Burbank building permits

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Department contacts, adopted codes, permit types, fees, and gotchas for Burbank, California.

Last verified 2026-09-21 · Source · Embed this page’s badge · Version history

Building department

Address: Community Services Building, First Floor, 150 N. Third Street, Burbank, CA 91502
Phone: (818) 238-5220, published as the number for "Building Permit/Plan check".
Email: building@burbankca.gov for the Building & Safety counter. SEPARATELY, eplancheck@burbankca.gov is where a complete application goes to obtain the electronic invitation that ProjectDox requires before an account can be created for a new project - the two addresses are not interchangeable.
Office hours: COUNTER HOURS ARE PUBLISHED WITH A LUNCH CLOSURE AND A FOOTNOTE THAT MOVES EVERY DEADLINE EARLIER. Verbatim: "Public Counter Hours* Monday - Thursday 8:00 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. Friday 8:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m. Closed for Lunch 12:00 noon - 1:00 p.m." and the asterisk reads "*The queue to join the line closes 15 minutes before lunch and closing times." So the last moment you can actually JOIN the line is 11:45 a.m. and 3:15 p.m. Monday to Thursday, and 11:45 a.m. and 2:45 p.m. on Friday - not the times printed in bold above them.
Website: Official site

Codes adopted

California publishes its building standards as Title 24, adopted by state agencies and republished on a three-year cycle. A city or county may change those standards only after its governing body makes an express finding that the change is reasonably necessary because of local climatic, geological, or topographical conditions, and no change becomes operative until the finding and the change have been filed with the California Building Standards Commission.

BURBANK NAMES ITS ADOPTING ORDINANCE AND THE COMMA IN THE NUMBER IS PART OF IT: "ordinance No. 25-4,034 that includes Title 9 with the approved local amendments can be referenced." Searching for "25-4034" without the comma may not find it.
THE ADOPTION, VERBATIM: "Burbank adopts and enforces the 2025 California Building Code" and "Local amendments are found in Title 9 of the Burbank Municipal Code". The page adds that it "has adopted the 2025 California Building Code with local amendments and is in effect as of January 1, 2026."
THE TRANSITION RULE CARRIES A CLOCK TIME AND TWO CONDITIONS RATHER THAN ONE: "All applications received by Building & Safety prior to December 31, 2025, no later than 12 p.m. Show full textShow less
THE TRANSITION RULE CARRIES A CLOCK TIME AND TWO CONDITIONS RATHER THAN ONE: "All applications received by Building & Safety prior to December 31, 2025, no later than 12 p.m. (noon), and project files uploaded prior to December 31, 2025, will be reviewed under the 2022 California Building Standards Code. All new projects that submit a building permit application on or after January 1, 2026, are subject to review under the new 2025 California Building Standards Code and local amendments." Note the AND: the application had to be in AND the project files uploaded. Filing without uploading did not qualify.
THE LOCAL AMENDMENTS THEMSELVES WERE NOT READ FOR THIS RECORD. Title 9 of the Burbank Municipal Code is named as their home and Ordinance No. 25-4,034 as the instrument, but neither was opened here, so what Burbank changes from the state code is unknown in this record rather than absent.
Health and Safety Code 18938(b) provides that building standards in the California Building Standards Code apply to all occupancies throughout the state, so the 2025 suite is the floor in Burbank whatever Title 9 adds.

Permit types & fees

Building Permit
Burbank publishes one time figure and it is not a plan check figure. Its counter queue shuts fifteen minutes before the hours it advertises, and its soft-story ordinance carries dated deadlines that attach to the property record.
See fee schedule

Burbank's permit history isn't searchable here yet

This page covers what the permit requires. What we don't have for Burbank yet is the record of permits actually issued — the history you'd search by street address. That is a gap in our coverage, not a statement about any particular property.

Your email, and the place — never an address. We only use it to tell you when Burbank lands. Privacy.

