How to look up a building permit in Travis County, Texas

MyGov's public portal is narrower than most: it is built for applicants tracking their own work rather than for open records research. For a property history you will usually need to make a records request to the office directly.

Using MyGov specifically

Travis County, Texas uses MyGov. Applications, inspection requests and contractor registration all run through one account, and the system sends a text or email at each status change.

MyGov requires contractors to be registered with the jurisdiction before they can be attached to a permit. Registration is a separate process from the permit itself and can add days if it is left to the last minute.

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• Void or withdrawn — the application never became a permit.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 MyGov 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 Travis 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.