do counties/cities keep the blueprints of houses built in their county/city? you know, like when the housing permit needed to be secured?
does this change if it’s a large-scale developer developing 100s of lots versus a one-time build?
are these blueprints/plans fully detailed, or are they more drawings of the foundations of the house and that’s it?
are these records available for public viewing?
Depends, obviously, on the local law and practice with regard to planning approvals and building controls. Most places in the developed world do require some kind of permit or approval to build. That may involve lodging building plans for approval, or it may not. Even iwhere it does, the building as erected may not exactly match the plans - variations can be introduced either without approval, or with an approval which does not require the lodgment of amended plans.
Any plans lodged are part of the records of the planning department of whatever government agency is involved. They are not necessarily kept indefinitely, though; they may be disposed of after a certain time has elapsed. Again, practice will vary from place to place.
If they have been kept, are they publicly avaiable? Depends on the local freedom of informatino laws. There’s obviously a privacy issue here - why should you be entitled to plans showing the internal layout of my house? And it is easy to think of legitimate reasons why I might not want you to have that information. So even if there is general access to the records of public bodies in the country concerned, there may be an exception which would cover something like this
I know that copies of of platted and approved subdivisions are kept and recorded, but I don’t see the need for the county to record or keep the house blueprints as long as the building inspector gives his approval to the construction. The fire inspection dept may require specialized blueprints of the fire system, but there is typically (so far as I know) no legal requirement to record them legally or keep them forever.
I would imagine that things may be different in building huge, complex urban office buiidlings, apartments, or multi-family townhouses re record keeping requirements.
In Lincoln you can go online and see an ASCII blue print of every taxed building.
And yes, every blueprint is on file in some way. The accuracy of these old documents probably leaves something to be desired since the home improvement boom of the last few decades, but they have something on file for each building.
My city has property info available to the public on their website. Punch in a name/address, and you can find property tax rates, ownership history, sales price history, and so on. For my house, they’ve got a simple layout of the first floor. No doorways or countertops or anything like that, but the basic room dimensions are there.
I was able to find similar data online for the three houses I grew up in as a kid in other cities. In all cases, no self-identification was required. You can look up your neighbor’s house if you want, see how much they really paid, or call bullshit on them the next time they complain about property taxes.
When I interned at the local Building Dept the only drawings they had were of each land plot defining the property, and in some cases of extensions/additions but only for the sort of thing that needed a special inspection or zoning variance. I live in the suburban area of Long Island NY.
The simple reason to keep these on file (or dare I even say digitize them) would be in the event of an emergency event. I know as a fire fighter the few times when we have had access to these records for a building it makes searching the house for victims and survivors immeasurably safer, faster and easier. Knowing the layout of house makes it that much easier to navigate when it’s filled smoke, heat and of course a possible hot burning death. I know the only times where we’ve gotten access to blueprints was for one of the municipal buildings.
Post #2 has it. It completely depends on the locality. But a) it’s more likely to be the city than the county, and b) I’ll bet there’s not 100 cities in the US that have floor plans on file for any private buildings.
Garland, TX is certainly one of them. At one point, anyone could type in his, or anyone else’s, address and look at the floor plans online. I don’t think they do that anymore.