What the Minneapolis permit record shows about who pulls remodeling permits

1. 80.0% of the 41,739 Minneapolis residential permits issued from 2023 to 2025 name a business that matches a state residential contractor license. 13.2% name a business we could not find on the state register, and 6.8% name a person.
2. That share changes with the kind of job. For roofs, 86.0% of permits match a licensed business and 3.1% name a person. For kitchens, bathrooms and basements the person share is 17.4% to 18.4%: roughly one permit in six is pulled under an individual's name.
3. Kitchen permits declare a very wide range of project values. Across 1,168 kitchen permits the median declared value is $40,000, and the middle half runs from $15,465 to $82,000. 19.2% declare $100,000 or more.
4. 15 of the 17 firms listed on this site appear on these permits, 1,033 permits in all. That is a fact about Minneapolis permits only. Garvin Homes and J. Carsten Remodeling did not turn up under the names we tried, which does not mean they did no work there.
5. Housing age differs sharply by city. 72.2% of Minneapolis homes were built before 1980, against 32.5% in Plymouth. Homes built before 1978 can contain lead paint, which is why the age of your house matters when you choose who does the work.

Reading this: a person's name on a permit may be a homeowner pulling their own permit, or a contractor who applied under their own name. We cannot tell which from the record, so this is not a count of unlicensed work.

Kitchen permits where a person rather than a business is named (375, 32.1% of the total) declare less: median $30,000, middle half $11,451 to $55,500. That fits smaller owner-managed jobs but we cannot tell from the record. Kitchens come to about 1.86 permits per 1,000 homes per year in Minneapolis, using the Census count of housing units.

The census groups homes by decade, so we can show homes built before 1980 but not before 1978, the year lead paint was banned in housing. Your own house's year is on your county property record.

Minneapolis is outside the three cities this site tracks, so this is not a check of the work each firm does in Plymouth, Minnetonka or Wayzata. It shows only which listed firms have applied for Minneapolis residential permits. Firms are in alphabetical order. A blank here does not mean a firm did no work, and the table is not a measure of quality.

An AI research assistant chose each firm's names one at a time from the firm's register entry, trade name and the applicant names on the permits, and recorded the reason for each. No person has reviewed these choices yet. Names that belong to a different firm were left out. 10 of the 15 firms with permits are matched by their exact register name alone.

Permits

109,300 unique residential permits in the city file; 41,739 issued 2023 to 2025 for remodel, addition, accessory or miscellaneous work with a declared value above zero, leaving out new construction and cancelled, denied, withdrawn or void permits

How names are matched

Names are upper-cased, '&' becomes AND, punctuation, legal suffixes (INC, LLC, CO, CORP and similar) and THE are dropped, and what is left must be identical to the legal name or the DBA name of a DLI Residential Building Contractor, Residential Remodeler Contractor or Residential Roofer Contractor record.

Applicant kinds

A name containing business words (such as construction, roofing, homes or an LLC ending) counts as a business. Other names count as persons. A business is licensed if it matches the register and its license covered the permit date.

Matched permits

33,395. For 2,452 of them (7.3%) the name appears under more than one license number, so the match is to a name, not to one license.

City agrees

75.9% of matched permits give an applicant city that is also a city on one of the matched licenses

License in force

33,144 matched permits fall inside the license dates on the record; 251 (0.8%) fall outside them. 10.6% of matched permits belong to a license whose status today is not simply Issued (for example ended or expired later).

Project type

A text rule over the first 400 characters of the permit description sorts each permit into one kind of job. The rules are in the script.

Sample checks

We drew five samples with fixed random seeds and read each permit and, where there was a match, the register record it matched. An AI research assistant made these calls on Nov 6, 2026. No person has reviewed them yet, so treat them as a rough check on the matching.

• A "variant" verdict means a DLI record whose legal name or DBA looks like the same firm under a different spelling, legal form or truncated name. It is a judgement, not a confirmed identity.
• The permit file cuts applicant names at 48 characters, so some long business names are truncated and fail to match.

• City of Minneapolis, CCS Permits (feature service)

  Retrieved Nov 6, 2026 · City data last edited 2026-11-06 · 110,572 rows

  Residential building permits (permit type Res), all years in the file

  Data address: https://services.arcgis.com/afSMGVsC7QlRK1kZ/arcgis/rest/services/CCS_Permits/FeatureServer/0

• Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry, residential contractor register (public CSV export)

  Retrieved Nov 6, 2026 · Register as exported on the retrieval date · 59,419 rows

  License names, DBA names, number, status and dates. Phone, e-mail and street columns were dropped before saving.

  Data address: https://www.dli.mn.gov/license-and-registration-lookup

• U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2020-2024 5-year estimates, tables B25034 and B25035, via Census Reporter

  Retrieved Nov 6, 2026 · ACS 2024 5-year (2020-2024) · 4 cities

  Housing units by year built, median year built

  Data address: https://api.censusreporter.org/1.0/data/show/latest?table_ids=B25034,B25035&geo_ids=16000US2743000,16000US2743252,16000US2751730,16000US2768818

• Firms listed on this site

  Retrieved Nov 6, 2026 · Firm license claims and the name list chosen for this study · 17 firms

  License numbers and the cities each firm names on its own site

Personal data was left out on purpose: individuals' names and street coordinates were dropped from the saved permit file, and contact columns were dropped from the register file. The download names applicants only for the 17 listed firms.

Inclusion rule. Every Minneapolis permit of type Res (residential) issued from 1 January 2023 to 31 December 2025 in the City of Minneapolis CCS Permits file, for remodel, addition, accessory or miscellaneous work with a declared value above zero, leaving out new construction and cancelled, denied, withdrawn or void permits. Duplicate rows for one permit number were merged. Applicants are matched to the DLI register by name only.

• Minneapolis only. Plymouth, Minnetonka and Wayzata publish no open permit data we could find, so this cannot check what a firm did in those cities.
• Matching is by name. A name that finds no DLI record may be a licensed firm under another spelling, a truncated name (the permit field cuts names at 48 characters) or a different trade name. In a sample check of 40 such names, 19 looked like a variant of a licensed name and 20 had no record we could find.
• No permit match does not mean a firm did no work, and no license match does not mean a firm is unlicensed. Some work, such as plumbing and electrical, falls under other licenses this study does not cover.
• Declared project value is what the applicant wrote on the permit. It is not a contract price, and it may exclude work the owner does or that does not need a permit.
• Project type comes from a text rule applied to the permit description. In a sample check, 33 of 40 permits labeled kitchen were kitchen work, and 39 of 40 not labeled kitchen showed none.
• Permits show who applied for a permit, not who did the work or how well. Nothing here rates or ranks any firm.

Data. Download the table as a CSV file. It is a long table of every figure on this page, with one row per measure and a note on where it comes from, including one row per listed firm. A script computes every figure from saved copies of the source files.