Hunt down the house's records
One-time · any month works
Why it matters
Your house has a paper trail, and the first weeks of ownership are when it's easiest to collect — the sellers' agent still answers email, the sellers still remember their vendors, and warranty-transfer windows (some manufacturers give you 60–90 days) are still open.
What the trail tells you: whether that basement bathroom was permitted, when the water heater actually went in, whether the roof job came with a transferable warranty, and which local companies already know your house's quirks.
What skipping it costs
$0–$2,500
Not knowing the house's history bills you in bad decisions: paying to diagnose an HVAC system that's actually under a transferable warranty, pumping a septic tank that was pumped last spring, or discovering during YOUR sale that the previous owner's deck was never permitted — now it's your closing-table problem.
Two ways to get it done
Do it yourself
You'll need: Your county's online permit portal, Your phone camera.
- County permit portal (search "your county building permits"): pull everything at your address. Note permits with no final inspection — unfinished permits can resurface when you sell.
- Email the sellers' agent one tidy request: HVAC/water heater service history, roof warranty paperwork, septic pumping records, alarm/irrigation vendor names, and any manuals they left out of the drawer. You'll get it maybe half the time — free either way.
- Warranty transfers: roof shingles, water heaters, windows, and some HVAC warranties transfer to new owners only if registered within a window. Check the manufacturer sites for anything under ~10 years old — ten minutes per item, real money if a compressor dies in year six.
- Service stickers are records too: furnace cabinets, water heaters, and electrical panels often wear dated service tags. Photograph them all.
- Everything goes in the house file (that's its own card on this punch list).
Hire it out
$25–$75National fair range — local labor moves this number.
There's genuinely nothing to hire — the county gives you the permits, the manufacturers handle their own transfers, and your agent works the seller side as part of the service you already paid for. Anyone charging for "home records research" is selling you a library card you already own.
Ask the tech
- Ask your closing agent or buyer's agent: they can often pull permit history and forward the seller-disclosure attachments you never opened.
Red flags you're being upsold
- 'Permit research services' charging real money for what your county's website gives you free.
The call
DIY over a coffee. Thirty minutes on the county portal plus one email to the sellers' agent beats a year of guessing.