Use these guides when you have a street address, parcel identifier, permit number, or project number and need to find the government system that holds the record. Start with Permit Lookup by Address for a practical workflow, including how to identify the responsible city or county before searching.
Address spelling, unit numbers, parcel formats, and record coverage vary by jurisdiction, so a zero-result screen is not proof that no permit exists. Try the confirmed alternate inputs described in each guide, check legacy archives when the current portal is incomplete, and contact the responsible records office when an online search cannot answer the question. The guides also point out when a portal separates building, planning, code-enforcement, or trade-permit records so you can avoid treating one search as a complete property history. Keep the agency name, search terms, permit number, and coverage notes with any result you plan to rely on. This site provides independent navigation guidance and does not hold or certify permit records.
Check an Oregon contractor in the CCB license search. Our count of 44,127 active construction licenses: 10.2% had insurance ending within 60 days, and two in three residential general contractors have no employees.
Find an NYC certificate of occupancy in DOB NOW (2021 on) or BIS. Of 4,587 jobs whose first DOB NOW certificate came in 2021–2023, 31% still had no final CO in October 2026.
How to check a Washington contractor in L&I Verify, and what the state data shows: 76% general contractors, $30,000 bonds, 96% with $1 million policies, 10.6% with insurance ending within 60 days.
To look up code violations on a property, search the city’s own enforcement records by street address: Chicago’s Building Permit and Inspection Records, New York City’s HPDONLINE, Austin’s Citizen Connect, or the Seattle Services Portal. The same search means different things in each city. In our count of 2024 records, 64% of Chicago building violations … Read more
To check a contractor’s license, take the license or registration number from the contract or the building permit and search it in the state or city agency’s own lookup tool. Confirm three things: the status is active today, the name matches the business on your permit, and the license type covers the work. Where the … Read more
A certificate of occupancy (CO) is the building department’s record that a building, or a change to it, passed its final inspections and can be used for the stated purpose. To look one up, search the permit records of the department that issued the building permit, by address or parcel number. In Miami-Dade County, new … Read more
Search NYC DOB property records by address, BBL, BIN, or job number. Learn when to use BIS, when to use DOB NOW, and how to follow permits and inspections.
Find the government office and current or legacy portal that holds a U.S. building permit record, then search with the address, parcel identifier, and permit number.
An address not found in a permit system does not prove that no permits exist. Use the correct jurisdiction, address variants, parcel identifier, and current and legacy databases to recover the record path.
A permit number can be the most precise way to find a record when address search is noisy.