Why is my permit still open? What it means and how to close it

How often permits stay open, by city and trade

Share of permits a year or more old that reached a final, and how long the usual permit took to get there.

Two patterns. One-visit jobs close: roofs, electrical and heating permits mostly reach a final within weeks to a few months. Long jobs stay open: additions and remodels pass through several inspections, the last one is easy to forget once the family has moved back in, and the permit sits.

The five usual reasons

1. Nobody booked the final. The most common case. The work passed its rough-in inspections, the job finished, and the last call to the inspection line never happened. Ask the contractor to book it.
2. The final failed and nothing followed. Open the permit on the city's portal and read the inspection list. A failed final with no re-inspection after it is a correction list someone has not finished.
3. The work stopped. The contractor left, the money ran out, or the scope changed. See what to do if a contractor didn't finish.
4. The city closes it some other way. Seattle closes a re-roof permit without an inspection: the contractor emails a Roof Replacement Affidavit to SDCI (SDCI, read October 2026). If the affidavit is never sent, the permit stays open even though no one ever needed to visit.
5. The record never caught up. The inspector passed it but the status did not change. The inspection list will show a passed final; the permit office can fix the status.

Open, expired, or closed

Permits do not stay open forever, though the rules differ even by trade. Andover, Massachusetts, quotes the state code (780 CMR 105.5): a building permit becomes invalid after 180 days if the work is "suspended or abandoned", the Town "cannot inspect under EXPIRED permits", but "plumbing, gas, and electrical permits never expire"; if the original contractor is gone, a new contractor pulls a new permit and the work must meet current code (Town of Andover). Jacksonville Beach, Florida, for example, treats a permit as expired when there is no inspection "within 180 days of permit issuance or the last approved inspection" (City of Jacksonville Beach). Seattle construction permits "typically expire 18 months after the issue date", can be renewed up to 30 days before that, and can be reestablished if expired for less than one year, at one and a half times SDCI's hourly fee (SDCI, read October 2026).

An expired permit is worse than an open one, because it usually has to be renewed or "cured" before anyone can close it or pull a new permit for related work. KXAN counted 107,775 expired permits on 68,867 Austin residential addresses in 2021, and the city told the station they generally have to be cured before a related new permit is issued (KXAN, November 2021).

How to close it

1. Look it up. Search your address on the city portal (the official search for 46 cities). Note the permit number, status and last inspection.
2. If it is open and the work is done, ask the contractor who pulled it to book the final. If they will not, call the permit office and ask whether you can book it as the owner. Close the trade permits first: Newton, Massachusetts, wants every electrical, plumbing and gas permit on the job closed before the final building inspection, and reminds owners that "old permits are not automatically closed" (City of Newton).
3. If a correction is outstanding, get the correction notice from the portal or the office, and have it fixed before the re-inspection.
4. If it has expired, ask the office how to renew or reactivate it, what it costs, and whether walls need opening for the inspector. Jacksonville Beach, for example, lets the owner close an expired permit for substantially complete work after paying fees and passing a safety field evaluation (City of Jacksonville Beach).
5. Keep the paper. Save the final inspection result as a PDF. Sioux Falls' building department warns that "many financial institutions will not finance a purchase without proof of a final inspection" (City of Sioux Falls). On the next job, do what Needham, Massachusetts, advises and write into the contract that proof every permit is closed comes before the final payment (Town of Needham).

Checking a contractor's open permits before you hire

Your contractor's other permits tell you whether yours is likely to be closed. Among Minneapolis HVAC firms with 10 or more permits, the 10th-percentile firm finished 57.5% of its permits and the 90th-percentile firm 93.6%; 40 of those 141 firms were under 70%. Every firm page here shows that firm's own share. A firm near the bottom of its city's range is one to ask, by permit number, about the jobs it left open.

See every Minneapolis HVAC firm's finished share →

What our numbers cannot tell you

A permit open in our file may have been closed since our last refresh (about monthly); the city portal is the live record. Some cities record finals unevenly. Many Chicago permits are never marked complete at all, and Tyler records no completion date, so we do not compare finish rates across those cities. And an open permit is not proof of bad work: it can be a homeowner who never let the inspector in.