To look up permits pulled on a house, go to the building department for the city or county where the property sits and search its permit records by street address or parcel number. Most jurisdictions offer an online portal; those that don’t will pull records for you by phone, counter visit, or public records request. Building permits are public records in every state, so you don’t need to own the home or explain why you’re asking.
Identify the Right Building Department
Permits are issued and stored locally, and “local” can mean a city, a county, or a special district depending on the property. A house inside city limits usually falls under the city building department. A house in an unincorporated area is handled by the county. The quickest way to confirm which office you need is to search the property address along with “building department” or “building permits” online.
If that doesn’t produce a clear answer, check the county assessor’s or property appraiser’s website. Searching the address there tells you which jurisdiction the parcel belongs to and often links directly to the building department. Contacting the wrong office wastes time; they won’t have the records, and they may or may not redirect you.
What to Have Ready Before You Search
A few pieces of information make the search faster and more reliable:
- The full street address, including any unit or suite number. Every permit search tool requires this at minimum.
- The parcel number, sometimes called the APN. This is the unique identifier the county assigns to each piece of land, and it’s more reliable than an address for older records or properties that have been subdivided. You can find it on a property tax bill, on the deed of trust, or by searching the county assessor’s website.
- The current or previous owner’s name. This helps narrow results for properties on common street names or in older records that weren’t digitized with full address data.
If you’re researching a house you don’t own, the assessor’s website is the best place to get the parcel number. Real estate agents can also pull parcel numbers from MLS databases that aren’t visible on public listings.
Search the Online Portal
Many building departments run online permit portals that return records in minutes. On the department’s website, look for a link labeled “Permit Search,” “Online Services,” or “Building Records.” These portals typically let you search by address, parcel number, or owner name, and they return every permit on file for that property.
What’s displayed varies. Most systems show the permit type, the date it was issued, its current status, and the name of the contractor or property owner who applied. Some let you view approved plans, inspection results, and associated documents on the spot. Others require a free account before showing full details. Larger cities and counties often have records going back decades online; smaller jurisdictions may only post permits from the last few years and require a phone call or office visit for anything older.
Request Records When the Portal Falls Short
If the online system doesn’t show what you need, or the jurisdiction hasn’t digitized older records, you have two options: call the building department or visit in person. Show up at city hall, the county clerk’s office, or the building department with the address and parcel number, and staff can look up what’s on file.
For older or more detailed records, you may need to submit a written public records request. Most agencies accept these by email or in person. Some turn requests around within a few business days; others take a couple of weeks, especially for large requests. The agency has to let you inspect existing records, but staff generally won’t compile custom reports or piece together a full construction history for you. Modest per-page copying fees for paper records are common.
Read the Permit Record
A permit record is a paper trail for a construction project. The fields worth understanding:
- Permit type tells you the category of work: electrical, plumbing, mechanical, roofing, demolition, or a general building permit for structural changes. A single renovation project often generates several permits.
- Scope of work is a brief description of what was authorized, such as “install 200-amp electrical panel” or “add 400 sq ft bedroom addition.”
- Dates include application, issuance, inspections, and completion or expiration. The gap between issuance and final inspection tells you how long the project took.
- Contractor and owner shows who pulled the permit and who owned the property at the time. Owner-pulled permits aren’t automatically a red flag, but they mean the work wasn’t done by a licensed professional.
- Status is the single most important field. “Finaled” or “Closed” means the work passed final inspection. “Issued” or “Active” with no final inspection may mean the project was never completed or never inspected. “Expired” means the permit lapsed before the work was finished.
Any permit not marked finaled or closed deserves attention. An open permit doesn’t necessarily mean the work is defective, but it does mean nobody from the building department verified that it met code. That distinction matters for insurance, lending, and resale.
Spotting Work That Should Have Had a Permit
Reading a permit history is also about noticing what isn’t there. The International Residential Code, which most jurisdictions adopt in some form, requires a permit for any work that involves constructing, enlarging, altering, or demolishing a structure, or installing and modifying electrical, plumbing, gas, or mechanical systems.
Work that generally does not require a permit includes:
- Cosmetic updates: painting, wallpaper, carpeting, tiling, cabinets, and countertops.
- Small detached structures such as sheds under 200 square feet with a single story.
- Fences under 7 feet tall.
- Retaining walls of four feet or less from the base of the footing to the top.
