City of Tulsa Offices a Property Owner Needs

Ask this before anything else

Is the property inside the Tulsa city limits?

A Tulsa postal address does not answer that. Plenty of property with a Tulsa address sits in unincorporated Tulsa County, or inside a neighbouring town, and every office below changes if it does.

Inside the city: the City of Tulsa. Unincorporated Tulsa County: County Inspections for permits and INCOG for zoning. Another town: that town's own offices. Getting this wrong is the commonest reason people spend a fortnight being bounced.

Permits and inspections

The Permit Center and the wider Development Services department handle building, plumbing, mechanical and electrical permits, plan review and inspections. They are at cityoftulsa.org/permitting, with the department at Development Services.

Permit history by address is the thing sellers actually want, and it is available through the City's self-service portal, linked from the permitting page. If you are selling a house where work was done by a previous owner, that search is the cheapest hour you will spend.

Inspections, including investigating work performed without required permits, sit with Inspection Services.

Our article on unpermitted work and an Oklahoma house sale covers what happens when a buyer's inspector finds something with no permit behind it, and our article on selling a house you ran a business from covers conversions.

Code enforcement

Code Enforcement deals with nuisance, zoning and property maintenance ordinances across residential, non-residential and vacant properties. Cases can be reported and their status checked online at cityoftulsa.org/code.

Vacant property is where sellers get caught. Grass, debris, an open structure and boarding all generate cases, and the charges attach to the property. Our page on a Tulsa code enforcement citation covers what happens after you receive one, and our article on selling a house with a lien covers what a code enforcement lien does at closing.

Looking up an existing case on a property you are selling, before a buyer does, is worth the ten minutes.

Zoning and planning

Inside the city, planning cases go to the City, and case information is published by the Tulsa Planning Office, whose staff and case contact information is at tulsaplanning.org.

Outside the city limits but within Tulsa County, INCOG Planning Services administers zoning and land development for the unincorporated areas, at incog.org. Their public mapping is at the map index.

The City's ordinances are published at Municode.

Our article on grandfathered and legal nonconforming property covers why a written determination of a property's status is worth obtaining before you list.

Utilities, and the bit sellers forget

Activating, transferring and shutting off city utilities is handled through the City, and is one of the tasks listed on the City's I want to page, which is the fastest route into most City services.

Do not close the utilities before closing. A house with the water off cannot have its plumbing tested, an appraiser may not be able to complete, and an empty unheated house in January is an insurance problem. Our article on vacant property insurance covers the second of those.

Transfer rather than terminate where you can, and do it on the closing date rather than the week before.

A caution about this page

Checked in August 2026 and reviewed every six months. City sites are reorganised regularly and departments are renamed.

No telephone numbers here, deliberately. Every office publishes its own current number on the page we have linked, and theirs will be right for longer than ours would.