Catching unpermitted and high-risk work before it becomes a claim
Most property risk that turns into a claim was visible in the permit record first — work that was never permitted, a permit that expired before final inspection, or a renovation whose scope doesn't match the stated value. This is how an underwriting team turns permit history into a pricing and inspection signal.
The challenge
The risk is in the record — but the record is scattered
An underwriter pricing a property wants to know what's actually been done to it: additions, electrical and roofing work, structural changes, and whether each of those passed a final inspection. That history exists in municipal permit and inspection records — but it's locked in the local portal, in a format no underwriting system can read, one jurisdiction at a time.
The result is that risk signals hiding in plain sight — a deck addition that never received a final, a major renovation pulled at a suspiciously low valuation — never reach the underwriter. They surface later, as a claim.
The approach
Join permit and inspection history to the property
Builders Monitor attaches each property's full permit history — scope, valuation, fees, and the inspection trail — to the address. An underwriter can see whether work was permitted at all, whether each permit reached a passed final, and whether the declared valuation is consistent with the scope of work described.
From that, a few high-value flags fall out automatically: permits that expired without a final inspection, recent structural or electrical work that changes the risk profile, and valuation-versus-scope mismatches that warrant a closer look or a physical inspection.
The outcome
Price and inspect with the record in hand
Underwriters route the genuinely uncertain properties to inspection and price the rest with more confidence. The permit trail moves a class of risk from 'discovered at claim time' to 'priced at bind time' — and gives the underwriter a defensible, sourced reason for the decision.
The permit trail moves a whole class of risk from discovered at claim time to priced at bind time.
Illustrative — property underwriting workflow
The workflow
How it runs in the product
- 1Search
Look up the property's permit history
Pull every permit tied to an address, with scope, valuation, and fees — across all the jurisdictions that ever touched the property.
- 2Record detail
Read the inspection trail
Open a permit to see its inspection history and final status, so you know whether the work actually passed — not just that a permit was filed.
- 3Exports / API
Score properties at scale
Push permit and inspection signals into your underwriting model to auto-flag missing finals, expired permits, and scope mismatches across a book.
What powers it
The data behind the workflow
Each field below is a real product capability — normalized across thousands of municipal portals into one schema.
permit.scope_of_workDescribes what was actually done to the property.permit.status / finalReveals permits that expired without a passed final.inspection.resultConfirms whether the work passed, failed, or was abandoned.permit.valuation + feesSurfaces valuation-versus-scope mismatches.property linkageTies the full history to a single underwritable address.
See it for your team
Start free with 50 record lookups a month. Search and browse are always free — you only spend a lookup when you open a full record.