How to check a Tempe rental building's safety and permit record before you sign

September 5, 2026

You are about to sign a lease on a place near campus, or off Rural, or in one of the older complexes south of the 60. The unit shows well. The question you cannot answer from a tour is what has actually happened to this building, and whether anyone official has looked at it recently.

Some of that is public. Not all of it, and not in one place. Here is what exists, what each record can honestly tell you, and where the gaps are.

There is no single safety file for a building. Anyone selling you one is selling you a partial record with a confident label on it.

The four separate records

1. Permit history — what was built, and whether it was inspected

Every significant piece of work on a building is supposed to be permitted, inspected at stages, and signed off. That record is public. It tells you when the roof was replaced, when the electrical panel was upgraded, whether units were reconfigured, and critically whether an inspector ever confirmed the work was finished properly.

This is the record we publish. You can search any Tempe address and see the filings with their status.

2. Code enforcement — complaints and violations

A separate system entirely. This is where habitability complaints, property maintenance violations and nuisance cases live. A building can have a spotless permit record and an active code case, because the two systems do not talk to each other.

If your worry is about the condition of the building rather than the construction of it, this is the record you actually want, and it is not the one permit sites publish.

3. Fire inspections — multi-unit buildings only

Apartment buildings above a certain size are inspected for fire safety on a cycle: alarms, sprinklers, exits, extinguishers. Single-family rentals and small units generally are not.

[VERIFY: Confirm how Tempe Fire Medical Rescue handles apartment inspections, what size threshold applies, and whether results are publicly requestable. If they are obtainable by records request, say exactly how — that instruction alone would make this the most useful page on the subject.]

4. Ownership and registration

Arizona requires residential rental property to be registered, and ownership records are held at county level. This tells you who actually owns the building, which matters when the leasing office is a management company and you need to know who is behind it.

[VERIFY: Confirm the current Arizona residential rental registration requirement, which office holds it (Maricopa County Assessor), and whether the register is publicly searchable. Link directly to the search if it is.]

What permit history actually tells a renter

It is worth being precise about this, because permit records answer a narrower question than people assume.

What you can learn

1. 01Whether major systems have been replaced recently. A re-roof, a panel upgrade or a full HVAC replacement shows up as its own filing, so you can see how old the last one is.
2. 02Whether the unit count or layout was changed, and whether that change was permitted. A converted garage bedroom in a student rental is a common one.
3. 03Whether the owner uses licensed contractors or does the work themselves. The contractor name is on the filing.
4. 04Whether work was started and never signed off. That is what an open or expired permit means.

What you cannot learn

1. 01Whether the building is currently in good condition. A permit from 2019 says nothing about the state of the plumbing today.
2. 02Whether other tenants have complained. That is code enforcement, a different file.
3. 03Whether pest, mould or habitability issues exist. Not in this record at all.
4. 04Whether small repairs were done well. Most minor work never requires a permit, so it leaves no trace either way.

[DATA: From your Tempe dataset, what percentage of permits sit in OPEN or LAPSED state, and over what date range? One sentence. This is the number worth citing, and it is the reason another site would link here.]

Reading a Tempe building's record

Search the address and look at three things in order.

The date of the most recent significant work

Not the most recent permit — the most recent one that matters. A sign permit from last year tells you nothing. A roof or electrical permit from twelve years ago on a building in Arizona sun tells you something.

Whether anything is open or expired

In an occupied rental this is a fair question for the landlord: what was this work, and is it finished? An old open permit is common and often harmless. Here is what open and expired actually mean.

Whether the filings match what you can see

If the unit obviously has more bedrooms than the building looks designed for, or a converted space that reads as an addition, check whether anything was ever filed for it. Unpermitted conversions in rentals are common near universities, and they carry real consequences: occupancy limits, egress windows, and whether that bedroom has a legal way out in a fire.

[VERIFY: Tempe has had rules on occupancy limits for unrelated occupants in single-family homes, and Arizona state law has intervened in this area more than once. Confirm what currently applies before publishing anything specific. If a real current rule exists, this deserves its own section and probably its own post — it is a live question for every ASU-area rental.]

[DATA: From your Tempe dataset, list the five most common permit types by count. It shows a reader what normal activity looks like in this city, which is useful context no competing page provides.]

If you find something concerning

Ask before you assume. Most of what turns up in a permit record has a dull explanation, and a landlord who answers plainly is giving you useful information about how they operate.

Put questions in writing rather than asking in the leasing office. Arizona's landlord-tenant rules generally turn on whether the landlord received notice of a problem and had an opportunity to address it, so a written record is worth having from the start.

[VERIFY: Confirm the notice provisions in the Arizona Residential Landlord and Tenant Act before stating anything more specific than the general point above. Do not cite section numbers or timeframes unless you have checked them. Consider adding a line noting this is general information rather than legal advice — the site-wide disclaimer at the foot of this page already does some of that work.]

The honest summary

Permit records are the best public window into what has physically been done to a building and whether anyone official checked it. They are not a safety inspection, they are not a complaint history, and no site that publishes them can honestly tell you a building is safe.

What they can do is take about a minute, cost nothing, and occasionally show you something that changes which lease you sign.

Frequently asked questions

This article is general information about the building permit records process. It is not legal, financial or real estate advice, and permit rules and enforcement practices vary by city. Verify anything you plan to act on with your agent, your attorney or the local building department.