How to Look Up Building Permits in Los Angeles
Every building permit filed in Los Angeles, CA is public record, maintained by the Department of Building and Safety (LADBS). Here's how to pull the full history for any address — and the shortcut when you'd rather not do it by hand.
Why you'd want the permit history
- Buying a home: confirm that additions, remodels, and major repairs were permitted and finaled.
- Selling or refinancing: unpermitted work surfaces in inspections and appraisals — know before the buyer does.
- Insurance and disputes: a dated permit record is the evidence that work was done to code.
Step by step, using the city's own tools
- Start at ladbs.org and use LADBS online services to search permits and inspection history by address — the record covers the City of Los Angeles only.
- Each permit shows the permit number and type, the work description, the declared valuation, the issue date, and the status.
- The same records are published as open data on the LA Open Data portal: the Building Permits dataset (data.lacity.org, dataset pi9x-tg5x), refreshed regularly.
- Electrical, plumbing, and mechanical work is permitted separately from the building permit, so one remodel can appear as several records at the same address.
Things that trip people up
A "Los Angeles" mailing address is often not in the City of Los Angeles. Unincorporated county areas, plus West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Culver City, Santa Monica, and Burbank, all issue their own permits and will not appear in the city record.
The shortcut
PingPermit pulls the same city records live and puts them on one page: a free preview (permit count, years active, declared work value, most recent filings), and the full report — every permit with description, value, status and dates. Los Angeles publishes no contractor or owner on its permit records, so the report names no one — for $29, one time, delivered instantly.