What a building permit is

A permit is a piece of paper from your town or county. It says you may build, fix, or wire something, and that someone will check the work.

Who gives them out

Your county or your city has a permit office. Most of the time it is called the Building Department. Some towns are small, so the county does it for them. The office gives the permit, and later an inspector comes to look at the work.

What it says

• The address of the job.
• What kind of work it is. A new house. A new roof. New wiring. A furnace.
• What the work is worth in dollars.
• Who is doing the work. This is the contractor's name.
• The day it was given out.

Why it is public

A permit is a government record. Government records belong to the public. You can ask the permit office for them, and the office has to answer. Every state has a law that says so. Some offices put the list on their website. Some will send you a file. Some ask you to fill out a form first.

How to find the permits in your town

1. Go to your county's website. Look for the words "permits," "building," or "inspections."
2. Many counties have a search page. You type an address or a date and it shows the permits.
3. If there is no search page, find the office's email. Ask for a list of permits from last month. Say you would like it as a spreadsheet.
4. If the office asks you to fill out a records request form, fill it out. That is normal.
5. Be polite. The person who answers is a clerk with a lot to do.

What White Tape does

We ask the permit offices for their lists, the same way you would. Then we put every list into one shape, so a permit from Maryland looks the same as a permit from Texas. We keep the original file next to every row, so anyone can check it. A contractor can then look at one list instead of a hundred websites.

The list is free to read up to a point. Past that point it costs a few cents a row. There is no contract and no salesperson.

Questions people ask

Is this legal? Yes. Permits are public records. We ask for them the way the law allows and we follow each state's rules.

Does White Tape give out permits? No. Only your county or city can do that.

Can I get my own permit taken off the list? The record is the county's, not ours. We only show what the county already makes public.

Where does the data come from? From the permit offices in the United States, requested one office at a time. It is an American record set.