How we verify data

This page exists because "verified" is a word directories use loosely. Here is exactly what it means on this site.

The jurisdiction must be real

Every jurisdiction is checked against the US Census Bureau's national county file. Places that do not appear in it are not listed. We also use the correct term for each state — parishes in Louisiana, boroughs and census areas in Alaska — rather than calling everything a county.

The official page must be retrievable

We fetch the jurisdiction's permit or building department page. If it returns an error, times out, or has been moved without a redirect, the jurisdiction is not listed. This alone removes a large share of candidates, and it is the honest outcome: a directory entry pointing at a dead link is worse than no entry.

The page must actually be about permitting

A live page is not enough. We check that the retrieved page genuinely concerns building permits rather than being a general county homepage. Pages with substantial permit content get a full set of topic pages; pages with limited content get a short entry that says so; pages with none are excluded.

Facts come from the page, or not at all

Phone numbers, addresses, office hours and platform identification are read from the retrieved page. Where a field is absent, the page omits it rather than substituting a state-level or regional value. This is the specific failure mode we set out to avoid: a page that shows a state agency's phone number as though it were the county office's.

What we never publish

• Fee amounts. Set by local ordinance, changed without notice.
• Processing or review times. Vary by season, staffing and submission quality.
• Local exemption thresholds. These are precisely the thing that differs between adjacent jurisdictions.
• Copies of application forms. Offices reject superseded versions, so a cached copy is a liability.

Re-checking

Every page shows the date its source was last retrieved. Reported errors are re-checked on receipt.