St. Louis Permit Data: Check the Building and Trade Files Separately

For a property in the City of St. Louis, Missouri, choose the permit file by the work you are tracing before concluding that a search is empty. The City’s open-data downloads page describes one Building Permits download for building, demolition and occupancy records and another for electrical, mechanical and plumbing records. Its Building Commissioner dataset catalog also lists these record classes separately. If the question is whether a rewiring or plumbing job had a permit, a blank building file alone does not answer it.

At a glance

• Address search: Yes. Building Permits Search by Address takes a street address or parcel.
• Online records start: Not confirmed.
• Older records: Sunshine Law request through the City’s GOV/QA portal. Fee and processing time: not confirmed.
• Checked: October 21, 2026. Compare 15 other jurisdictions in our permit lookup by address comparison.

Building Permit History tool · for buyers and owners

Permit status decoder

Copy the permit rows from the city or county portal and paste them below, one permit per line. The decoder explains each status, flags the ones to ask about, and lists what to request before you rely on the record.

Try: A mixed history Final scheduled Closed Certificate issued

Permit rows or statuses (up to 40 lines)

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Decode the statuses

Runs in your browser; nothing you paste is sent or saved. Status words differ between portals, so the department's own legend and inspection history decide what a record means. This is a checklist, not legal or purchase advice.

For a single City property, the Building Division also provides a Building Permits Search by Address. Its instructions say to enter a City address to find past permits, and its input is labeled Street Address or Parcel. That is a practical first look before working with the bulk files. The page does not state that this one screen replaces the separate trade datasets or contains every historical document.

Pick the file that matches the work

• Construction, alteration or demolition: Start with the City’s building or demolition permit data. The building-permit field guide names address and assessor-parcel fields as well as application and completion dates. Those columns are leads for matching the right project, not a certificate or a final-inspection report.
• Electrical, mechanical or plumbing work: Check the separate trade download or the individual electrical, mechanical or plumbing catalog entry. Each entry defines its own identifiers, dates and status fields; do not assume a building-permit number will be the trade permit number.
• Occupancy or inspection evidence: Treat the occupancy and inspection listings as separate record classes. An issued construction permit is evidence of authorization, while a final inspection or occupancy document answers a later question. Our final-inspection status guide explains why an issued date cannot substitute for that later result.

The City download description warns that recent data may be missing because of system upgrades. It gives no single, complete historical start year for every class on that page. In particular, the trade dataset catalog describes older downloadable CSVs separately from its current portal/API display; do not turn one file’s date span into a promise about all City records.

Match the project without merging unrelated rows

Begin with the work type and a known City address. If a candidate appears, compare its street fields, assessor parcel identifier where available, application or permit number, work description and dates. A later trade job at the same property may be unrelated to the original building permit; conversely, a building project may have several trade permits. Keep the identifiers and dates for each record rather than combining them into one guessed project timeline. Our permit lookup by address guide provides a general way to handle address variants.

The City’s building-permit layer definition lists AppDate, IssueDate and CompleteDate as distinct fields. An application date is not issuance. A displayed completion date is a field in that dataset; it should not be called a passed final inspection or a Certificate of Occupancy without the corresponding City record. If you need the latter, ask for that specific record and check whether it relates to the same work and address.

Escalate a gap to the City division

If a relevant file has no matching row, first check the other class and verify the address spelling and jurisdiction. The public Building Commissioner catalog lists the City Building Division at 314-622-3313 and dps-building-division@stlouis-mo.gov. Give staff the City property address, the type of work, approximate period and any candidate permit or application number. Ask whether the division holds a permit, inspection or occupancy record for that particular project, and which source covers the period missing from the download. A no-result screen or data extract is not a finding that no permit was issued.

Know the 2018 split in the trade files

The Electrical Permits dataset, Mechanical Permits dataset and Plumbing Permits dataset each offer a CSV titled “July 1992 to Present.” The City marks it deprecated, says it holds records from before November 28, 2018, and groups it by application year. Later records come through a live API on the City’s permit system. The Demolition Permits dataset says its API covers permits issued starting November 28, 2018. The two Access-database downloads on the City’s public datasets page show a last update of July 25, 2024, so don’t treat them as current.

In the trade data, the permit number field is PEIF_Number, current status is PEST_Name and the application date is PEIF_ApplicationDate. Inspection result fields sit alongside them.

Ask for records the data doesn’t show

1. Contact the Permit Section first. The Apply for a Building Permit page lists stlcitypermits@stlouis-mo.gov, (314) 622-3313, and 1200 Market, Room 425, open Monday to Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
2. For a formal copy request, use the City’s Sunshine Law Requests page. It routes requests through the GOV/QA portal, which needs an account.
3. Choose “Submit a Sunshine Law and Public Records Request,” pick the City department group, and list the address or parcel, any permit numbers, and the trade and date range. The page gives (314) 657-1326 for questions.

This route is for the City of St. Louis; a county mailing address does not establish City permit jurisdiction. Official City of St. Louis Building Division and open-data pages checked October 20, 2026.