Asheville building permit search: SimpliCity, statuses and old records

Which addresses this covers

The City of Asheville Development Services Department permits property inside city limits only. Unincorporated Buncombe County, Weaverville, Black Mountain, Woodfin and the other towns issue their own permits, so an address there will not be in SimpliCity.

The City's permit page does not describe a search by contractor name.

How to look up the permits on an Asheville address

1. Open simplicity.ashevillenc.gov/permits/search.
2. Type the street address, or the permit number from your paperwork.
3. Open each permit on the property. Trade work (electrical, plumbing, mechanical, gas piping) is filed as its own permit, so a remodel usually shows several.
4. Read the status of each one. Finaled, CC Issued or CO Issued means the City signed it off; Issued means work is still open.
5. If the address does not come up, check that it is inside city limits, then call Development Services at (828) 259-5846, the number on the City's permit page.

What the statuses mean

These are the statuses in the City's permit file and how our pages count them:

Of the home permits opened October 2024 to September 2025, 74.2% had finished, 12.2% were still open and 13.6% had expired by our 19 October 2026 snapshot. One in eight expiring is the number to remember: an Expired permit on work that was done means it never got its final inspection.

When the record is not online

For anything the online tools do not show, the City's public records page says to "visit the Public Records Portal to submit a request" at cityofashevillenc.justfoia.com. It says people "may obtain copies of their public records and public information free or at minimal cost unless otherwise specifically provided by law", and cites G.S. 132-6 for the point that the City does not have to create records that do not already exist (read 24 October 2026). Name the address and the years you want.

What our Asheville pages add

SimpliCity answers "what was permitted at this address". Our Asheville page answers "what gets built here, and how much of it gets signed off", from the City's file, October 2024 to September 2026:

Hurricane Helene struck at the end of September 2024, so the first months of the window carry a wave of storm-repair permits: 769 in October to December 2024 alone, against 1,797 in all of 2025. Electrical permits fell from 327 to 61 and roofing from 151 to 34 between the two 12-month halves. The permit statistics page has the year, month and season breakdown, permits by ZIP code shows where the work is (28806 led with 949 permits, October 2024 to September 2026), and browse permits lists the rows without owner names or street addresses. To check the license of the firm on a permit, use How to check a contractor's license in North Carolina.

What this does not tell you

The City's file has no issue date, so we date a permit by the day its application was opened, and we do not show time to final. The job value is blank on almost every permit, so we show no costs. The file names a contractor on most permits, but we have not matched those names to state license records, so our pages show counts, not firm rankings.