What to check before you bid in Los Angeles

Before you price the job

The city and the county have already written down most of what changes a bid. A report reads all of it in seconds.

1. The permit history on the parcel. LADBS permits since 2020 keyed to the parcel, with type, description and declared valuation. A permit issued and not yet finaled is an obligation a job can inherit.
2. What the city holds open. LADBS code-enforcement cases are a register per parcel: what is open now, by type, and how many the department has closed and when. Zero open cases is what a clean parcel shows and what an unvisited one shows, so the closed count is beside it.
3. The county's record of the building. Use, floor area, year built, and the assessed value across five roll years — the staircase Proposition 13 builds, and where it breaks.
4. What is starting around it. The fifteen lists, keyed on the day the department acted.

Two things the record will not tell you, and one it now does

• Who pulled the permit. The feed carries no contractor field the city publishes as a business alone, and this report prints no name.
• The contractor. The trade feeds carry a business unit, not a licensee the city publishes as a business alone, and this report prints no name. The trade itself is on the record: electrical permits are their own feed, and plumbing, HVAC, fire-sprinkler and elevator permits are permit types in the mechanical feed, so the report reads the trades on the parcel and the Trade plan carries their lists.

Counts run 4 September 2026.