CA LA County Building Permits (EPIC-LA) - Unincorporated Permit & Planning Cases

LA County Public Works publishes its entire unincorporated-area case history - every building, construction and planning case filed in the county's unincorporated communities - as open data. This actor turns that register into a charged-per-record lookup and diligence tool.

Built for: construction & development leads (who just pulled a permit, what's being built where), contractor / builder prospecting, real-estate & property diligence, ADU / affordable-housing market research, disaster-recovery rebuild tracking, and LA County building-activity analytics.

What it covers

916,509 cases across the county's unincorporated communities (the areas outside LA's 88 city limits - Malibu, East LA, Altadena, Hacienda Heights, unincorporated Torrance / Santa Monica Mountains, and hundreds more). Two case modules:

Module	What it is	Rows
permits	building & construction permits - the useful slice	614,180
planning	zoning / land-use plan reviews	302,329

permits - the building-permit register (default)

614,180 building & construction cases, including:

Permit type	What it is
Unincorporated Building Residential / Commercial / Multifamily	building permits (new, additions, alterations)
Electrical / Plumbing / Mechanical / Solar	trade permits
Road / Sewer / Grading / Pool & Spa	infrastructure & site work
Construction & Demolition / Flood / Film	special permits

Every case carries its case number, project name, status, the apply / complete / expire / issuance / last-inspection dates, permit valuation (filled on ~34% of rows - building & valuation-carrying cases; many trade permits are zero), the main address (filled on ~95% of rows) and assessor parcel number (AIN), the supervisorial district and countywide statistical area, current & proposed land-use codes, ADU (accessory dwelling unit) and junior-ADU flags, new-dwelling-unit counts, affordable-housing designation, and disaster-recovery rebuild tracking (for the county's disaster areas).

planning - zoning & land-use reviews

302,329 plan reviews (RPPL series) - the zoning conformance and land-use cases that precede or accompany building. Useful for understanding what's been cleared for a property.

Status

The source carries a large status vocabulary (~40 values) - this actor matches status exactly, never by loose substring. Key values: Finaled (333,838) / Issued (146,000) / Approved (98,956) / Completed / Void / Accepted / Canceled / Open / Expired / Denied / In Review / Withdrawn / Rejected / Revoked. Ask for open (or active) to get the live in-progress slice (Open / In Review / New / Waiting for Applicant / Approved Pending Clearances / ...).

Typical questions

• "What building permits were pulled in this neighborhood in the last year?"
• "Show recent residential permits in unincorporated East LA."
• "Which contractor is building the big ADU projects?"
• "What's the permit valuation mix - find permits over $500k."
• "Finaled commercial permits by countywide statistical area."
• "Permits on this parcel (AIN) - current and historical."
• "Where is the disaster-recovery rebuild activity (fire-damage areas)?"
• "Aggregate the whole register by permit type or status."

Inputs

Input	What it does
module	permits (default) / planning
permitType	building-permit type: residential, commercial, multifamily, electrical, plumbing, mechanical, solar, sewer, grading, pool/spa, road, C&D, flood, film
status	exact source value (Finaled / Issued / Approved / ...) or open / active for the live slice. Blank = any status
caseNumber	exact case number -> that case's record
address / ain	property filter (substring)
minValuation / maxValuation	permit-valuation range
appliedFrom/To / issuedFrom/To	date-range filters (applied / issued dates)
supervisorialDistrict / countywideStatArea	district / community filter
aggregate / groupBy	one summary row per group - caseType / status / module / countywideStatArea / supervisorialDistrict / useCurr / workClassName
maxResults	cap records (default 200)

Default run = the 200 newest building cases (by the register's insert order - the county appends cases as they're filed, so the newest rows are the most recently filed / updated; not sorted by apply date). A live slice, fast for the daily auto-test. For a targeted query add a caseNumber / address / permitType / status filter; for a broad view use aggregate (a handful of summary rows, not a full dump).

Low cost

From $0.001 per record - billed only for the rows you use, with a per-run charge cap so a broad query can't surprise-bill.

LA County's EPIC-LA case history is one of those "public portal" exports that hides its mess in plain sight: building permits and zoning reviews live in the same feed (two case modules that behave differently), the status field runs ~40 values that overlap confusingly (a New case vs New - Online, In Review vs Review), permit valuation is filled on only ~34% of rows, and many planning cases carry no address at all. Sorting that into a register where a permitType / status / date-range query returns exactly the cases you mean - never the near-misses - is the actual product. Every pull is integrity-checked against the feed's known shape, so a degraded source fails loudly instead of returning bad rows.

Source

• LA County Public Works EPIC-LA - the county's public case-management portal. This actor reads the published EPIC-LA_Case_History_view service.
• Reflects the county's published record as of the refresh date; not an endorsement of any project or contractor.