Montrose County has online building permit records for recent decades

Was the basement finished with a permit? Was the deck inspected? Did the garage, addition, or manufactured home ever go through the county at all? Photos and a seller’s memory only carry you so far on any of that.

Montrose County keeps building permits from recent decades available online, which turns permit history into a real due-diligence step for unincorporated county property. Pulling the file lets a buyer set three things side by side: the seller’s disclosure, the inspection report, and what the county actually approved. Where those three agree, you can relax a little. Where they disagree, you have something specific to ask about before the deadline.

The search has edges worth knowing. Work older than the online range may simply not appear, so a blank result is not always proof that nothing was permitted. And property inside a city often belongs to a city permit office rather than the county, so the county file may not be the right drawer to open. For work the county itself reviewed, though, the record answers questions that walk-throughs cannot.

The public records page and the Planning and Development portal are the two places to start, and both are easiest to check while there is still slack in the inspection timeline rather than once it has tightened.