Who issues the permit on your address
| Where the property is | Who issues permits | How to look one up |
|---|---|---|
| A city, village or town (Evanston, Schaumburg, Cicero, Oak Park, Des Plaines, Orland Park and so on) | That municipality's building department | The village's own permit portal or counter |
| Unincorporated Cook County | Cook County Department of Building & Zoning | Building Permit Status Search: permit number plus PIN; phone 312-603-0500 |
| City of Chicago | Chicago Department of Buildings | Our Chicago permit search guide |
| Anywhere in the county, as a cross-check | Cook County Assessor (copy) | Assessor - Permits on Cook County Open Data |
The County's building permits page says "All work in unincorporated Cook County" needs a permit, apart from ordinary repairs, and sends you to CookViewer to check whether a site is unincorporated.
How to look up the permits on a Cook County address
- Find the property's 14-digit PIN on its tax bill or the Assessor's site, and check in CookViewer whether it is inside a municipality.
- In a municipality: go to that village's building department. Ask for every permit on the address and its final inspection.
- Unincorporated: enter the permit number and PIN in the Building Permit Status Search. Without a permit number, contact Building & Zoning at intake.bnz@cookcountyil.gov or 69 W. Washington, Suite 2830, Chicago.
- Cross-check: open Assessor - Permits and filter the
pincolumn by your PIN (zero-padded to 14 digits). Each row shows the local permit number, issue date, work description and amount the suburb reported. - Compare what you find with the work you paid for. A roof, a water heater and a fence are each their own permit.
What the Assessor's status means
The Assessor's file has a status column (Closed, Open, Pending and others), but it is not an inspection result. The Assessor's dataset notes say it "updates the status of CCAO workflows (e.g., open or closed)": the status tracks whether the Assessor has finished reviewing the permit for property tax. The file has no final inspection date either. So our pages list every permit as open and show no finished share and no time to final. For whether the work passed, only the village (or Building & Zoning) has the answer.
When the record is not online
Old permit files sit with whoever issued them: the village for incorporated land, Building & Zoning for unincorporated land. Illinois' Freedom of Information Act (5 ILCS 140) covers municipal and county records, so a written FOIA request to that office is the route for a file you cannot find online. The County's building permits page lists intake.bnz@cookcountyil.gov for Building & Zoning.
What our suburban Cook County pages add
Our suburban Cook County page puts the Assessor's file in one place, January 2024 to December 2025:
| Kind of work | Permits (Jan 2024–Dec 2025) | Last 12 months on file (Jan–Dec 2025) | Usual declared value |
|---|---|---|---|
| Remodels and repairs | 36,624 | 18,188 | $9,000 |
| Roofing | 33,059 | 14,756 | $15,939 |
| Fences and walls | 16,560 | 8,146 | $4,445 |
| Plumbing | 15,170 | 7,950 | $5,137 |
| HVAC | 10,735 | 5,359 | $9,400 |
| Electrical | 7,909 | 4,024 | $3,800 |
| Solar | 6,555 | 2,952 | $20,007 |
| New homes | 1,009 | 505 | $350,000 |
85% of the 179,885 permits were on homes. Roofing fell 19% from 2024 to 2025 while plumbing rose 10%. The permit statistics page has the year, month and season breakdown, and browse permits lists the rows without owner names or street addresses. To check a contractor's license, use How to check a contractor's license in Illinois.
What this does not tell you
The Assessor's file holds only the permits a suburb sent in, weeks to months after issue. It names no contractor (the applicant is usually the homeowner), has no ZIP code we can publish, and its status is a tax review, not a final inspection.
How we know this
The Building & Zoning details are from Cook County's building permits page and Building Permit Status Search, read 24 October 2026; the status wording is quoted from the Assessor's dataset notes. Our counts are the Cook County Assessor's Assessor - Permits file, read 20 October 2026: suburban permits issued January 2024 to December 2025, Chicago excluded.
Numbers come from public permit records in 57 cities, data through October 20, 2026. Nobody paid to be on this page and nobody can.
Questions
- How do I find out if a permit was pulled on my house in Cook County?
It depends on where the house is. In a city or village (Evanston, Schaumburg, Oak Park and the rest), ask that village's building department. In unincorporated Cook County, Cook County Building & Zoning issues the permit. You can also filter the Assessor's permit file on Cook County Open Data by your 14-digit PIN.
- Can I check a Cook County Building & Zoning permit online?
Yes, with the Building Permit Status Search at bzpermits.cookcountyil.gov. It asks for both the building permit number and the Property Index Number (PIN); it does not search by address.
- Is the Cook County Assessor's permit file every permit?
No. The Assessor says it holds the permits it knows about, as municipalities send them in. About a tenth of suburbs had not sent 2026 permits when we read it, so our counts stop at December 2025.
- Does the Assessor's permit status mean my permit passed inspection?
No. The status in the Assessor's file is the Assessor's own review of the permit for property tax, not a final inspection. Ask the village or Building & Zoning for the inspection record.
- What do Cook County suburban permits declare for a roof?
In the Assessor's file, January 2024 to December 2025, the usual roofing permit in suburban Cook County declared $15,939 and the usual remodel or repair permit $9,000. That is the value the suburb recorded, not a final bill.
Build your own list
Pick your city and the kind of work. Every firm with a permit on record, sorted by what you value.
Related guides
- Adams County, CO building permit search: the e-Permit Center, statuses and CORA
- Alachua County building permit search: Citizenserve, statuses and old records
- Anaheim building permit search: Anaheim NEXT and the Building Permit Report
- Arlington, VA building permit search: Permit Arlington lookups and FOIA requests
- Fairfax County building permit search: how to look up permits on an address
- Fayetteville, AR building permit search: the Civic Access portal and FOIA
- Building and Zoning Building Permits — Cook County (2026-10-24)
- Building Permit Status Search — Cook County Department of Building & Zoning (2026-10-24)
- CookViewer — Cook County (2026-10-24)
- Assessor - Permits (6yjf-dfxs) — Cook County Open Data (2026-10-20)