Pull Your Denver Building Permit — Direct Links + How to Read Codes
Denver e-Permits is the official system of record for every building permit, mechanical permit, electrical permit, plumbing permit, demolition permit, and certificate of occupancy ever issued inside the City and County of Denver. It is the same database CPD plan reviewers and inspectors write to in real time. We deep-link you there directly — no middleman, no stale mirror.
Opens on denvergov.org — the official City and County of Denver government site. For Aurora addresses, use Access Aurora. Boulder uses its own city portal.
What to look up
Denver e-Permits accepts three search axes: street address, permit number, and project number. Address search returns every permit ever pulled on the parcel — useful when buying a Wash Park bungalow with a finished basement and wanting to confirm the ceiling-height egress was permitted. Permit number lookup pulls the full job card, including plan-review comments and inspection history. The portal also surfaces zoning-permit status, ADU (Group Living) approvals, and CPD code-enforcement actions, none of which appear on private scraped mirrors. For a full history including paper-only legacy records, request the building file at the CPD counter at 201 W Colfax Ave — online coverage is roughly 2003-forward, with parcel-level gaps.
How to read Denver permit codes
Denver permits carry a four-letter discipline prefix that tells you the work type at a glance: BLDG (building), MECH (mechanical / HVAC), ELEC (electrical), PLMB (plumbing), DEMO (demolition), SIGN (signage), ZONE (zoning), ROW (right-of-way). A code like 2024-BLDG-0012345 reads as a 2024 building permit, sequence 12345. The status field reads either Issued (work approved, may begin), Final (signed off, complete), Expired (180 days without inspection — Denver expires permits faster than most jurisdictions), or Cancelled(homeowner pulled the permit before any work occurred). Inspections nest beneath each permit. A “final building” without an attached C of O on a brand-new construction is not actually move-in legal — the C of O is a separate, downstream document.
Red flags to watch for
The single biggest red flag on a Denver property record is an expired permit on substantial work — finished basement, garden-level ADU, deck or addition. Denver expires permits at 180 days of inspection inactivity (much faster than LA's 12 months), so dormant projects pile up quickly. Expiration without a final inspection means CPD never confirmed the work meets code, and the buyer inherits the open permit and the liability. Second red flag: ADU without a Group Living permit — Denver's 2021 Group Living amendments tightened the rules, and a basement or garage suite added before then may not be legal even if the BLDG permit closed. Third: if address search returns no records on a clearly remodeled Cap Hill or Highland property, the work is either pre-2003 or unpermitted. Walk the property with that hypothesis. Finally, watch for open zoning violations — Denver's short-term-rental and accessory-structure rules are enforced by CPD and the violations follow the property.
Questions LA homeowners actually ask
Because CPD records change throughout the day. A pulled permit, an issued stop-work order, or a final sign-off updates on Denver e-Permits in real time — any third-party mirror is already out of date. The only honest answer is the source system, so we deep-link you there.
AskBaily does not scrape Denver CPD
We have no Denver e-Permits database mirror. We do not cache permit results. We do not sell permit data. The deep-link above is the entire integration — the homeowner reads the City and County of Denver record on the city's own system. That is the only way to know what is actually on file.
Last reviewed 2026-04-24.