Checking Building Permits in San Diego

Although half of the internet just blithely says, "Oh, just go pull the permit history" - nowhere on the internet does it seem to actually tell you where to go to find out what permits have been issued for any given property in question.

Correction later on - now that I've muddled through everything, I found a fairly helpful city-provided howto.

Anyway, on to what I found...

To pull building permits, you're looking for Development Services in San Diego. It's at 1222 First Avenue. You'll actually end up getting there by going to City Hall, then taking a skybridge west.

There's a sign-in counter on the third floor (where the skybridge is), but you'll want to go downstairs to the second floor and look at the Records department. If your luck is like mine, you'll find out that there were permits issued for the house you're looking at, and they never passed final inspection. It seems that the previous owners just got tired of failing inspections and gave up halfway through - which left the entire second story of the house illegal. All kinds of fun and games there.

-- SeanNewton - 02 Apr 2009