Permits and inspections, and why they protect you

Back to Guides & Resources

What a permit actually is

A building permit is permission from your local building department to carry out specific work, combined with a commitment that the work will be inspected at defined points. It is not a tax and it is not a formality. It is the mechanism by which someone independent of your contractor looks at the work before it is covered up.

Permit requirements are set locally, so the only authoritative answer comes from your city or county building department. They will tell you over the phone, and they are used to the question.

Work that generally needs one

• Structural changes, including removing or altering walls.
• Most electrical work beyond replacing a fixture.
• Most plumbing alterations, as opposed to simple repairs.
• Water heater replacement, in most jurisdictions.
• Re-roofing.
• Additions, conversions, and anything that changes the building envelope or egress.
• Decks above a certain height, and most fences above a certain height.

Work that generally does not: painting, flooring, cabinet replacement without plumbing or electrical changes, and like-for-like fixture swaps.

Who pulls it

A licensed contractor should pull the permit for work they perform. This matters more than it sounds, because the permit holder carries responsibility for the work meeting code.

If a contractor asks you to pull the permit as the homeowner, understand what is being transferred. You become responsible for the work complying, and you lose a layer of protection if it does not. There are legitimate situations where a homeowner pulls their own permit, and a contractor asking you to do it for work they are performing is a warning sign rather than a convenience.

What the inspector does and does not check

An inspector checks compliance with code. Code is a minimum safety standard. It covers whether the wiring will start a fire, whether the beam will hold, whether the drain will vent properly.

It does not cover whether the tile is level, whether the paint is even, or whether the work is tidy. Passing inspection means the work will not hurt anyone. It does not mean the work is good.

Your own inspection is for quality. The city's is for safety. They are not substitutes for each other, and both should happen.

The inspections that matter most

The critical ones are the inspections that happen before something is covered up. Rough electrical and rough plumbing are inspected before the drywall goes on, because afterwards nobody can see them without demolition.

Be present for the rough-in inspection if you can. You do not need to understand everything being discussed. You will learn a great deal from whether the inspector is relaxed or is writing things down.

What unpermitted work costs you later

The bill for skipping a permit rarely arrives during the project. It arrives at one of three moments.

At sale, when a buyer or their agent asks about work that does not appear in permit records. Unpermitted additions and conversions can reduce what a buyer will pay, complicate their financing, or become a condition of the sale.

At an insurance claim, where an insurer may take the position that unpermitted work contributed to a loss.

And when the city finds out, whether through a neighbour, an unrelated inspection, or a records search. Unpermitted work can have to be opened up for inspection, brought to code, or removed, and retroactive permitting is usually slower and more expensive than doing it properly the first time.

Make sure it gets finalled

A permit is not complete when the work is. It is complete when the final inspection has passed and the permit is closed out. An open permit sitting in the record can be as much of a problem at sale as no permit at all.

Ask for confirmation that the permit was finalled, and keep it with your project paperwork. This is the single most commonly skipped step, because by that point everyone has moved on.