Are any building permits NOT public record?

Rarely. Federal buildings, military installations, embassies, courthouses, and some critical infrastructure may be sealed. Domestic violence shelter addresses are sometimes redacted. A handful of celebrity homes have successfully petitioned for individual permit sealing — but residential permits are essentially always public.

Can I use permit data for commercial outreach?

Yes — public records can be used for B2B prospecting in all 50 states. Standard guardrails: respect Do Not Call registry for consumer outreach, never impersonate a government official, and follow your state's commercial-mail rules. 154,583 contractor profiles in PermitGrab were built from these public sources.

Are Building Permits Public Record? How to Look Them Up Free

Q: Are building permits public record?

Yes — in every US state, building permits are public record under state open-records laws. Anyone can request the permit history for any address, who pulled the permit, the project value, and the inspection record. PermitGrab tracks permits across 1061 cities from these public sources.

Q: How do I look up a building permit for free?

Three options: (1) Search the city or county permit portal directly — most major cities (Chicago, NYC, Miami-Dade, Phoenix, Austin, Atlanta) publish daily to Socrata/ArcGIS portals. (2) Use a free aggregator like PermitGrab to search across cities. (3) Visit your local building department in person for older or non-digitized records.

Q: What information is in a building permit?

Standard fields: property address, permit number, permit type (roofing/electrical/plumbing/etc), filing date, issue date, work description, declared project valuation, property owner of record, and the licensed contractor of record. Some cities also include the inspector name and final Certificate of Occupancy date.

Q: Why do people search for public permits?

Homebuyers verifying renovations. Contractors prospecting for adjacent work. RE investors finding distressed properties. Insurance agents auditing replacement-cost coverage. Journalists investigating zoning. Researchers tracking neighborhood construction trends. The data is one of the most-used public-records categories in America.

By Marcus Reeves, Head of Permit Research at PermitGrab · Updated daily from official city records · Last permit filed: today

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Yes — building permits are public record in every US state. Anyone can look up permits filed for a property, who pulled them, what work was done, and how much it cost. Most cities publish permits online for free; a handful still require an in-person trip to the building department. Across the 1061 cities PermitGrab tracks, every single permit feed comes from a public open-data portal or municipal records system.

This guide answers the questions homeowners, contractors, real-estate investors, and journalists actually ask when they try to look up a permit — and includes the fastest free path for the 30 biggest US cities.

Why are building permits public record?

Building permits are issued by a unit of local government — your city's building department, your county's land use department, or in some states a regional authority. Anything issued by a government in the US is presumptively a public record under state public-records laws (sometimes called sunshine laws, FOIA equivalents, or open-records acts). The reasoning: when someone alters a structure, neighbors, future buyers, code inspectors, and the public have a right to know what was permitted, who was responsible, and whether inspections passed.

That said, "public" doesn't always mean "easy to find." Some cities post every permit to a searchable map within hours. Others publish quarterly batches as PDF lists. A few hold out and require a walk-in records request. PermitGrab spends most of its engineering time bridging that gap: pulling from the 1,000+ portals that do publish online and normalizing the data into one searchable feed.

How do I look up a building permit for free?

Three working paths, ordered from fastest to slowest:

Search the city or county permit portal directly. Most major cities run an open-data portal (Socrata, ArcGIS, CKAN, or Accela) where you can search by address, permit number, or date range. Examples: Chicago (data.cityofchicago.org), NYC (data.cityofnewyork.us), Miami-Dade (gis-mdc.opendata.arcgis.com), Phoenix (mapping.phoenix.gov/maps), Austin (data.austintexas.gov).
Use a free third-party aggregator. Sites like PermitGrab, Shovels, and BuildZoom pull from the same public sources and let you search across cities in one place. PermitGrab is free to browse — full contractor phone numbers unlock with a paid plan, but addresses, permit types, dates, and contractor names are visible to all visitors.
Visit the building department in person. For older permits (pre-2000s) or cities that haven't digitized, the records exist on paper or microfilm at the local building department. Most clerks will print you a record if you give them an address. Allow 1-3 business days.

