Leez Almeida

A month ago I launched PermitPeek here, and the reaction taught me something I didn't expect, so I wanted to share it with this community.

What it does: PermitPeek pulls the full building-permit history for any home across 34 US cities, straight from official city records. Every renovation, addition, and the important part: every permit that expired or got left open. It flags what a buyer should pause over, in plain English, instead of a raw government portal.

The thing that surprised me: I built it for buyers vetting a house. But after launch, people kept running it on the home they already own and finding real problems. One person found a roof permit that was never closed out, which finally explained an insurance headache from the year before. Another found open permits their contractor left hanging after a kitchen reno. Stuff sitting on their record that they had no idea about.

Why it matters: home inspectors check the condition of a house, not its paperwork. So unpermitted or unfinished work stays invisible until it bites a failed sale, a forced tear-out, a five-figure bill to legalize after the fact.

Because building products has become much more accessible thanks to AI, the bar has had to rise a bit, or at least the expectations have become stricter.

I built my own tool  SafeLimit, but personally, I wouldn t launch it on Product Hunt yet because it s still very basic and doesn t even have a website.