Where the data comes from

County permit systems

• City of Savannah: the city’s public permit search at etrac.savannahga.gov.
• Unincorporated Chatham County: the public permit search run by Chatham County Building Safety & Regulatory Services at energov.chathamcounty.org.

We only read what those searches show to the public. We don’t use anything that needs a login.

Public records

Building permits are public records under the Georgia Open Records Act (O.C.G.A. § 50-18-70). Anyone can look them up.

Owner names come from a different public source: the Chatham County Board of Assessors parcel digest, published as open data by SAGIS. It covers all of Chatham County, including Savannah. The digest is updated once a year, so an owner name can be out of date.

How often it updates

We pull permits once a week. Each Monday list covers a 7-day window that ends the day we pull. A permit lands in a list when its timing for your trade falls inside that window. Usually that’s the week it passes final inspection. Some are timed later, like a pool permit that shows up 60 days after it’s issued.

What you get for each address

• Street address and lot number
• Subdivision or project name, when the record has one
• Permit type and permit number
• The date that matters for your trade, such as the final inspection date
• The job value declared on the permit
• The owner-of-record name from the assessor’s data, when there is one
• A short note on why it’s on the list
• Tags such as Townhouse or Multi-family, when they apply

What we don’t collect

We do not collect, store, or publish personal contact information for property owners. That means no phone numbers, no email addresses, and no mailing addresses. The assessor’s data includes some of that, and we don’t read it.

The only owner information in the list is the owner-of-record name described above. For a new house that’s usually the builder. For other properties it can be a private person. Each address is where the permitted work is, not a mailing address.

Found a mistake?

Check the permit number in the county’s search first. If our list doesn’t match the county’s record, email valdessystems@gmail.com.