Most homes in Santa Clara County sit inside one of its cities, and each city keeps its own building records. The county issues permits only for unincorporated land. So the first job is working out which building department has the house, and the second, if you want them, is finding out whether its original plans exist at all. In California, many never did.
Unincorporated county: the Public Permit Portal
For unincorporated property, the county's Department of Planning and Development keeps its records in the Public Permit Portal. Under Development, choose Search Records. You can search without an account, by:
- site address,
- parcel number,
- record number (the case or permit number).
An account unlocks more services, but you do not need one to look up a property's history. The same portal has an Enforcement section with its own record search, worth checking on the same visit.
Inside San José: SJPermits
San José's records are on SJPermits. Use Property Search and find the property by:
- address,
- Assessor's Parcel Number,
- permit number,
- project reference number,
- tract number.
Click the address, then View Permit/File. Anyone can see the Status column. The word to look for on finished work is Finaled, which the city defines as construction completed, a final inspection conducted and the project approved. A permit still "Under Inspection" was issued but never closed out.
The other cities
Palo Alto, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, Cupertino and the county's other cities each run their own building department and their own records search. Start at the city's building or permit center page. A mailing address can name one city while the parcel sits in another jurisdiction, so if a search turns up nothing, check the parcel's jurisdiction before reading anything into the blank.
Looking for the house's original plans?
A permit history tells you what work was approved. The drawings behind it are a separate question, and California law answers it in two parts:
- The plans may never have been filed. Health and Safety Code § 19850 requires a building department to keep an official copy of the plans for the life of every building it permitted, but it also says plans need not be filed for single or multiple dwellings of no more than two stories and a basement, or the garages that go with them. Condominiums and other common interest developments are the exception: their plans must be kept.
- If they exist, you can look but not copy freely. Under § 19851, the official copy is open for inspection only at the building department. Copying it needs the written permission of the architect or engineer who signed the plans and of the owner, or, for a building in a common interest development, the association's board. The person asking signs an affidavit that the copy will be used only for the building's maintenance, operation and use.
For a house you are buying, the most practical step is to ask the seller for any plans or drawings they have. For a condo, ask the association.
What Santa Clara County Is Permitting Right Now
The mix of what Santa Clara County builds has shifted in a year. Units in multifamily buildings were 49% of everything permitted in the same months last year and are 71% now: 2,712 units, up 164.8%. Single-family permits barely moved, 1,084 to 1,096 (up 1.1%), so the county's total, up 80.6% to 3,808 units, says almost nothing about the supply of houses.
Source: US Census Bureau Building Permits Survey, county file, year to date through July 2026 against the same months of 2025. 98% of these units were reported directly by permit offices; the rest are Census estimates for offices that did not report.
Looking Up Permits Elsewhere
The jurisdiction question is the same in every county, with a different answer each time. How to look up building permits by address covers the method, and what to do when the record is empty.