How to get your home’s permit history

Your city or county keeps a record of the permits pulled at your address: what work and when, and in many offices who did it and whether it passed its inspections. Your building department is the source of record, and you can ask it for what it has.

Where the records are

The office that issued permits for your address holds them. Inside city limits that’s usually the city’s building department. Outside, it’s often the county. In Colorado, the City of Boulder and Boulder County each keep their own.

Many offices let you search by address online, for free:

• Los Angeles lists building permits “from 1905 to present” in its online records (LADBS).
• Seattle has “All permits and inspections from 2005-present” in its online portal, and older permits scanned back to about 1894 on a separate records page (Seattle SDCI).
• Denver says to “Search permit records online (free & instant)” by address, and you can download a copy of an issued permit from the record (Denver CPD).
• New York City’s building profile shows “violations, permits and complaints,” each marked “active or resolved” (NYC DOB).
• Phoenix has permits “from 1995 to current” online; older ones take a public records request, as the city’s environmental records page says of its permit office (Phoenix).

What’s not online, you request. In the places we checked, these are public records: Seattle routes requests through Washington’s Public Records Act (Seattle SDCI), and Denver and Boulder through the Colorado Open Records Act, as both cities’ records pages say. Denver says a request “can take up to 10 business days to complete and may include a charge for staff time.”

Search more than one address. Seattle says limited or unexpected results “could be because the address has changed over time”, and “Permits may be filed under those different addresses.”

What you get back

Usually a list of permits, each with its type of work and its dates. Some offices show more. Boulder’s system includes “contractor names and inspection dates” and “inspection results,” and says, “Inspections in the city of Boulder are pass/fail” (City of Boulder).

Plans are harder. Los Angeles has “No plans available for Single Family Dwellings and Commercial buildings 3 stories and under, prior to 1978”, and for newer ones asks for a release letter from the current owner, a copy of the owner’s grant deed, and a release letter from the architect and engineer whose stamp is on the plans (LADBS request form, rev. February 11, 2026). Seattle releases approved plans only on “an individually written request” with the permit number and address.

What the status words mean

Offices word these a little differently. Sacramento’s definitions are typical (City of Sacramento):

• Issued: “approved, all fees were paid, and the project is now under construction.”
• Finaled: “The project permitted under the permit record received approval on all required inspections.”
• Expired: “A building permit or application expired due to inactivity.”

An expired permit often means the last inspection never happened. Deschutes County, Oregon, puts it plainly: “Final inspections were not completed prior to the 180-day expiration” (Deschutes County). In San Diego, if the work “has not received final inspection approval by the permit expiration date, all work shall stop until a new permit is issued” (San Diego IB 117, April 2026). Chicago says its building department “does not have legal authority to reinstate an expired permit” (Chicago DOB).

So the line to look for is a permit that was issued but never finaled. What it means for your house, and what to do about it, is a question for the office.

What to ask the building department

1. What permits do you have on file for this address, and under any earlier address?
2. Which were finaled, and which were issued but never finaled, or expired?
3. Are there violations, complaints or orders on file? If you don’t hold all of them, who does? (Los Angeles’s records office says it doesn’t have violations from the last 12 months or the housing department’s records.)
4. Are the plans on file, and what do you need from me to get a copy?
5. How far back do your records go, and what’s on paper or microfilm instead of online?
6. Is there an inspection record behind each final, or only pass or fail?
7. Who can I talk to about what a record means for work I’m planning?

The last one matters because a records request gets records, not answers. Boulder: requests “are limited to providing records only,” and research “does not include interpreting plans, building codes, or policies or answering questions concerning any document(s) provided.”

What the record can’t tell you

A missing record is not proof of anything. Records have gaps: the Denver Public Library’s permit collection says “Permits from 1893-1899 and 1955-1959 did not survive” (Denver Public Library), and Boulder says, “We do not keep permit documentation unless it is for new construction or major modifications.” Los Angeles’s records office says it doesn’t have inspection cards (LADBS request form). If something you expected isn’t there, ask the office why before you draw a conclusion.

Why it comes up at a sale or a refinance

Seller disclosure forms ask about it. Colorado’s form asks a seller about “Any additions or non-aesthetic alterations made without a Building Permit” and “Building code, city, or county violations” (Colorado Real Estate Commission, Seller’s Property Disclosure, required from January 1, 2026). Other states’ forms differ.

Appraisers notice it too. Fannie Mae’s guide says that if an appraiser finds an addition “that does not have the required permit, the appraiser must comment on the quality and appearance of the work and its impact, if any, on the market value” (Fannie Mae Selling Guide B4-1.3-05).

Before you buy, before you sell, and before you plan work on something an earlier owner changed, the permit history is worth asking for.

Keep what you get

Save the list and every copy the office sends, with the date you asked. When you pull a permit yourself, keep the permit and the final inspection result with the job, so the next owner and the next pro can see what was done and that it passed.

How Homaic does it

For a house in Denver, Aurora, Adams County, Boulder County, the City of Boulder or Fort Collins, the House page reads that office’s public permit records and prints one line when it finds permits at the address, such as “3 permits since 2016 · newest Jun 2022”, with the office’s name and, where the office publishes one, the year its records start. It counts permits filed under the house’s current address, and it doesn’t say whether each was finaled; that’s a question for the office. Fort Collins lists only open permits, so its line says “Current permits.”

On a job that could need a permit, the job’s page lists questions worth asking the building department, with a link to find yours. Homaic can’t tell you what the code says or whether a permit is required.

When the permit comes, add a photo or the PDF to the job’s documents, and the final inspection result when it passes. Homaic keeps the original.

Look up your home at homaic.io.