Step 1: find the office that issues permits for the address
City limits decide it. A house with a city's mailing address may sit in unincorporated county land, and then the county holds its permits. Gilbert, AZ is an example: the Town permits land inside the town limits, while the unincorporated Maricopa County islands next to it are permitted by the county (Gilbert and Maricopa County guides).
Check the property tax bill or the county assessor's parcel page: it names the jurisdiction. Then use that office's search.
Step 2: search the portal
| System | Our guides that use it | What to type |
|---|---|---|
| Accela Citizen Access | 43 | Street number and street name in separate boxes; leave out "St", "Ave" if nothing comes back |
| Tyler EnerGov (Civic Access / self-service) | 30 | The address, or the permit number if you have it |
| CentralSquare eTRAKiT / TRAKiT | 12 | Address or permit number; some need an account for details |
| Open data (ArcGIS, Socrata and similar) | 121 mention it | Filter on the address field; download the table for a full history |
Counts are from our 168 search guides; a guide can name more than one tool. Several places have their own system: San Francisco's Permit / Complaint Tracking System and the MyBuildingPermit search shared by Bellevue and other Washington cities.
Step 3: read the status
| Status (common wording) | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Applied, In review, Plan check | Not yet issued; work should not have started | Nothing yet |
| Issued, Active, Open | Work allowed; final inspection not passed | Check the inspection list for the last result |
| Final, Finaled, Closed, Complete, C of O | Final inspection passed or permit closed out | Keep a copy for your records |
| Expired | Ran out of time before a final | Ask the office how to renew it; see open permits when selling a house |
| Void, Withdrawn, Cancelled | Abandoned before or after issue | Jacksonville Beach notes even a withdrawn permit "will remain recorded in a property's permanent history" |
Open the permit itself, not just the list: the inspection history shows whether a final failed or was never booked, and the contractor or applicant name shows who pulled it.
Step 4: older records
Online systems rarely go back past the year the office switched to them. For older permits and plans, file a public records request with the building department or city clerk; 93 of our 168 guides describe that office's request route. Gilbert, AZ, for example, takes building records requests through its Clerk's Records Request Portal.
The official permit search, by state
Each guide gives the portal link, what it searches by, how that office words its statuses and where older records are kept.
What you can do with the record
- Check a contractor. Search the contractor's name instead of an address, or open their profile on our city pages, which groups every permit they pulled in our window. Our guide to checking a contractor's permit history shows how.
- Confirm your own job was permitted. See did my contractor pull a permit.
- Before you buy or sell. Every open or expired permit on the address is worth a call to the office; see open permits when selling a house.
- Unpermitted work. If the work is there and the permit is not, see how to legalize unpermitted work.
What this page cannot tell you
The city's portal is the live record; our own permit lists are refreshed about monthly and leave out street addresses. We cover 57 cities with contractor data and more places with permit data only; for anywhere else, search for the city's or county's own permit portal on its .gov site; the search there is free. Portals change: each guide is dated, and the system counts above are from the guides as of 25 October 2026.
How we know this
The place list is our 168 local building permit search guides, each written from that office's own portal and help pages and dated. System counts are the number of those guides that name the system (one guide can name several). Status wording is the common form across those guides; your office may use other words for the same thing.
Numbers come from public permit records in 57 cities, data through October 25, 2026. Nobody paid to be on this page and nobody can.
Pick your city and see every contractor's permit record →
Questions
- How do I find out what permits were pulled on my house?
Search the address on the permit portal of the office that issues permits there: the city inside city limits, the county outside them. Most portals list every permit on the address with its number, type, status and dates. Our table links the official search for 168 places; for anywhere else, search "[city] permit search" and use the result on the city's own .gov site.
- Are building permits public record?
Yes. Permit applications, statuses and inspection results are public records in every place we cover, and many offices publish them as open data as well as on a search portal. Plans and drawings can be restricted for security or copyright reasons and usually take a records request.
- Why can't I find a permit for my address?
Four usual reasons: the address is under a different office (a county, not the city); the permit predates the online system, so it is on paper or microfilm; the portal wants the address in its own format (try the street name only, or the parcel number); or no permit was ever pulled. A records request to the building department settles the first three.
- How far back do online permit records go?
It depends on when the office moved to its current system, often the 2000s or 2010s. Albuquerque, for example, keeps pre-2016 permits in separate reports outside its ABQ-PLAN portal. Older permits are usually available through a public records request.
- Can I see who pulled the permit?
Usually. Most portals show the contractor or applicant on the permit record. On our city pages each contractor's permits are grouped into one profile, so you can see how many permits a firm pulled and what share it finished.
- Do I need an account to search permits?
Usually not for a basic search by address. Some portals ask you to register before showing details or documents: Gilbert, AZ's One Stop Shop finds a permit by number after you log in, while its open data table can be searched by address without one.
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
- McKinney, TX building permit search: the Customer Self Service portal and the City's permit file
- Mecklenburg County building permit search: Charlotte permits, statuses and old records
- Open and Expired Permits — City of Jacksonville Beach Building Division (accessed 2026-10-20)
- One Stop Shop — Town of Gilbert Development Services (2026-10-24)
- Public Records — Town of Gilbert Clerk's Office (2026-10-24)
- Permit / Complaint Tracking System — San Francisco DBI (2026-10-23)
- Permit Status — MyBuildingPermit (2026-10-23)