Santa Ana building permits
Department contacts, adopted codes, permit types, fees, and gotchas for Santa Ana, California.
Last verified 2026-09-18 · Source · Embed this page’s badge · Version history
Building department
- Address
- 20 Civic Center Plaza, Santa Ana, CA 92701
- Phone
- (714) 647-5400
- Office hours
- Monday - Thursday: 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesdays: 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Alternating Fridays: 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. (as published by the division; Wednesday appears in both the Monday-Thursday range and its own line in the source, and is recorded here unreconciled.)
- 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.
2025 California Building Standards Code (Cal. Code Regs., Title 24) - published July 1, 2025 by the California Building Standards Commission, effective January 1, 2026. Show full textShow less
2025 California Building Standards Code (Cal. Code Regs., Title 24) - published July 1, 2025 by the California Building Standards Commission, effective January 1, 2026. This is the statewide edition in force; it is not a city-specific adoption. Health & Safety Code s 18938(b): building standards adopted into the California Building Standards Code "shall apply to all occupancies throughout the state and shall become effective 180 days after publication."
- THE CITY'S OWN ADOPTING ORDINANCE WAS NOT READ FOR THIS RECORD, so no city ordinance number or local effective date is asserted here.
Permit types & fees
Santa Ana's permit history isn't searchable here yet
This page covers what the permit requires. What we don't have for Santa Ana 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 Santa Ana lands. Privacy.
Tips & gotchas
- THE CITY'S WEB DOMAIN HAS MOVED. santa-ana.org now redirects to santa-ana.gov; older links and printed guidance pointing at the .org domain still resolve but are not the canonical site.
- EVERY WEEKDAY HAS A DIFFERENT CLOSING TIME. The division states "Monday - Thursday: 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesdays: 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Alternating Fridays: 8 a.m. to 3 p.m." - Wednesday closes an hour earlier than the rest of the week, and only some Fridays are open at all.
- ALTERNATING FRIDAY CLOSURES ARE COMMON ACROSS CALIFORNIA COUNTERS, not unique to Santa Ana - Stockton publishes the same pattern. Treat a Friday counter visit anywhere in the state as needing confirmation.
- The division's own site flagged "Upcoming Changes to the California Building Standards Code Effective January 1, 2026", which matches the statewide edition date published by the California Building Standards Commission.
- California's code changes on a fixed statewide cycle rather than per city. The 2025 California Building Standards Code took effect January 1, 2026; the previous 2022 edition took effect January 1, 2023.
- Between October 1, 2025 and June 1, 2031 California cities generally may not adopt new residential amendments to the state code (H&SC s 17958(b)), so a residential requirement a city published before that window may no longer be amendable - check the current state code rather than an older local bulletin.