How to look up a building permit in Yuma County, Arizona

OpenGov shows a public record list with the current step highlighted on a progress bar. You can see which reviewer has the file and what the last action was, without having to call the office.

Using OpenGov Permitting & Licensing specifically

Yuma County, Arizona runs permitting on OpenGov Permitting & Licensing, which many jurisdictions still refer to by its old name, ViewPoint Cloud. OpenGov leads with a plain-language question flow rather than a blank form, so it tends to tell you which permit you need instead of expecting you to already know.

OpenGov emails every status change to the address on the application. If a contractor applied on your behalf, those notifications go to them and not to you — ask to be added as an additional contact on the record.

Search by parcel number where you can

Street addresses are renumbered, re-suffixed and reassigned as areas develop, and a house standing for sixty years may have had three of them. Parcel numbers usually survive all of it, so a parcel search returns the complete history where an address search returns a partial one. Where address search is the only option, enter the house number and street name without the suffix — most systems match the string literally and fail on "Rd" against "Road".

Reading what comes back

• Issued — work is authorised and inspections are outstanding.
• Finaled or closed — passed final inspection. This is what you want to see on a property you are buying.
• Open — issued but never signed off. It transfers with the property.
• Expired — the validity window lapsed without inspection activity.
• Void or withdrawn — the application never became a permit.

If nothing comes back

Before concluding that work was unpermitted, rule out the likelier explanations. Records predating OpenGov Permitting & Licensing at this office are frequently not loaded. The work may sit with another agency — septic with the health department, driveways with public works, floodplain with the state. Or the property may be inside a city, in which case the municipality holds the record and Yuma County will show nothing at all. Ask the office to check the paper file before you draw a conclusion.

Our guide to looking up permits covers the records-request route where no online search exists.