- Sidewalks and driveways.
- Ground-level decks under 200 square feet, no more than 30 inches above grade, and not attached to the house.
- Ordinary repairs like replacing a light fixture, patching drywall, or swapping out a faucet, provided you’re not cutting into structural elements or rerouting plumbing or wiring.
Local rules can be stricter or more lenient than the model code. Finished basements, new bathrooms, decks attached to the house, water heater replacements, and any rewiring almost always require a permit. If a property has a major addition or system upgrade with no matching permit, that’s a gap worth investigating.
Why This Matters When Buying a Home
A home inspection tells you what an inspector can see on the day of the visit. A permit history tells you what happened behind the walls over the life of the property. The two complement each other, and using only one leaves blind spots.
Say a previous owner converted a garage into a bedroom or added a bathroom. If the work was permitted and finaled, a building inspector verified it met code at the time. If there’s no permit, nobody checked. The work might be perfectly sound, or it might have undersized wiring, inadequate ventilation, or structural problems that won’t surface until something fails. A home inspector can catch visible issues but can’t open walls and has no way to know whether the electrical panel was upgraded by a licensed electrician or by a relative on a weekend.
Permit records also reveal scope. A disclosure statement might say “kitchen was remodeled in 2019,” while the permit record tells you whether that remodel included new gas lines, moved plumbing, or structural changes.
Risks of Unpermitted Work
Discovering unpermitted work isn’t just paperwork. The consequences are financial and practical.
- Insurance claim denials. If damage stems from unpermitted work, the insurer can deny the claim on the grounds that the work was never inspected and may not meet code. An electrical fire in an unpermitted room addition is a textbook example. Beyond denying the individual claim, the insurer may raise premiums or cancel the policy once unpermitted improvements come to light.
- Appraisal problems. Appraisers generally cannot assign value to unpermitted improvements because there’s no guarantee the work is safe or code-compliant. A finished basement or extra bedroom might add nothing to the appraised value, which can sink a sale when the appraisal comes in below the purchase price.
- Lending complications. Lenders care about unpermitted work because it affects the collateral. FHA and VA loans are particularly strict about safety and habitability standards, and unpermitted work found during underwriting can delay or kill loan approval. Conventional loans are somewhat more flexible, but lenders can still require permit documentation for major improvements before closing.
- Fines and forced remediation. Local governments can impose fines for work done without permits, and some jurisdictions charge penalty multipliers of two to four times the standard permit fee. In serious cases, the municipality can require you to tear out the unpermitted work entirely.
- Disclosure liability. In most states, sellers are legally required to disclose known unpermitted work. If a buyer discovers unpermitted improvements the seller knew about but didn’t disclose, the seller faces potential lawsuits even after the sale closes.
These risks stack. A house with significant unpermitted work can be hard to insure, hard to finance, and hard to sell at full value.
Fixing What You Find
Open permits and unpermitted work are usually resolvable. The path depends on what turned up.
Closing an Open Permit
An open permit means someone pulled a permit but never scheduled the final inspection, or the project stalled. Open permits stay with the property regardless of ownership changes, so a previous owner’s open permit is now the current owner’s problem. Start by contacting the building department to find out what’s needed. Sometimes a single final inspection closes it. If the work was never completed, you may need a licensed contractor to finish or correct it before the inspection can pass.
Getting a Retroactive Permit
For work done with no permit at all, most jurisdictions allow you to apply retroactively. The process is more involved and more expensive than getting a permit upfront. You’ll typically submit as-built drawings showing the work in its current state, and an inspector has to verify code compliance. That often means opening up walls, ceilings, or floors so the inspector can see what’s behind them. Anything that doesn’t meet code has to be brought into compliance before the permit can be finaled.
Costs vary widely. Beyond the standard permit fee, expect penalty surcharges and the expense of opening and repairing finished surfaces for inspection access. If corrections are needed, repair costs add up quickly. The process can take several weeks. It’s neither cheap nor fast, but it’s almost always better than leaving the work unpermitted and running into insurance, lending, or resale trouble later.
Negotiating During a Purchase
If permit issues surface during a home purchase, you have leverage. The standard move is to require the seller to close all open permits and obtain retroactive permits for unpermitted work before closing. The alternative is a price reduction that covers the cost of resolving the issues after you own the home. Either way, identify the problems before you close. Once the deed is in your name, every unresolved permit becomes your expense.