San Francisco building permits
VerifiedDepartment contacts, adopted codes, permit types, fees, and gotchas for San Francisco, California.
Last verified 2026-09-19 · Source · Embed this page’s badge · Version history
Building department
- Address
- 49 South Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94103
- Phone
- 628-652-3200
- Office hours
- Monday: 9:00 am to 5:00 pm; Tuesday-Friday: 8:00 am to 5:00 pm. The department adds that "Plan Review and Print Center queues will close at 4:30pm", and that it is closed on public holidays.
- Website
- Official site
Inspection guide
See how inspections work in San Francisco — sequence, scheduling & re-inspection fees.
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; Health & Safety Code 18938(b) provides that 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."
- 2025 San Francisco code amendments, layered on top. DBI lists a 2025 San Francisco Building Code, Electrical Code, Mechanical Code, Plumbing Code, Green Building Code, Housing Code and Existing Building Code, alongside the 2025 California Historical Building, Building (Volumes 1 & 2), Existing Building, Mechanical, Electrical, Green Building, Plumbing and Energy Codes.
- WHICH EDITION APPLIES IS SET BY YOUR FILING DATE, NOT YOUR BUILD DATE: "If you file on or after January 1, 2026, you must use the 2025 California Codes and the 2025 San Francisco Code Amendments."
- SAN FRANCISCO PUBLISHES NO RESIDENTIAL CODE AND NO ENERGY CODE OF ITS OWN. Neither a "San Francisco Residential Code" nor a "San Francisco Energy Code" appears on the department's current-codes list, so for those two the California editions stand unamended. The San Francisco Housing Code runs the other way - it has no California counterpart on that list.
Permit types & fees
Property Access
San Francisco's permit history is searchable by address
1,148,910 permits in our copy of San Francisco's register — searchable by street address, with permit type, status, issued date and valuation where the city publishes them. This is what we hold, not a statement of everything San Francisco has issued.
1,092,203 of these 1,148,910 permits — 95.1% — carry an issued date, and those run from 1906 to 2026. The remaining 56,707 have no date at all.
Tips & gotchas
- MONDAY OPENS AN HOUR LATER THAN THE REST OF THE WEEK. The department publishes Monday 9:00 am to 5:00 pm against Tuesday to Friday 8:00 am to 5:00 pm. A Monday-morning counter trip that assumes an 8:00 start wastes an hour.
- THE QUEUES CLOSE BEFORE THE DEPARTMENT DOES: "Plan Review and Print Center queues will close at 4:30pm", while the office itself runs to 5:00 pm. That is thirty minutes in which the building is open and the thing you came for is not.
- THE BUILDING PERMIT FEE IS TWO FEES. Table 1A-A: "The Building Permit Fee is the Plan Review Fee plus the Permit Issuance Fee." The two are printed as separate columns in every valuation band, and reading only one of them understates the cost - at a $50,000 valuation the plan review side alone is $1,617 before the issuance side is added.
- TWO DIFFERENT DATES GOVERN TWO DIFFERENT THINGS. Which code edition applies is fixed by your FILING date (January 1, 2026 for the 2025 codes); which fee schedule applies is fixed by your ISSUANCE date (July 12, 2026 for the 2026 table). A project that straddles both can be reviewed against one vintage and billed against another.
- SAN FRANCISCO HAS NO RESIDENTIAL CODE OF ITS OWN. It publishes 2025 San Francisco amendments for the Building, Electrical, Mechanical, Plumbing, Green Building, Housing and Existing Building codes - but neither a San Francisco Residential Code nor a San Francisco Energy Code appears on its current-codes list, so those two stay at the California editions unamended.
- IT DOES HAVE A HOUSING CODE, AND CALIFORNIA DOES NOT. The 2025 San Francisco Housing Code is the one entry on the department's list with no California counterpart beside it.
- OVER-THE-COUNTER IS A MEASURE OF REVIEW EFFORT, NOT A CATEGORY OF WORK: "You can get OTC review for projects that need less than 1 hour of plan review." Whether your project qualifies is a judgement the department makes about your plans, so it is not something you can settle in advance from a project-type list.
- PERMITSF DOES NOT COVER A GENERAL BUILDING PERMIT. The online portal is described as offering "New online electrical, plumbing, mechanical, and in-kind kitchen or bath permits" - a building permit for anything beyond an in-kind kitchen or bath is not on that list.
- THE PHONE AND ADDRESS ON THIS RECORD ARE CORROBORATED BY TWO INDEPENDENT DOCUMENTS - the department's own page and the letterhead of the July 2026 fee schedule, which prints "49 SOUTH VAN NESS AVENUE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103" and "PHONE: (628) 652-3200".
- PAYMENT METHODS ARE LIMITED AND THE PAYEE NAME IS SPECIFIC: "we accept cash, check, Visa, MasterCard and money-orders payable to City and County of San Francisco Department of Building Inspection or CCSF-DBI."