Direct answers to the questions Oregon buyers, sellers and agents ask most, each one linked to the record that carries the citation and the date it was checked.
Each answer below restates a field that has cleared verification. Where a question has no verified answer, this page does not carry one.
It depends on the trade, not just the town. Counties own electrical for a great many Oregon cities, so the structural history of a house can be a city record while its electrical history is a county record in a different system. That is the usual reason an inspector reports no permit on file for work that was in fact permitted.
Permit authority for all 36 counties ↗Two separate things have to be true, and almost every published guide blurs them. ORS 701.445(1) requires that the individual is certified by the Construction Contractors Board and is an owner of, or employed by, a business licensed by the board. The CCB runs a separate search for each.
Both searches, and the failure mode nobody describes ↗One year, under ORS 701.143, and the clock starts when the initial written report is delivered rather than at closing or on discovery. A widely circulated citation to ORS 701.355 is wrong: that section was renumbered in 2015 and is a bar on an inspector bidding repair work.
The licensing record ↗No. Section R327 is local-option, it reaches only new construction of new buildings under ORS 455.433(3), and the statute expressly forbids the state requiring adoption. 6 of 59 tracked jurisdictions have adopted it.
Which jurisdictions adopted, with dates ↗The seller property disclosure form no longer asks. SB 83 amended ORS 105.464 rather than repealing it, and deleted one line: whether the property has been classified as wildland-urban interface. It was removed outright and not replaced, so the form now carries no wildfire question of any kind.
What the amendment actually changed ↗OAR 812-008-0203 puts it plainly: inspections undertaken in accordance with division 8 are visual and are not technically exhaustive. Sewer laterals, oil tanks, radon and seismic work all sit outside that scope and need their own specialist.
The standards, and what they exclude ↗There is no single figure to quote, and a page that gives you one is guessing. Oregon publishes a snow load region and an elevation adjustment factor per location. Central Oregon climbs at 0.07 psf for every foot of elevation against 0.04 across the valley, so an address matters more than a city name.
Snow load region for all 23 cities ↗No. It is an independent informational resource covering residential property inspection in Oregon. No inspections are performed, offered or bid, and nothing here is legal advice. Every field carries its own source and the date it was last checked.
How this site is sourced and corrected ↗