A broker says the property has been "fully renovated." New roof, new HVAC, kitchens redone, electrical updated. The marketing photos look great. The price reflects the improvements.
Half the time, when you pull the actual permit history, you find out the seller filed a permit for the roof and nothing else. Sometimes not even the roof. The kitchens were done by a "handyman." The electrical panels were swapped by the maintenance guy. The HVAC was a Craigslist install.
This matters because unpermitted work transfers with the building. After closing, you own the code violations. You own the lender's discovery during refinance. You own the insurance carrier's discovery during a claim. And in tenant-friendly states, you own the legal exposure when a tenant gets hurt because the wiring wasn't to code.
Here's how to actually check.
Why brokers can claim "renovated" without permits
In most jurisdictions, only structural work, electrical, plumbing, HVAC replacement, and major mechanical upgrades require a permit. Cosmetic work (paint, flooring, cabinets, countertops, appliances) generally doesn't. So a broker can truthfully describe a building as "renovated" when the only thing that's actually new is paint and granite.
The work that should have been permitted but wasn't is the work that matters for your underwriting:
- Electrical: Panel upgrades, sub-panels, new circuits, knob-and-tube replacement
- Plumbing: Repiping, water heater replacement (in most jurisdictions), gas line work
- HVAC: Furnace or AC condenser replacement, ductwork modifications
- Structural: Wall removal, headers, footings, additions, deck construction
- Roofing: Full tear-offs (varies by jurisdiction; some require it, some don't)
If the broker claims any of the above happened recently and no permit shows up, you have four possibilities: the work wasn't done, the work was done unpermitted, the work was done by a previous owner long enough ago that you might not care, or the permit exists but isn't surfacing in the online search.
That last one is more common than people think. Most digital permit databases only go back to a cutoff date, often somewhere between 1995 and 2010 depending on the jurisdiction. The property's address might have been renumbered or its street renamed since the permit was filed. Annexation occasionally moves records between databases when a city absorbs a township. And many systems are picky about address format ("123 Main St" vs "0123 N MAIN STREET" vs "123 Main") and won't return matches under slightly different inputs. Try a few variants if the obvious search comes back empty, and search the parcel ID separately when the address search returns nothing.
Asking the seller for documentation is the fastest way to distinguish between the four possibilities. As part of diligence, request the permits and final inspection records for the renovation work the broker is claiming. A seller who actually renovated will have copies, or will know exactly which contractor pulled them and can point you to the right search term or year. A seller who can't produce documentation when you've also looked it up and found nothing is telling you what you need to know.
Step 1: Pull the official permit record
Every municipality maintains a permit database. The catch is that none of them are organized the same way, and a lot of them haven't been digitized past a certain year. Here's where to look in the markets DealBrief covers:
| Market | Permit Portal | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Dallas-Ft. Worth, TX | Dallas Open Data | Search "Building Inspection Permits" in the catalog |
| Houston, TX | Houston Permitting Center | Project status lookup runs through the iPermits portal |
| Phoenix, AZ | Phoenix Planning & Development | Search by parcel through PDD Online |
| Charlotte, NC | Charlotte-Mecklenburg (Accela) | Search by address or project number |
| Raleigh-Durham, NC | Wake County / Durham County | Two separate portals: Wake for Raleigh-area, Durham for Durham proper |
| Atlanta, GA | Atlanta Accela Citizen Access | Search by address |
| Jacksonville, FL | City of Jacksonville | Permitting is in the main menu; search by address or RE number |
| Tampa, FL | Hillsborough County / City of Tampa | HillsGovHub portal for county parcels; Construction Services for city parcels |
| Orlando, FL | City of Orlando / Orange County | County permits under Permits & Licenses |
| Miami-Dade, FL | Miami-Dade EPSPortal | Search by folio or address |
| Fort Lauderdale, FL | Broward County Building | Online Permits search by folio or address |
| West Palm Beach, FL | Palm Beach County PZB | ePZB system for online lookup |
| Louisville, KY | Louisville Metro Government | Last few years of permits are searchable |
| Lexington, KY | LFUCG | Building inspection records under the Planning section |
| Philadelphia, PA | eCLIPSE | Free to search without registering |
Search by street address. You should get back a list of permits with: file date, permit type, description, contractor name (if any), valuation, and status (issued, finaled, expired, withdrawn). The status field matters more than people realize. An expired permit usually means work was started but never inspected to completion. Sometimes it means the owner pulled the permit and didn't do the work at all. A withdrawn permit means the owner cancelled before the file closed, which could mean they did the work without one or decided against it entirely. In any of these cases, don't take a "permit on file" line at face value: check what was actually done.
