How to Look Up Building Permits in Philadelphia
Every building permit filed in Philadelphia, PA is public record, maintained by the Department of Licenses & Inspections (L&I). 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 Philadelphia permits.
Step by step, using the city's own tools
- Open the L&I Property History tool (li.phila.gov) and enter the address. Every permit, violation, and inspection at that property is listed.
- Each permit shows the permit type, the approved scope of work in full sentences, the status, the issue date, and the contractor named on it.
- The city publishes the same records through OpenDataPhilly as the L&I Building Permits dataset, refreshed daily.
- Certificates of occupancy and their dates appear on the permit record when one was required.
Things that trip people up
Philadelphia issues a separate zoning permit and building permit for the same job, so one project often shows several records. The approved scope of work on the building permit is the one that describes the actual construction.
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.