Guides to reading Chicago building records
The record pages answer what each document is and what it proves. These guides answer the questions that sit around them: what a whole permit history shows when you read the column rather than a row, what a violation record's fields actually mean, how Chicago's four permit routes differ from each other, and what to make of a building whose file and whose condition do not agree. They are grouped into three sections, and each section’s overview page is listed above the guides it covers.
Begin at a section’s pillar
Reading a permit history, the City’s permitting system and what to do when the file and the building disagree are each introduced by a page that frames the subject whole, before the guides below it narrow to one permit route, one violation code or one gap in a published dataset. A reader who has never pulled the record for a Chicago address should start at that page rather than partway down a section.
Reading the record
4 guidesWhat a permit history shows, what a violation record means, and what the published data leaves out.
Read the reading the record overview →
The Chicago system
4 guidesThe four permit routes, what self-certification shifts, the porch ordinance, and the code the records are written against.
Read the the chicago system overview →
When the record is wrong
4 guidesUnpermitted work, a permit never closed out, open violations at closing, and records that predate the public datasets.
Read the when the record is wrong overview →
What this reference does not cover
Everything here is about Chicago, and about the City’s own records. Two adjacent questions come up constantly and are answered better elsewhere. The first is what a municipal record looks like in a city that runs its permitting differently — different code, different software, different disclosure rules — which is set out at planohomeinspection.com, a reference on city permit and inspection records in Plano, Texas. Reading one city’s system against another is the fastest way to see which features of Chicago’s are peculiar to Chicago. The second is who is licensed to inspect a building at all and what that license obliges them to do, which is covered at 90daywarrantyvalidation.com, a reference on home inspector licensing and buyer deadlines. Neither question is answered on this site, and neither is a City of Chicago building record.