Permits, and the work nobody filed

Building permits are not the whole permit record

San Francisco issues trade permits separately from building permits, with their own numbers and their own datasets: electrical and plumbing. Rewiring, a new panel, a re-pipe, a water heater — plenty of work needs one of these and no building permit at all.

So a parcel that looks untouched in the building-permit history can have had its wiring replaced twice. The report reads both, keyed to the same block and lot, and counts anything still open. An unfinalled trade permit is an open obligation exactly like an unfinalled building permit, and it is the kind of thing that surfaces late in a transaction.

A permit is paperwork, not a building

The permit record tells you what somebody declared to the city, when, what it was going to cost, and whether the city ever recorded it as finished. It does not tell you the work was good, and it does not tell you the work happened.

The more useful reading runs the other way. Work done without a permit does not appear at all — so the signal is often the gap between what a building visibly is and what its record says was ever permitted.

What the report gives you

• The count and the span — how many permits on the parcel, and the date of the earliest. A building with decades of small permits reads differently from one with none.
• Declared cost, summed over the permits read. On a long history the report says how many that covers rather than presenting it as a lifetime total.
• What is still open — filed and never recorded as finalled.
• The recent list, with dates, descriptions and cost.

Open permits transfer with the building

This is the part that costs money. A permit filed and never closed out is an obligation the next owner inherits, and closing somebody else's unfinished paperwork can mean re-inspection, corrective work, or a fresh application.

Often the innocent explanation is the right one: the work finished and the final inspection never got scheduled. That is fixable — but it is fixable on a timescale of weeks, not in the days before a close, which is why it is worth finding early.

Reading the record against the building

The most valuable ten minutes: compare the permit history with the listing photographs, or with what you saw at the viewing.

1. A renovated kitchen, an added bathroom, a finished basement, a deck, a roof deck, a converted garage — each of these normally requires a permit.
2. If the record shows nothing corresponding, that is a question, not an accusation. Was this work permitted, and is there paperwork?
3. Ask it early and ask it plainly. Unpermitted work affects insurance, financing, what an appraiser will count, and sometimes what you are allowed to keep.
4. An added unit is its own question — an unpermitted dwelling unit is a different order of problem from an unpermitted deck.

The 3R, and what this is not

San Francisco's Report of Residential Building Record — the 3R — is the city's own summary for a residential sale: the permitted use, the number of units on record, and the permit history. A seller orders it from the Department of Building Inspection.

This report covers much of the same ground from the same block and lot, and it covers it three weeks earlier. It does not replace the 3R. Order it anyway; what this gives you is the contents in advance, and the questions to have already asked.

The permits that are not about this building

The report also counts permits filed in the surrounding area, and separately lists the development pipeline — what is approved to be built nearby, and how many net new homes it would add. A quiet outlook is a fact about somebody else's project schedule.

Two things the record cannot do

• It is not an inspection. Filed paperwork describes obligations, not a foundation or a roof.
• It does not date the building's condition. A permit from 1974 tells you work was declared in 1974, and nothing about what has happened since.