Research municipal permit activity faster
Accela Scout searches supported city permit portals and organizes matching records into a clearer investigation summary — so you spend less time fighting portals and more time understanding a property.
The problem
Permit portals are slow, fragmented, and hard to read
Every city runs its own portal, each with a different interface, search behavior, and way of presenting results. Finding the permit activity for a single address often means slow searches, paging through dense tables, and piecing the picture together by hand — across systems that were never designed for quick research.
The approach
Accela Scout organizes permit activity into clearer summaries
Give it an address and a supported city, and Accela Scout searches that city's permit portal, retrieves the matching records, and organizes them into a single, readable investigation summary. One consistent view instead of one portal's quirks at a time.
How it works
From an address to a summary in five steps
Enter an address
Start with the street address you want to research.
Choose a supported city
Pick one of the city portals Accela Scout currently covers.
Search the portal
Accela Scout queries the city's permit portal on your behalf.
Retrieve matching records
Permit records tied to the address are collected and parsed.
Review the summary
Matching activity is organized into a clearer investigation summary you can read at a glance.
Why it helps
Built for practical permit research
Faster research
Skip the manual portal-by-portal lookups. Get matching records pulled together in one pass.
Clearer summaries
Permit activity is organized into a readable summary instead of raw portal tables.
Supported-city focus
Depth over breadth — we cover specific Bay Area city portals well rather than thinly everywhere.
Practical due diligence
A faster starting point for understanding the permit picture behind a property.
Coverage
Supported cities
Accela Scout focuses on a small set of Bay Area city portals so it can cover them well.
Use cases
Where Accela Scout fits
Pre-offer research
Get a read on a property's permit activity before you make an offer.
Remodel review
See what permitted work has been associated with an address.
Inspection prep
Walk into an inspection already oriented to the permit record.
Property due diligence
Fold permit research into a broader look at a property.
Start researching permits faster
Accela Scout is in invite-only public beta. Request access, or sign in if you already have an invitation.