What a building permit record shows (and what "final" means)

Status words by city

From each city's permit file as we read it in October 2026 (Nashville's Case Status field; Seattle StatusCurrent; San Francisco Current Status; Medford TRAKiT status; Miami BuildingPermitStatusDescription; Minneapolis status). A dash means we did not tabulate that word for this page.

The fields, defined

Filed / applied. The application is in and under review; no work is allowed yet. San Francisco's file holds 10,508 permits still at "filed" and Seattle's shows review states such as "Corrections Required" (San Francisco and Seattle permit files). We count a permit only once it is issued.

Issued. The city approved the plans or the scope and the work may start. It says nothing about whether the work was done right. Our days-to-finish figure counts from the issue date.

Final / finaled / closed / complete / done. The inspector passed the last inspection and the city closed the permit. This is the word to look for. Sioux Falls' building department warns that "many financial institutions will not finance a purchase without proof of a final inspection" (City of Sioux Falls, accessed Oct 2026). In Medford, 99.9% of done permits in our window carry a FINALED date (Medford permit file); in Miami a final-inspection date is present on only 19.7% of rows, so we use the date the status changed to Final instead (Miami permit file).

Certificate of occupancy (C of O). The document a city issues when a new building, or a change of use, may be lived in. Medford records it as a status of its own, C OF O ISSUED, on 3,113 rows of the current layer we read, and we treat it as finished (Medford permit file).

Expired. The permit ran out of time before a final. Causes vary: work never started, work stopped, or work finished and nobody booked the final. In Seattle, expired permits are 3–15% of a year's issues (Seattle permit file). KXAN counted 107,775 expired permits on 68,867 Austin residential addresses in October 2021, and the city told it that a related new permit generally waits until the expired one is "cured" (KXAN, Nov 2021). We count expired permits as not finished.

Voided / withdrawn / cancelled. The permit was pulled back before work, or applied for and never issued. We drop these from every count: San Francisco had 4,593 such rows in our pull (San Francisco permit file).

Filed (declared) value. What the applicant told the city the work is worth, used for permit fees. It is not an invoice. Seattle uses EstProjectCost; San Francisco has an estimated and a revised cost, and we use the revised one when it is above zero; Miami uses TotalCost. Some permit types carry no value: in Minneapolis it is present on 99.3% of building permits but only 41.9% of permits overall, because plumbing and most mechanical permits leave it blank (Minneapolis permit file).

Contractor of record, applicant, owner. The contractor of record is the licensed business responsible for the work. The applicant is whoever filed (often the contractor, sometimes an expediter or the owner). The owner is the property owner. Cities mix these: Minneapolis's applicantName is the contractor; San Francisco keeps a separate contacts file where the contractor is the contact with role "contractor", and 71,380 contacts there are owner-builder placeholders (San Francisco permit file). A permit naming the homeowner as the builder is an owner-builder permit: the owner takes responsibility for the inspections.

License match. Our link between the business name on the permit and a state license. In Seattle we matched 1,153 of 1,229 residential firms to Washington L&I records by business name (Seattle build notes, Oct 2026). Unmatched means the name did not match, not that the firm is unlicensed.

Parcel. The assessor's ID for the lot: Miami's folio number, Minneapolis's APN, San Francisco's block and lot. Seattle's permit file has no parcel column, so its records join to property data by address (Seattle permit file).

Trade / permit type. The kind of work: electrical, mechanical, plumbing, roofing, building. Many cities issue each trade its own permit, so one remodel can carry three or four permits with different contractors. In Medford each electrical, mechanical and plumbing permit is issued to its own contractor and finaled on its own (Medford permit file).

Inspection result. Each visit (footing, rough-in, cover, final) is logged with pass, fail or partial. A failed inspection followed by a pass is ordinary. A last inspection that failed with nothing after it is an open problem. Minneapolis's file adds a milestone field that reads "Final Inspection" (Minneapolis permit file).

What our numbers mean

Two cautions on the finished share. First, long jobs finish less often inside our window: in San Francisco, roofing permits reached a final 87.3% of the time and additions 52.2%. Second, cities record finals differently, so compare firms within one city and trade, not across cities.

Check one record yourself in five minutes

1. Find your city's official search in our list of 46 permit portals and search your street address.
2. Open the permit that matches your job and read the status against the table above.
3. Open the inspection list and check that the last entry is a passed final.
4. Look up the contractor on our site to see how their other permits ended.

See every Seattle electrician's finished share and license status →

What a permit record does not show

Whether the work was good beyond what the inspector checked, what you paid, or work done without a permit. Our copy is refreshed about monthly from each city's file; the city portal is the live record.