Fairfax County building permit search: how to look up permits on an address

Which addresses this covers

Fairfax County Land Development Services issues permits for the county and the towns of Vienna, Herndon and Clifton, including Reston, McLean, Springfield, Annandale, Centreville and Chantilly. The independent City of Fairfax and City of Falls Church run their own offices; a Fairfax or Falls Church mailing address outside those cities is the county's.

How to look up the permits on a Fairfax County address

1. Confirm the house is not inside the City of Fairfax or the City of Falls Church.
2. Open PLUS and choose Search by Address in the General Search menu.
3. Enter the street number and street name, then open each record in the results.
4. Read the status and the inspections on each permit. A finished job is Closed.
5. For work from before October 2022, repeat the search in LDIH; LDS says it "contains only those records that were uploaded prior to the launch of PLUS".
6. Check the contractor's licence on the Virginia DPOR lookup; our Virginia licence guide explains the classes.

What the statuses mean

Of permits issued June 2024 to May 2025, 85% were Closed by our count.

When the record you want is not online

LDS says to "Email LDSFOIA@fairfaxcounty.gov or submit the VFOIA Requests for Records form" if the online tools do not have it (LDS VFOIA Records Request). Check the retention schedule first: building plans and their supporting documents (applications, inspections, certifications) are "Destroyed three years after final inspection". For a house location plat, the county points to the Zoning Permit Review Branch at 703-222-1082 (all read 24 October 2026).

What our Fairfax County pages add

Our Fairfax County page counts the county's building records by kind of work, June 2024 to May 2026. Days to final are for permits issued June 2024 to May 2025 that closed.

73% of the 18,103 permits were for homes. The permit statistics page has counts by year and month, how long permits take has the middle-half ranges (63 to 224 days for all permits), and browse permits lists the rows. Whether a job needs a permit is in Do I need a permit?

What this does not tell you

The county's open file has no contractor and no job value, so we show neither. It holds building permits only: electrical, plumbing, mechanical and roofing permits are not published, so those jobs do not appear in our counts even though PLUS shows them. Permits issued from June 2026 on were still arriving when the file was read, so our window ends in May 2026.