We have not seen the building, and we have not seen its file
We have not seen the building, and we have not seen its file. Nobody connected with this site has been inside the property you are looking at, opened its permit history, read its violation record or attended a hearing about it. We have no access to Department of Buildings files, inspection notes, docket entries, closing files or correspondence, and no way to obtain them. Every page here describes how a kind of record works in general — what it is, who creates it, under what duty, and what it leaves out — and a general description is not an assessment of a specific building.
We do not tell you what to do about a record, or about a City process
We do not tell anyone how to obtain a permit, expedite one, self-certify, answer a violation or prepare for a hearing. That boundary is deliberate and it is absolute. Chicago has a licensed expediter trade and a documented enforcement history around it, and a site that drifted from explaining what a record is into walking a reader through a municipal procedure would be doing something quite different from what this one is for. If you need to act in a City process, the people to talk to are a licensed professional and, where it matters, an Illinois attorney — not a website.
The verdict on each record page is a summary, not a prediction
Every record page opens with one of three verdicts — proves the work was inspected, proves it was permitted but not inspected, or proves less than it appears to. That label summarizes what the record establishes in general, across the code provisions, departmental guidance and dataset definitions cited on the page. It is not a statement about any particular record at any particular address. A record described here as proving an inspection took place can still be wrong, incomplete or superseded in an individual file, and a record described as proving very little can sit beside other evidence that settles the question. The verdict exists so that a reader can tell a strong record from a weak one before relying on either.
An absence of records is not evidence
This is the most consequential limit on the whole site, so it is stated on its own. Chicago publishes no standalone buildings inspections dataset, and a passed inspection generally produces no public record at all. The published permit data excludes permits voided or revoked after issuance, so a withdrawn permit does not appear flagged — it disappears. Large categories of building are excluded from the recurring inspection regimes outright. Records made before the City's datasets begin are not in them. The consequence is that an empty record can mean a building was examined and cleared, that it was never examined, that the record exists only on paper, or that the work was never permitted at all, and the public data contains nothing that distinguishes those cases. Do not read silence as reassurance.
No prices
No prices. This site publishes no figures for what anything costs — not an inspection, a repair, a professional's time, a permit application or any other service. Not a range, not an average, not a per-square-foot rate, not a figure attributed to a survey. Where a dollar amount does appear on a page, it is a threshold written into a cited primary document — a code trigger, a statutory limit, a published fee schedule referenced as such — and it is named with the document it comes from. A threshold is a rule; an estimate is a guess with a decimal point. A figure goes stale silently: the page around it stays correct and the number quietly stops being true, and a reader has no way to tell which is which.
No figure without a source
No figure without a source. Every number on this site is traced to a named document with an address that resolves — a section of the Municipal Code or the Chicago Construction Codes, a Department of Buildings page, a dataset's own published field definitions, an Office of Inspector General report. Where a commonly repeated claim turns out to have no reliable primary source behind it, the pages say so rather than repeating it. The clearest live example on this site is the self-certification program: the rules as published in 2018 set out eligibility by occupancy class, height and floor area, and no audit rate, enforcement outcome or statement of the program's current operating status could be located anywhere this site could search. The pages say that, rather than filling the gap.
Where the City itself warns against its own data
One source caveat is important enough to carry here as well as on the page it belongs to. The City's published building violations data carries its own guidance that it should not be relied on for transactions, and the City directs transaction parties to the Department of Administrative Hearings instead. A violation record is a snapshot of what an inspector found on a date; its status fields describe the state of a file rather than the state of a building; and a case marked complied is a case that was administratively addressed, which is not the same statement as the condition having been repaired well, or at all.
What the Inspector General measured, and what it does not mean
Several pages cite the City of Chicago Office of Inspector General's 2022 audit of the Department of Buildings' permit inspections process, which found required inspections completed on 98.9% of permits requiring a certificate of occupancy against 16.7% of permits that do not require one, with a June 2024 follow-up finding the Department had not implemented the recommended corrective action. Those figures describe the Department's process at the time of the audit. They are not a prediction about any individual permit, they do not establish that a specific inspection did or did not happen, and they are not a statement about the condition of any building.
We name nobody and assess nobody
No individual or firm is named or assessed anywhere on this site. There are no rankings here, no ratings, no scores, no "best of" lists and no directory of inspectors, architects, engineers, expediters, contractors or attorneys. Comparison content in this field is overwhelmingly funded by the parties being compared, and the ordering usually reflects what a placement is worth rather than how the work is done. Rather than publish a worse version of that, this site describes the records a reader can check for themselves.
Not professional advice
Nothing here is legal, real estate, engineering, architectural, construction, insurance, tax or financial advice, and reading it creates no professional relationship. The code is amended, guidance is reissued, datasets are redefined, and nearly every rule described here turns on thresholds that decide whether it applies to a given building at all. Consult a licensed professional, and where the question is legal, an Illinois attorney, before acting on anything you read here.
No affiliation with any former use of this domain
This domain was previously used by an unrelated property inspection business. This site is not that business, is not connected to it, does not speak for it and does not continue it. No page here should be read as a statement by, about or on behalf of any party who previously used this name. This site is also not affiliated with the City of Chicago or any of its departments.
Timeliness
Pages are written from sources current at the time of writing and are not updated automatically when the underlying material changes. A page's modified date moves only when its content is actually revised, which means an older date is honest rather than neglectful — but it also means you should treat everything here as a starting point for your own verification rather than as a current authority.
Illustrations are abstract
The artwork on this site is abstract and decorative. No image here is a facsimile of a City form, certificate, placard or record, a technical drawing, or a depiction of any specific building, document or case, and nothing should be inferred from a graphic about how anything is permitted, inspected, documented or enforced.
Accuracy and corrections
No responsibility is assumed for errors or omissions, or for any outcome resulting from the use of information on this site. If you find an error, please tell us — ideally with the primary source that supports the correction — and it will be fixed.