There is no single provincial permit database in British Columbia. Permits are issued by municipalities, and each municipality decides how and whether to publish that data. Here is how to find what you need, regardless of which city you’re looking at.
The City of Vancouver: best open data in BC
Vancouver is the gold standard for permit data access in BC. The City publishes its full permit dataset at opendata.vancouver.ca under “Issued Building Permits.” The dataset includes:
- Address and legal description
- Work type (New Construction, Alteration, Addition, Demolition)
- Declared construction value
- Primary contractor name
- Issue date
- Neighbourhood classification
The dataset is updated daily and available as CSV download or JSON API. You can query it without creating an account.
To access it: go to opendata.vancouver.ca, search “building permits,” and download the current year CSV or use the API endpoint. The API documentation is linked from the dataset page and supports filtering by date range and permit type.
Limitation: Vancouver’s open data covers issued permits. Applications still under review, which typically precede building permit issuance by 60 to 90 days, are in a separate Development Applications dataset, also on the open data portal.
Surrey, Burnaby, and other Metro Vancouver municipalities
Metro Vancouver municipalities outside the City of Vancouver have varying levels of data accessibility:
Surrey publishes permit data through its open data portal at data.surrey.ca. Coverage is reasonably complete going back several years.
Burnaby publishes permit summaries but the dataset is less granular than Vancouver’s, fewer fields, less regular updates.
Richmond, Coquitlam, and Langley have permit lookup tools on their respective municipal websites, but these are search-by-address tools rather than bulk downloadable datasets. For individual address lookups they work well; for market-wide analysis they’re not practical.
North Vancouver District and City of North Vancouver both publish permit information but as separate systems. The District covers the suburban areas; the City covers the urban core around Lonsdale.
BC Assessment
BC Assessment (bcassessment.ca) is not a permit database, but it contains historical permit information embedded in property records. BC Assessment updates property assessments based on permit activity, and the assessment records often show the year improvements were made, which correlates with permit dates.
This is useful for reconstructing permit history on a specific property, particularly for renovations completed before digital permit records were available. It is not useful for real-time permit monitoring.
The free public access tool at bcassessment.ca shows basic property information. More detailed records are available through your real estate board’s MLS data access (if you have a license) or through services like BC Online, which provides access to the full Property Information Centre.
Land Title and Survey Authority (LTSA)
The LTSA (ltsa.ca) maintains land title records and is the authoritative source for property ownership, registered charges, and covenants in BC. It does not contain permit records directly.
However, when a municipality registers a notice against a property, for a bylaw violation, a pending demolition, or an unauthorized structure, that notice often appears as a registered charge on title. LTSA searches are useful for understanding the legal status of a property before bidding on remediation or compliance work.
A basic title search through BC Online costs approximately $10 to $20 per property.
Freedom of Information requests
For municipalities that don’t publish permit data online, smaller cities, District Municipalities, some Regional Districts, a Freedom of Information (FOI) request under the BC Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA) is your legal right.
How to file an FOI request in BC:
- Identify the public body (the municipality’s FOI office or City Clerk)
- Describe the records you want, for example, “all building permits issued between January 1 and December 31, 2025, including address, permit type, declared value, contractor name, and issue date”
- Submit via the municipality’s online form or by letter to the FOI Coordinator
- The public body has 30 business days to respond
- Most routine records requests are fulfilled without a fee; large data extraction requests may carry a cost estimate you can accept or negotiate
FOI requests for permit data are common and most municipalities maintain the data in formats that are straightforward to export. If you are turned down or quoted an unusually high fee, the BC Information and Privacy Commissioner (oipc.bc.ca) handles appeals.
Practical approach for contractors
If you need permit data for business development purposes, the most efficient path depends on your city:
Vancouver: Download the open data CSV weekly, or use the API to pull new permits since your last check. Filter in Excel or a simple script by work type and minimum value.
Other Metro Vancouver cities: Check individual municipal portals for what’s available, then use FOI for gaps.
Province-wide coverage: Manually assembling permit data from dozens of municipal sources is impractical. SiteWire normalizes permit feeds from 31 cities across BC and Canada into a single daily-updated database you can filter, alert on, and search without touching municipal websites.
The difference between checking data manually and having it delivered to your inbox each morning is roughly 45 minutes per day of someone’s time, or a tool that does it for you.