Tips & gotchas

THE PUBLISHED COUNTER HOURS ARE NOT THE HOURS YOU CAN ARRIVE. "*The queue to join the line closes 15 minutes before lunch and closing times." Against counter hours of 8:00 to 3:30 Monday to Thursday, 8:00 to 3:00 Friday, and a noon-to-one lunch closure, the operative deadlines are 11:45 a.m. and 3:15 p.m., or 2:45 p.m. on Friday. The footnote is doing more work than the bold times above it.
THE ONLY TIME FIGURE BURBANK PUBLISHES DESCRIBES A ZONING SCREEN, NOT PLAN REVIEW. "In the first 48 hours of the review process, plans will be screened by the Planning Division for project viability in relation to Burbank's municipal code per zoning standards (Zoning Pre-clearance)." A reader who takes 48 hours as a turnaround will plan a project around a number that describes a viability check.
AND THE ABSENCE OF A TURNAROUND WAS TESTED PROPERLY, WHICH IS WORTH SAYING BECAUSE IT USUALLY IS NOT. Three pages were searched across their full DOM text - 42,137, 51,533 and 55,083 characters - rather than across what renders. The Plan Check Review page alone hides roughly 40,000 characters inside tabbed panels, about twenty times its visible text, so a search of the visible page would have been close to meaningless. Zero day or week figures in any of them.
THE CODE TRANSITION HAD A CLOCK TIME AND TWO CONDITIONS, NOT ONE. "All applications received by Building & Safety prior to December 31, 2025, no later than 12 p.m. (noon), and project files uploaded prior to December 31, 2025, will be reviewed under the 2022 California Building Standards Code." The application had to be received AND the files uploaded, both before noon on the final day. An application filed on time with files still to come did not qualify.
THE ADOPTING ORDINANCE NUMBER CONTAINS A COMMA AND SEARCHES WILL MISS IT. It is "ordinance No. 25-4,034". Searching the municipal code or the council record for 25-4034 is not the same string.
NON-COMPLIANCE WITH THE SOFT-STORY ORDINANCE IS RECORDED AGAINST THE BUILDING: "Failure to comply ... will result in the recordation of the referenced subject building with the Los Angeles County Recorder, identifying the building as being subject to and in violation of the Ordinance." That is a title-level consequence that surfaces at sale or refinance, not merely an enforcement action.
BURBANK PUT MONEY ON THE DATES, AND TWO OF THE TIERS HAVE ALREADY GONE. A 100 per cent building permit-fee refund was available for full compliance by 10 July 2026 and a 50 per cent refund for full compliance by 10 January 2028. As at 21 September 2026 the 100 per cent tier closed 73 days ago and the 50 per cent tier is the live one. Every date in this record was checked against a calendar rather than read off the page and assumed current.
A GRANT WINDOW IS OPEN AND CLOSING WITHIN DAYS AS THIS RECORD IS WRITTEN. The Earthquake Multi-Unit Retrofit Grant Program offers up to $49,600 per building and up to 70 per cent of eligible retrofit costs for 5 to 10 unit apartment buildings subject to the ordinance, with registration published as "AUGUST 19 - SEPTEMBER 30, 2026" and the note "Funding is limited." On 21 September 2026 that was nine days from closing. ANY READER SEEING THIS AFTER 30 SEPTEMBER 2026 SHOULD ASSUME THE WINDOW HAS SHUT and check CRMP.ORG/EMR for the current position.
PROJECTDOX CANNOT BE SELF-SERVED. "An electronic invitation, which you get after submitting a complete application to eplancheck@burbankca.gov, is needed prior to setting-up an account for a new project." An applicant who goes to the portal first will find no way in.
TWO EMAIL ADDRESSES DO DIFFERENT JOBS AND ARE EASY TO CONFUSE: building@burbankca.gov is the counter inbox; eplancheck@burbankca.gov is where the complete application goes to trigger the ProjectDox invitation. Sending the application to the counter inbox does not start the electronic review.
THE CITY MARKS WHICH COUNTER ERRANDS SKIP ZONING: a repair and maintenance permit and a meeting with Plan Check staff are both flagged "(no Zoning review required)". If Planning is your bottleneck, those are the two things that will not wait on it.
BURBANK'S OWN WEBSITE RETURNS HTTP 403 TO NON-BROWSER REQUESTS. Every page behind this record had to be read in a browser; a plain fetch of burbankca.gov is refused. That says nothing about the city and everything about how the site must be read - a tool reporting the pages as unreachable is describing itself.