I'm always amazed by businesses that solve consumer problems. It wasn't until recently that I learned about the process of permit search. If you've ever bought or sold a home, you might be familiar with permit search but this doesn't always come up as a debated topic during the home selling process until you're at the closing table.

Before you can buy or sell a home, you have to check for open permits. There are dozens of reasons why this is so important but as you can imagine, an open permit means work was done in the home and never received a final inspection. I don't know about you, but that would certainly give me cause for concern. "Was the work completed?", "Was the work done according to code?", "Will there be any future problems because a contractor cuts corners?". These are all the reasons why building inspectors exist and consumers must depend on permit history to gain valuable insight into what they are buying.

The permit search process is an arduous one. In order to obtain permit history, in the majority of cases, you can't just look it up online like you can with tax information. The majority of municipalities that control building permit information have either not digitized the information or do not make it public. As a result, if you're buying or selling a home and trying to acquire permit history, you have to make a request directly from the municipality.

This process of requesting permit history has its own challenges. The first step is finding the right municipality and the second step is finding the right place to make the request from. In many instances, municipalities will request that you complete and OPRA request. An open records act request is made to access information under the freedom of information act. It's crazy right? You have to go through this formal process to simply access information about your own house. But for the time being, that's what it takes.

Having ordered a number of these reports, I can say with confidence that it's not an easy process. It may be simple on the cover, but often requires multiple calls and an advanced degree to interpret the results. Even after receiving a permit history report from a municipality, you will likely have questions.

That's where Permitsearch.com comes in. The company was started by 3 guys who understood the frustration of finding permit history during the home buying or selling process. Which by the way is already extremely stressful - especially in today's housing market. 

The service takes the headache out of acquiring a permit history. Once you know what property you're buying or selling, you can purchase a permit history report. If the information is available through the Permitsearch.com database, comprised of digital records from local municipalities, you can receive a report in as little as five to seven business days. If the information is not digital, either because municipalities are still in the dark ages or have chosen not to license their data, Permitsearch.com will manually request the information through and OPRA request. Once the information is obtained, they share it in an easy-to-understand report. Finally, a simple solution to a complex problem.

The takeaway here is that companies like PermitSearch.com are founded on a simple premise which is to take the frustration out of a process that hasn't changed in decades. I don't know about you, but seems like a great foundation to begin improving things in the real estate market which hasn't changed in decades. I for one, welcome the value of such a solution and feel like it's only the beginning. 

If you're in the home buying, selling, or real estate business, I strongly encourage you to check out this service.