Step 2: Compare permits against what the broker is claiming
This is the actual exercise. Take the OM (offering memorandum) or whatever the seller has put in writing. Pull out every claim about renovations or recent capex. Match each claim against the permit record:
| Broker claim | Permit on file? | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| "Roof replaced 2023" | Yes, finaled 2023 | ✓ verified |
| "New HVAC units" | None | ⚠ probably unpermitted |
| "Updated electrical" | Sub-panel added 2019 | Partial: sub-panel only, not full update |
| "Fully renovated kitchens" | None | Cosmetic only: no permit required |
| "Plumbing replaced" | None | ⚠ probably unpermitted, or wasn't actually done |
The "verdict" column is your underwriting input. Anything with a ⚠ flag adds risk that needs to be priced in or addressed in your offer.
Step 3: Pull code violation history too
Permits tell you what was intended to be done legally. Code violations tell you what got caught being done illegally, or what the city found later that the owner ignored. Most jurisdictions expose this data separately. Search for:
- Code enforcement cases
- Building violations
- Housing inspection failures (especially in cities with rental licensing, like Philly or Minneapolis)
Open or unresolved violations transfer to you on closing in most states. A property with five open violations and no permit history isn't a "renovation opportunity." It's a liability transfer.
Step 4: What to do with what you find
Three options when you find significant unpermitted work:
-
Walk away. Unpermitted electrical, plumbing, and HVAC on small multifamily is the single most common source of "I should have walked" stories in this asset class. The fix is expensive (rip-and-replace plus permit fees plus contractor markup), and if the work was bad enough to require it, the building probably has other surprises.
-
Reprice and disclose. Calculate what it'll cost to either rip-out-and-redo with permits, or get a retroactive permit and inspection (jurisdiction-dependent, often more expensive than just redoing the work). Cut the price by that amount, in writing, with a contingency for inspection findings.
-
Negotiate seller-paid retroactive permitting. Some sellers will pull permits and pay for the inspection failures as a closing condition. This is rare but worth asking for. It shifts the financial risk to the seller, and if they refuse, you learn what they think the actual cost is.
Whichever you pick, don't accept "we'll do it after closing" or "the previous owner did that, not us." Both are admissions that the work isn't documented, and both are setups for the cost to fall on you.
What you can skip checking
A few things that look like red flags but usually aren't worth the time:
- Permits from before ~2000. Most jurisdictions didn't digitize old records well, and old work is generally either grandfathered or has been touched again since.
- Roof tear-offs in small towns. Some jurisdictions don't require permits for re-roofs. Confirm yours does before you flag it.
- Water heater replacements in some Texas counties. Texas is famously permit-light on certain mechanical work.
Knowing what not to chase saves time during diligence, and you have a lot of other things to check.
The actually fast way to do this
Pulling permit history, cross-referencing broker claims, and checking code violations takes about 90 minutes per address if you're fast and know where to look. Most buyers don't do it. The buyers who do find unpermitted work on roughly one in three "fully renovated" listings.
If you want to skip the manual lookup, DealBrief pulls the full permit history for any multifamily address in our covered markets, including dates, descriptions, contractor names, and dollar values, and surfaces it alongside everything else (tax assessment, flood zone, crime, debt service analysis). Your first report is free.