How to Look Up Building Permits in Seattle
Every building permit filed in Seattle, WA is public record, maintained by the Seattle Department of Construction & Inspections (SDCI). 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: Seattle names the licensed contractor on some permits but not all — where it did, the name is on the record.
Step by step, using the city's own tools
- Open the Seattle Services Portal (cosaccela.seattle.gov) and search "Building & Land" records by address.
- Each permit shows the type, description, applied/issued dates, estimated project cost, current status, and the contractor company on the permit.
- The Seattle Open Data portal publishes the same records as the Building Permits dataset (data.seattle.gov, dataset 76t5-zqzr), updated nightly.
- Pre-1990s permits are best pulled through SDCI's public records request process; the online record is most complete after 2000.
Things that trip people up
Seattle stores the full address as a single string, so "1234 Main St" and "1234 Main Street" can both appear — search by number and street name without the suffix to catch both.
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 licensed contractor where Seattle recorded one — for $29, one time, delivered instantly.