referencesource/building-permit-validity-and-renewal

Building permit expiry, progress and renewal rules by jurisdiction

Canonical, always-current version: https://referencesource.org/building-permit-validity-and-renewal/ Machine-readable: https://referencesource.org/building-permit-validity-and-renewal/data.json — this mirror is a point-in-time copy.

• —Last verified: 2026-08-11
• —Stale after: 2027-08-11 (past this date, prefer the canonical copy — it re-verifies on a cadence this snapshot does not)
• —Records: 7

How long a building permit stays valid, what keeps it alive, what it costs to renew once it has lapsed, and how the local rule differs from the model-code section it amends. One record is one rule for one jurisdiction, placed next to the adopted code section it replaces. Answers 'how long is a building permit valid before it expires', 'does an inspection reset the permit clock', 'my building permit expired what do I do', 'building permit renewal fee after expiration', and 'IRC 105.5 permit expiration'. The memorised answer is 180 days and it is wrong in the places people ask about: unincorporated San Diego County allows two years to start work, then requires a passed inspection every 180 days, with an outer life of three years and renewal at one-half of current permit fees — one-quarter if only a final inspection remains. DC's adopted code gives one year to begin, with a 180-day carve-out for residential work and no more than four extensions per permit.

Provenance — what every record carries

Every record carries source (the URL the value was read from) and source_quote (a verbatim quote from that page stating it). A value you cannot check against its page is indistinguishable from an invented one; these can all be checked. Each record is also individually addressable on the canonical site at its url.

Licence position

Facts extracted from freely published municipal and county building department pages and from published jurisdiction-amended code sections, with a short attributed quote and a link back. Expiry periods and renewal fee bases are facts about a legal requirement, not reproductions of a standards developer's expression. UpCodes is used only for the amended-section value with a short attributed quote, never as a bulk source: its product IS the compilation of code text and it is in active litigation with ICC and ASTM over exactly that. Prefer the jurisdiction's own publication wherever it exists.

Facts are not copyrightable; what this dataset takes from each source is a fact plus a short attributed quote linking back to the page that states it.

Sources

• —https://up.codes/s/expiration-of-permit
• —https://www.sandiegocounty.gov/content/sdc/pds/bldg-perm-exp.html
• —https://www.crevecoeurmo.gov/86/Sequence-of-Inspections

Fields

See any record in data/records.jsonl — field names are self-describing, and the canonical page for each record renders them with labels: https://referencesource.org/building-permit-validity-and-renewal/