If a city's permit search page has a web address that starts with aca-prod.accela.com, you are on Accela Citizen Access. It is the public side of permit software made by a company called Accela, and cities and counties across the country, from California to Florida, use it to publish their building permits, inspections and code cases. Each agency runs its own copy, with its own name, its own menus and only its own records, which is why the same search can work perfectly in one city and find nothing in the next.
This is how to search one by address without an account, how to avoid the setting that hides older permits, and how to read what comes back when you are checking a house you might buy.
How to tell you are on one
Many agencies give their portal a local name, so the word Accela may not appear on the page you land on:
- The City of Tampa calls it the City of Tampa Citizen Access Portal.
- The City of Fort Worth calls it its Online Permitting System.
- Pasco County, Florida calls it PascoGateway.
- San Bernardino County calls it EZ Online Permitting, as the San Bernardino permit guide explains.
- Fort Lauderdale calls it LauderBuild, covered in the Broward County permit guide.
The giveaway is the address bar. These portals live at aca-prod.accela.com followed by a short agency code, such as /TAMPA/, /CFW/ for Fort Worth or /PASCO/. Once you recognize one, the rest of this page applies to it.
First, make sure it is the right agency
An Accela portal only holds the records of the agency that runs it. A permit for a house inside a city is usually on the city's portal, not the county's, and searching the wrong one returns nothing, which is easy to misread as "no permits were ever pulled".
Hillsborough County, Florida is the clearest example. Unincorporated addresses are permitted by the county through its own system, HillsGovHub, while addresses inside Tampa city limits are on the City of Tampa's Accela portal. A Tampa mailing address does not settle which one holds the record. The Hillsborough County permit guide walks through it, and the method for finding the right office for any US address is in the permit lookup guide.
Searching by address, without an account
You do not need to log in to look a property up. Tampa's portal says so on its front page: many functions can be used without a log-in. Fort Lauderdale and the Santa Clara County portal work the same way, as their guides note. An account is for things like applying for permits, not for reading records.
The layout differs between agencies, but the search itself follows the same pattern:
- Pick the area the permit would fall under. Building permits are usually under a tab called Building, Permits or Development.
- Choose the option to search, labeled something like Search Applications or Search Records. That opens a page titled Search for Records.
- Open the search type menu. Tampa and Fort Worth both offer General Search, Search by Address, Search by Licensed Professional Information, Search by Record Information, Search for Trade Name and Search by Contact.
- Enter the address in pieces. The form splits it into separate boxes: street number, street name, street type (St, Ave, Blvd), direction, unit number and unit type. Start with just the number and the street name.
- If the address search misses, try the parcel number instead. The form has a Parcel No. box, and the county property appraiser's or assessor's site will show the parcel number for any address.
The date range that hides older permits
This is the setting that matters most. The General Search form arrives with a start date and an end date already filled in, and only records inside that window come back.
On the day this guide was checked, Tampa's form defaulted to the last 12 months. Fort Worth's defaulted to the last five years. Neither will show a roof permit from 2015 or a remodel from the 1990s unless you change the start date first. Before you search, move the start date back as far as you need to go, then search again. If a result still looks thin, that is often the real reason, not a house with no history.
Reading what you find
Each record has a record number, a record type (what kind of permit or case it is) and a status. The status words are set by each agency, so read them on the record itself rather than assuming they mean the same thing everywhere.
What you are looking for as a buyer is simpler than the vocabulary:
- Work that was permitted and closed. A permit that was issued and then passed its final inspection is the record you want to see for a roof, an addition or a panel upgrade.
- Work that was started and never closed. A permit that was issued but never reached final inspection, or simply lapsed, can stay on the property's record after it sells. The guide to finding unpermitted work covers what to ask the seller when you find one.
- Code cases. Many portals also hold enforcement records. Tampa's has an Enforcement section for code violations, and Santa Clara County's portal has one too.
No record is not proof that nothing was done. Plenty of work is never permitted, and some agencies only put recent years online.
When the portal does not go back far enough
Older permits often exist only on paper or microfilm. The portal is the agency's index, not necessarily its whole archive, so ask the building department directly before concluding a record does not exist.
Permit files are public records. In Florida, where Tampa, Pasco County and Fort Lauderdale all run Accela portals, Florida Statutes § 119.07(1)(a) requires the custodian of a public record to permit it "to be inspected and copied by any person desiring to do so". Other states have their own public records laws, and the building department will tell you how to make a request. The same records route is what to use when you need a firm date for one item, such as how old the roof is.
Searching by contractor
The Search by Licensed Professional Information option looks records up by the contractor rather than the address, using the license type and number. A buyer can use it to see what else a seller's contractor has permitted in that jurisdiction. A contractor can use it to check that their own permits are showing correctly before a buyer, an inspector or an insurer looks.
Where these portals are covered on this site
Accela runs part or all of the permit search in several of the county guides here: San Diego County for unincorporated addresses, Santa Clara County through its Public Permit Portal, Fort Worth in the Tarrant County guide, and some of the cities in the Riverside County guide. Each of those pages covers what is specific to that place.