Yes. Building permits are public record in every U.S. state. The permit file for any address shows what was applied for, when it was issued, which inspections passed or failed, the contractor of record, the declared project value, and the final status. Anyone can look it up, no account, no stated purpose, no notification to the owner. The one part of the file that usually stays restricted is the full set of stamped construction plans.
That single restricted category trips people up, so this page walks the line between the two halves: what the public file contains, what a city will withhold, and what it means that a stranger can pull the permit history on your house in about ninety seconds. If you want the lookup itself, portal by portal, that walkthrough lives in how to look up building permits. This page answers the access question underneath it, as part of our public records guide for real estate.
Why permits are public in the first place
A building permit is a government approval to do regulated work. The application, the review, the fees, and the inspections are all government business, and government business in the United States defaults to open. Washington's Public Records Act is typical: an agency has to disclose records unless a specific statutory exemption covers them, and it cannot ask why you want them. The fee statute even caps what a city can charge, fifteen cents a page for copies, and inspection of the original record is free.
Most cities go further than the law requires. Rather than process a records request for every "what permits are on this house" question, they publish the permit database in a searchable portal. Seattle puts its full permit and complaint history online through the Seattle Services Portal. Fourteen Eastside and South King County cities share one search at permitsearch.mybuildingpermit.com. You are not filing a request when you use these. You are reading a published record.
What the public permit file contains
I read permit files daily. We pull Seattle's complete permit dataset every night for our lead scoring, and the fields below are what a portal record carries just about everywhere.
| Item | Public? | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Permit number, type, description | Yes | What work was approved: addition, reroof, demolition, new unit |
| Application and issue dates | Yes | When the project started its paper trail |
| Status (issued, finaled, expired, cancelled) | Yes | Whether the work was ever signed off |
| Inspection history, pass/fail | Yes | Whether the work was checked, and how many tries it took |
| Contractor of record and license number | Yes | Who did the work, and whether a pro did it at all |
| Declared project valuation | Yes | Roughly what the owner said the work would cost |
| Applicant and owner name on the permit | Yes | Who pulled it, owner or contractor |
| Full stamped plan sets and drawings | Usually restricted | Floor plans, structural drawings, engineering calcs |
| Reviewer notes and internal correspondence | Sometimes | Released on request in most states, portal-visible in a few |
The owner row has a trap in it: the name on a permit is whoever pulled it, often the contractor, so check it against the deed on file with the county recorder before you read it as ownership.
The plans row deserves its own section, because it is the one place the yes gets complicated.
The exception: building plans
The permit record and the building plans are two different things, and cities treat them differently. Stamped architectural drawings are the design professional's work product, so copies typically take an extra, deliberate step rather than a portal click. Seattle is a concrete example: the permit record is self-serve online, but a copy of approved construction plans requires an individually written request to SDCI naming the permit number and address, and plans for certain buildings, jails and critical infrastructure among them, are not released at all. The practical result is consistent across most of the country. You can see that a plan set exists, you can often view it at the counter or in a viewer, and you will need an extra step or the owner's cooperation to walk away with a copy.
For a buyer or an investor this rarely matters. The question you care about, was the basement conversion permitted and inspected, is answered by the permit record itself. The drawings only come into play when you are planning your own work on the property.
Are permit applications public before approval?
Yes, and this is one of the most useful nuances on the page. An application enters the public record when it is filed, not when it is approved. Seattle's portal shows applications the day they land, with a status that walks through intake, review cycles, corrections, and issuance. That means the public record shows you intent: an owner who filed for a demolition permit last Tuesday has told the world something the sale listings will not say for months. It also means a denied or withdrawn application stays visible, which is its own signal about a project that went sideways.
Can anyone look up permits on my house?
Yes. Anyone, on any house, with no notice to you. Neighbors check whether your remodel was permitted. Buyers check before writing offers, since an unpermitted addition becomes their problem at closing, and the seller disclosure form in Washington asks about permits directly. Contractors prospect from fresh applications. Insurers and appraisers verify declared work. And investors like me read the file in bulk: as of August 2026, Seattle's public dataset carries 12,827 expired permits, projects that stalled without a final inspection, and the addresses behind them carry code violations at nearly twice the citywide rate. That overlap is why an expired building permit reads as a distress signal, and it is all sitting in the open record.
If the openness bothers you as an owner, the honest framing is that the record protects you more often than it exposes you. The same public file is what lets you prove your own addition was legal when you sell, and what lets you catch a contractor who took your deposit and never pulled the permit.
When the portal is not enough
A portal shows you what the city chose to publish, which is most of the file but not all of it. Older permits often exist only on microfiche or paper, and reviewer correspondence usually is not surfaced. For those you file a records request, which every agency must answer, in Washington within five business days. The wording that works and the fee schedule are in our public records request walkthrough. For a whole jurisdiction's permit data at once, the same open-data route that powers our ingest is covered in bulk property owner data.
We index permit activity alongside violations and other distress signals for seven Puget Sound markets, and you can see the result on any address on the free FlaggedLeads map, no lookup skills required.
FAQ
Are building permits public record in every state?
Yes. Permit records are government records in all fifty states and fall under each state's public records law. What varies is delivery: some jurisdictions publish a searchable portal, and the rest answer records requests, usually within a statutory deadline measured in days.
Can I look up permits on a house I don't own?
Yes, on any address. Ownership is never a requirement for reading permit records, and the owner is not notified. That is exactly how buyers verify a seller's remodel claims before an inspection.
Are building plans public record too?
Partially. The existence of the plan set and the permit it belongs to are public. Copies of stamped drawings usually require the design professional's permission or the owner's involvement, because of copyright and, in some states, a security exemption for detailed plans of occupied buildings.
How far back do permit records go?
The permit record lives as long as the building does, but portals typically cover the digitized era. Seattle's online records run from 2005 forward, and everything back to 1894 sits in the city's microfilm library, copied on request for about a dollar and a half a page. Most cities follow the same shape: recent decades online, the rest on film or paper behind a records request.