How to Look Up Building Permits in Marin County
Every building permit filed in Marin County, CA is public record, maintained by the Marin County Community Development Agency. 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.
- Finding the contractor: the licensed contractor is named on most Marin County permits.
Step by step, using the city's own tools
- Start at marincounty.gov and search building permits by address through the Community Development Agency — this covers unincorporated Marin.
- Each permit lists the permit number, the description of work, the construction value, the status, the issue date, and the licensed contractor.
- The county publishes the same records as open data (data.marincounty.gov, dataset mkbn-caye), refreshed regularly.
- For an address inside San Rafael, Novato, Mill Valley, Larkspur, Corte Madera, Sausalito, Tiburon, or Fairfax, check that city's own building department — incorporated towns permit their own work.
Things that trip people up
Much of what people call a Marin address is inside an incorporated town, so the county record can look empty for a property that has plenty of permits on file with its city. Confirm the jurisdiction before concluding there is no history.
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, and the contractor and owner named on the permits that record one — for $29, one time, delivered instantly.