Permit Advisor's suggestions are only as good as the official pages it finds. This update changes how it searches, so it finds the right agency's pages more often, especially outside big cities.
The county, not just the city
In an unincorporated area, or a small town that relies on its county, the county issues the building or development permit, and often the septic and well permits too. Permit Advisor now works out the county from the project's address and searches the county's official site as well as the city's. A new house in Manchaca, outside Austin, now gets Travis County's development permit, with Travis County named as the issuing agency.
Where the city and county are one government, such as Denver or San Francisco, or there is no county government to search, as in New York City and Connecticut, Permit Advisor searches the city alone, as before.
A search for each kind of work you describe
If your project description mentions work that needs its own permit, such as a pool, a seawall, a septic system, tree removal or exterior work in a historic district, Permit Advisor now runs a separate search for each, up to three, worded the way agencies describe them. For a rowhouse in a Brooklyn historic district, it now finds the Landmarks Preservation Commission's permit pages, not just its news releases.
More suggestions link to their source
Permit Advisor also uses a new search provider and skips data downloads, such as spreadsheets of past permits, that used to crowd out real pages. In our tests on 17 sample projects across the US, about three in four suggestions now link to the official page they're based on, up from three in five.
Permit Advisor still adds only permits from Permitful's catalog of permit types, and you should confirm them with the agency before you apply.
What the searches include
Searches can now include the project's county, which Permitful looks up from public Census data. They never include your client's name, the street address or your project description. The Privacy Policy lists what Permit Advisor sends to its providers.