How to Look Up Building Permits in Montgomery County
Every building permit filed in Montgomery County, MD is public record, maintained by the Department of Permitting Services (DPS). 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
- Open the DPS eServices portal (permittingservices.montgomerycountymd.gov) and search permits by address.
- Each permit shows the permit number, the status, the applicant's written description of the work, the application type, the work type, the building area, and the declared valuation.
- The county publishes residential and commercial permits as two separate open datasets, both refreshed daily.
- Rockville, Gaithersburg and Takoma Park run their own permitting for some work, so a permit there may not appear in the county record.
Things that trip people up
Montgomery County records the scope the applicant actually wrote, which makes the descriptions unusually good — but many of them are prefixed with workflow text like "Customer Wants To Use ePlans" before the real scope begins. The county names no contractor on the permit record, so the report cannot either.
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. Montgomery County publishes no contractor or owner on its permit records, so the report names no one — for $29, one time, delivered instantly.