What the records say, in plain English
Guides for people buying, selling or renovating a home, written from the public permit records themselves rather than from general advice.
Buying a flipped house in Cincinnati? Check what the rehab actually filed.
A gut renovation leaves a paper trail: building, electrical, plumbing, mechanical. When a freshly finished Cincinnati flip shows one permit or none, that gap is the story.
ReadHow to check a Tempe rental building's safety and permit record before you sign
Permit history tells you what work was done on a building and whether anyone inspected it. Here's how to read it before you sign, and the three other records it does not replace.
ReadMost cities never mark their building permits closed. We checked thirty of them.
We wired up thirty US permit systems and compared how each one reports status. The gap between cities that close their records and cities that never do is far wider than we expected.
ReadOpen, expired, finaled: what every building permit status actually means
Permit records use a vocabulary nobody explains, and the same word means different things in different cities. A plain-English guide to every status you'll see.
ReadThere's an open permit on the house I'm buying. Now what?
It usually arrives as a phone call you were not expecting. What an open permit means for your closing, and the four things you can ask for while you still have leverage.
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