You can browse PermitGrab's directly: Chicago permits, NYC permits, Phoenix permits, Miami permits, or browse all 1061 cities.

What information is in a building permit?

The typical permit record includes the property address, permit number, permit type (roofing, electrical, plumbing, addition, demolition, etc.), filing date, issue date, work description, project valuation (declared dollar amount of work), the property owner of record, and — most usefully for lead-gen — the licensed contractor of record. Some jurisdictions also include the inspector's name, the architect of record, and the final certificate of occupancy date.

Coverage varies by city. Chicago's open data feed includes contractor name + permit valuation. Boston's includes the licensed individual but not the business. Washington DC's includes the applicant but not the contractor of record. PermitGrab documents these per-city schema differences for 1061 cities so you don't have to learn each portal's quirks.

Are sealed permits a thing?

Yes, but rarely for residential construction. Permits for federal buildings, military installations, embassies, courthouses, jails, and some critical infrastructure (water treatment plants, power stations) may be sealed under exemptions to public-records acts. Domestic-violence shelter addresses are sometimes redacted. A small number of high-net-worth privacy buyers successfully petition courts to seal individual permits — usually celebrity homes — but this is uncommon and only affects a tiny fraction of permits filed.

How fresh are public permit records?

Most cities publish permits within 24-72 hours of issuance. A handful (Saint Petersburg FL, Tampa FL via Accela detail pages, some California counties) lag by a week or more. PermitGrab tracks the publish-cadence of every wired source and surfaces freshness metadata on each city page so you know when "newest" really is newest.

Recent freshness across our top cities (as of the latest collection cycle): Atlanta — today; San Bernardino County — today; Austin, Chicago, Miami, Nashville — within 1 day. The full freshness ranking is on every city detail page.

Why do people search for public permits?

Homebuyers verifying that previous owners pulled permits for renovations (unpermitted work can fail a closing inspection).
Real estate investors looking for distressed properties (open code violations + no recent improvement permits = lazy maintenance and potential value-add).
Contractors prospecting for jobs — every permit is a homeowner who just hired someone for work; the next phase often needs a different trade.
Insurance agents auditing replacement-cost coverage after major renovations.
Journalists investigating zoning, gentrification, or contractor misconduct.
Researchers tracking neighborhood-level construction activity.

What if my city doesn't post permits online?

Three options. (1) File a public-records request with the building department — every state has a statutory response window (5-15 business days typically). (2) Visit in person; most building departments have a public records counter. (3) Check if a state-level aggregator covers your city — California's CSLB and Florida's DBPR publish statewide licensee data that helps you cross-reference contractor names even when individual permits aren't online.

Can I look up permits by contractor name?

Yes — that's actually one of the most useful searches. If you find a contractor's name on one permit, you can usually pull every other permit they've filed in that city. PermitGrab makes this trivial: search by contractor name on any city page and see every project that contractor has filed in the city, with project values and addresses. Across our database, 154,583 contractor profiles have at least one permit on file.

How do I use this information legally?

Permit data is public record and using it for outreach — direct mail, prospecting calls to licensed contractors, market research — is legal across all 50 states. Three guardrails: (1) Do Not Call registry compliance still applies when contacting consumers; B2B calls to a licensed contractor's business line are exempt. (2) Some states require disclosure when you're using public-records data for political polling or fundraising — those rules don't apply to commercial prospecting. (3) Don't impersonate a government official when contacting people about their permit.

If you're a contractor, real-estate investor, insurance agent, supplier, or any other professional wanting to use permit data as a lead source at scale, the manual portal-by-portal lookup gets old fast. PermitGrab is $149/month for unlimited access to the 154,583 contractor profiles and 11,863,412 property owners in our database — or start with the 14-day Pro trial ($0 today, cancel anytime).

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