How to Pull a New Home's City Inspection Record Before You Close

Every new home in Johnson County has a second history that has nothing to do with the builder's marketing binder. It lives at city hall. From the day the builder pulled the permit to the day the city signed off on the final, an inspector has been writing things down — what passed, what failed, what got re-inspected, and when. Most buyers never see it. I think every buyer should, and it costs nothing but an hour.

This guide is about that record: where it lives in the cities I work most, how to read it, and what it can and can't tell you. It pairs with the pre-drywall and final-walkthrough milestones on a build, and it's just as useful on a finished spec home — maybe more, because on a spec you weren't there for any of it.

What the record actually is

When a builder starts a house in Overland Park, Olathe, Leawood, Lenexa, or anywhere else in the county, they pull a building permit. That permit opens a file. As the house goes up, the city's inspectors come out at set stages — footings, foundation, framing, rough mechanicals (plumbing, electrical, HVAC), insulation, and a final — and each visit gets logged as passed, failed, or partial, with notes. Trade permits for the plumber, electrician, and HVAC contractor usually hang off the same address. When everything clears, the city issues a certificate of occupancy (or the local equivalent) and the file is effectively closed.

That file is a public record. You are allowed to look at it. And unlike the builder's warranty paperwork, nobody who wants to sell you the house wrote it.

Where to find it, city by city

Each city runs its own system, so the mechanics vary a little. Here's the lay of the land as of this fall — portals get renamed, so if a link has moved, search the city's site for "permits" and you'll land in the right place.

Overland Park. The city runs permitting through an online system it calls ePLACE, reachable from the Building and Construction section of opkansas.org. You can search by address to see the permits on a property and their inspection history. If the online view doesn't show what you need, the city's Building Safety division at City Hall (8500 Santa Fe Drive) can pull the file.

Olathe. Olathe moved all permitting online several years ago and also publishes building-permit data through its open-data portal at data.olatheks.org, which is handy for seeing what's been permitted on a lot or across a subdivision. For inspection-level detail on a specific address, the city's Building Codes division is the direct route, and anything older or not online can be requested through a Kansas Open Records request — the city says its reports go back to 2017.

Leawood. Leawood handles permits and inspection scheduling through its Access Leawood portal, with Codes Administration at City Hall (4800 Town Center Drive) as the human backstop. New residential construction has its own permit track, so ask for the residential file on the address.

Unincorporated Johnson County (parts of Stilwell, the acreage south and west of the cities). Building Codes is a county function, with its own online permitting through jocogov.org. If you're looking at a home on well and septic, this is also where the septic permit lives — see my well and septic guide for that side of it.

Everywhere else (Lenexa, Shawnee, Prairie Village, Spring Hill, and the Missouri side). Same idea: a city permits portal, a Building Safety or Codes desk, and an open-records request as the fallback. Kansas and Missouri both have open-records laws, and a permit file on a house you're under contract on is about the most routine request a city clerk gets.

If any of that sounds like a chore, it's about fifteen minutes online for most addresses. Or ask me — I pull these as part of my due diligence on every new-construction contract, and I'd rather you see the record with me than not see it at all.

How to read it

Once you have the file, you're looking for a story, not a single number. Here's the order I read it in.

Start with the dates. When was the permit issued, and when was the final passed? The gap tells you how long the house actually took. A house that took nine months is normal. One that took twenty-two months, or one that sat for a long stretch between framing and rough-ins, deserves a question — maybe a builder cash-flow problem, maybe a subcontractor change, maybe weather. The answer might be fine. You just want the answer.

Count the fails. Failed inspections are not automatically bad. A fail on a framing inspection that was corrected and passed a week later is the system working exactly as designed. What I look for is patterns: the same trade failing repeatedly, or multiple fails at the same stage, or a fail followed by a very long delay before the re-inspection. Those are the places I want a private inspector to look harder.

Look for partials and "corrections required." Inspectors sometimes pass a stage with a list of items to be fixed before the next one. Read the list. If it mentions something you can still see — a missing handrail, a grading issue, an unfinished fire block — go check whether it was actually done.

Check the trade permits. Plumbing, electrical, and mechanical should each have their own permit and their own inspections at the address. If one is missing, that's a real question: either the work was done under a different permit, or it was done without one. Ask.

Confirm the final and the occupancy sign-off. No certificate of occupancy, no closing — most lenders won't fund on a house the city hasn't cleared. If the builder says the final is "scheduled," that's a date on your contingency calendar, not a formality.

Compare the permit scope to what you're buying. Finished basement, deck, irrigation, a detached structure — each should show a permit. A finished lower level that was never permitted is the single most common surprise I see on spec homes that sat a while before selling. The basement square-footage rules already make that space tricky to value; unpermitted finish makes it worse.

What the record won't tell you

I want to be fair about the limits. A city inspector is checking code compliance at a moment in time. They are not grading workmanship, they are not opening walls after drywall, and a clean record does not mean the house is well built. It means the house met minimum code at each stage the city checked. Those are different things.

So the permit file doesn't replace your own inspector. It aims your inspector. If the record shows two framing fails and a long delay before rough plumbing passed, your inspector spends extra time in the attic and under the sinks. That's the whole value — and it's why I'd rather pull the file before the inspection than after.

It also won't tell you much about the builder's warranty response, how the punch list went for the last three buyers on the street, or whether the grading will hold up through a wet spring. For those, I rely on the neighbors, my own transaction history with the builder, and the questions in my contract clauses guide.

When this matters most

Three situations where I won't let a client close without the record in hand.

A spec home that sat. If a finished home has been on the market a while, I want to know when the final passed and whether anything was added after. The foundation-stage spec I wrote about yesterday is the easy case — you're there for the back half of the record. The aged spec is the one where the file has to speak for the months you missed.

A builder you don't know. Johnson County has a deep bench of good builders, and my who-builds-where guide covers most of them. But new names show up every year, especially in the fast-growing corridors around Olathe and south Overland Park. The permit file on their last few houses is the fastest reference check there is — and you can pull the neighbors' addresses, not just yours.

Anything with a finished basement, a deck, or a pool. These are the add-ons most likely to have skipped a permit, and the ones an appraiser and a future buyer will ask about. If you're weighing new construction against resale partly because "new means no surprises," this is the check that makes that true.

The short version

Pull the permit and inspection file on any new home before your inspection contingency runs. Read the dates, count the fails, confirm every trade has a permit, and make sure the final and occupancy sign-off exist. Then hand the file to your inspector and let it tell them where to look.

If you're under contract on a new build in Johnson County — or about to be — send me the address and I'll pull the record and walk you through it before your inspection. It's one of the least glamorous things I do for buyers, and one of the most useful.