Baltimore building permit search: Accela Citizen Access and the open permit file

Which addresses this covers

The Department of Housing & Community Development (DHCD), Permits and Inspections, issues permits inside Baltimore City limits. Baltimore County, which surrounds the city, runs its own permit office; Towson, Catonsville and Dundalk addresses are not in the city's system. DHCD announced in September 2023 that Accela would replace the city's permitting and inspections system (DHCD news). Permits issued since early 2025 carry new numbers: BRCM for residential combination permits and BCCM for commercial ones, replacing the old COM numbers.

How to look up the permits on a Baltimore address

1. Open Accela Citizen Access and choose Permits and Inspections. No account is needed to view records.
2. Pick Search by Address and enter the street number and street name. Leave the street type blank if the first try finds nothing.
3. Open each record on the address. A Baltimore renovation is usually one combination permit covering building, electrical, plumbing and mechanical work, so one record can hold the whole job.
4. Read the record's status and its inspection list to see whether the final inspection was passed.
5. To check the firm, switch to Search by Licensed Professional Information and enter the business name or state license number from your contract.

What the status tells you

The city's open permit file has no status column and no final inspection date, so the open data cannot tell you whether a job was signed off. Check the record in Accela Citizen Access instead: the status and inspection history are there. The open file does carry an expiration date for each permit, which tells you when an unfinished permit lapses.

What our Baltimore pages add

Our Baltimore page counts the city's permits by kind of work, June 2025 to September 2026:

85% of the 37,029 permits (June 2025 to September 2026) were residential combination permits. The busiest ZIP codes in that window were 21230 (3,167 permits), 21218 (2,917) and 21215 (2,910); every ZIP is on the ZIP code pages. The permit statistics page has counts by year and month, and browse permits lists the rows. Smaller kinds of work are on the garages and sheds, additions and demolition pages. Maryland home improvement contractors are licensed by the Maryland Home Improvement Commission.

What this does not tell you

The open file names no contractor and has no status, so we show no finished share, no time to final and no firm lists for Baltimore. The window starts in June 2025 because the city's switch to the new permit system left early-2025 monthly counts incomplete. The value is the cost declared on the permit, not the final price.