cases, local approvals from your city or you county. That can vary from location to location. The most important authorization that you might need would be the permission from the state to use the submerged land underneath the water.

In most cases in Florida, the state of Florida holds title to those lands below the high tide line and you would need permission from them as the property owner in the form of a lease, an easement or a license to place some sort of a structure on that property. That could include obtaining a lease and paying lease fees and other conditions that can be placed upon your use of the state's property to protect natural resources and to preserve the public's use of the water.

On top of that, you would need environmental permits. The level of permitting that would be needed from the state would be dependent upon the type of dock, the size of the dock, the type of natural resources that might be impacted, such as sea grass or mangroves or, in the case of the Keys, corals and hard bottoms.

Then finally, you can run into circumstances where local governments have their own layer of permitting for docks and may place additional restriction upon docks.

As a final note, you can find, in some cases, deed restrictions placed upon property by homeowner's associations and whatnot that might further control the type of dock or your ability to place a dock on the property.