Property compliance evidence · Updated August 22, 2026
STR permit not found? A no-match is not a verdict.
“Not found” can describe several different failures: the address was formatted differently, the query covered only part of the source, the publisher was unavailable, or the complete selected publisher query genuinely contained no exact match. Those are not interchangeable.
The four questions to answer first
- Which authority and publisher? State, county, and city records can describe different licenses or permits.
- Was the query complete? A capped page or sample cannot support a complete-source negative finding.
- Did the source actually work? An outage, schema change, or collapsed feed is a source-health event—not evidence about the property.
- How was the address matched? Unit numbers, abbreviations, spelling, and jurisdiction suffixes can prevent literal equality.
The decision vocabulary
EVIDENCE_FOUND: the normalized address exactly matched evidence in the selected published source.NO_PUBLISHED_MATCH: the complete selected publisher query returned no exact match.REVIEW_REQUIRED: the input was invalid or a similar candidate needs human review.SCOPE_INCOMPLETE: the available input was bounded, so a complete negative finding is not supported.
What an inspectable answer contains
A useful decision carries the submitted address, match basis, official source URL, observation time, scope completeness, selected record fingerprints, and a hash binding the visible decision fields. If the source cannot be evaluated completely, the system should fail instead of returning a convenient negative result.
Run the check
CivicDataForge address evidence mode checks 1-25 addresses against one supported complete publisher query. Use the Actor for machine self-service, or choose the $99 analyst-reviewed audit when you need review candidates resolved and a delivered evidence bundle.
Copy the HTTP request · Compare self-service and reviewed delivery · See supported jurisdictions
Operating principle
The record, the scope, and the retrieval event belong together. Keep them together and “not found” becomes a precise, reviewable state. Separate them and it becomes a black-box label no one should trust.