Are Building Permits Public Record in Texas?

If you sell to homeowners, builders, or property managers in Texas, you've probably wondered whether you can legally pull a list of every building permit in your service area. Short answer: yes. Texas building permits are public record under the Texas Public Information Act (Government Code Chapter 552), and every city that issues building permits is required to make them available — usually through an online portal, sometimes by request.

The legal basis

The Texas Public Information Act treats any record created or received by a Texas government body in connection with the transaction of official business as public, unless it falls under a specific exception. Building permits don't qualify for any of the standard exceptions. Owner names, contractor names, addresses, work descriptions, and declared work values are all routinely disclosed.

Some cities go further than the Act technically requires. McKinney, Frisco, Plano, and most North-DFW municipalities publish a live, searchable portal — anyone with a browser can see permits issued yesterday. Other cities (still legal) make you submit a written request and wait up to 10 business days for a response.

What's on a typical Texas building permit

• Permit number (the city's tracking ID)
• Permit type (e.g., "Roof Replacement", "New SFR", "HVAC Change-Out")
• Filed and issued dates
• Property address
• ZIP code and (sometimes) parcel ID
• Owner of record — often the homeowner's name, sometimes an LLC
• Contractor of record — when one is on file. Permits pulled by the homeowner show no contractor
• Work description (free-text)
• Declared work value (what the contractor told the city the job is worth)
• Status (Applied, Issued, Final, Closed, etc.)

How to access them

Option 1: City portal search (free, slow)

Every major Texas city has a permit search portal. Cities running Tyler Technologies EnerGov let you search by date range, permit type, and address. Cities on Accela, OpenGov, eTRAKiT, and SmartGov look slightly different but expose the same fields. Search is free; pulling 90 days of data manually is tedious.

Option 2: Public Information Act request

If a portal doesn't exist or doesn't give you what you need, you can file a written request with the city's records officer. They have 10 business days to respond. Some cities charge for staff time on large requests; small requests are typically free.

Option 3: A permit data service

Services like RafterIQ, Construction Monitor, and BuildZoom pull from city portals continuously and resell cleaned, tagged data. The trade-off is price vs. effort. If you're working three cities and you don't mind manual portal queries, you can do it free. If you're working all of DFW and want a Monday-morning digest, a paid service costs less than one signed roof job per year.

What you can and can't do with permit data

You can absolutely use building permit data to identify prospects, time your outreach, and prioritize territories. Public-record data is not protected under wiretap or anti-spam laws — calling a property owner whose information you found in a public permit is legal in Texas.

Where you can run into trouble: TCPA still applies to phone calls and texts. The DNC list still applies. CAN-SPAM still applies to commercial email. The data being public doesn't waive any of those — it just gives you a clean source for the prospect itself.

Common questions

Can I see permits filed today?

Usually yes. Most city portals update overnight, so a permit filed Monday is visible Tuesday morning. RafterIQ's weekly digest catches everything filed in the last seven days.

Are home-improvement permits public?

Yes. Re-roofs, HVAC change-outs, pool builds, additions, fence replacements — anything that requires a permit. Some minor work doesn't require a permit (small repairs, paint, landscaping); those won't appear in any database because no city record exists.

Can the homeowner block their permit from public view?

No. The Texas Public Information Act doesn't allow opt-out for property-based records. Even if a homeowner asked the city to hide their permit, the city is legally required to release it.

Bottom line

Texas building permits are public, sourced from city portals, and legal to use for sales prospecting. The hard part isn't access — it's volume and signal. Pulling 14 Texas cities of permits, tagging each one by trade, and surfacing the records most likely to convert takes work. That's why services like RafterIQ exist: to take public data and turn it into a sales tool that doesn't require an analyst on staff.