Building Permits Scraper — Construction Leads

Get fresh building permit data from 15 major US cities and counties — straight from verified government open-data APIs. Building Permits Scraper turns public permit records into construction leads for roofing, solar, HVAC, electrical, plumbing, and remodeling contractors, plus clean structured data for analysts, PropTech builders, and real-estate investors.

No proxies, no brittle HTML scraping, no fake coverage claims. Every city in this Actor is a government-published API that was individually verified, field-mapped, and documented below — so runs don't silently break the way HTML scrapers do.

What does Building Permits Scraper do?

It pulls recently issued building permits — permit number, type, status, issue date, address, coordinates, valuation, contractor, and owner — filtered by city, date range, trade, and minimum project value. Run it on demand, on a schedule, or through the Apify API, and export to JSON, CSV, or Excel, or push results to a webhook, Google Sheets, or your CRM via Apify integrations.

Why use building permit data for contractor leads?

A building permit is a homeowner or business publicly announcing a funded project. Permit-based prospecting is how lead services charging $96–600/month work under the hood:

• Roofers / solar installers: a reroof or PV permit identifies the exact address and (in most cities) the project value, the day it's approved.
• HVAC / electrical / plumbing: mechanical and service-upgrade permits flag active job sites that need follow-on trades.
• Remodelers / GCs: addition and alteration permits show who is investing in their property.
• Suppliers and lenders: permit valuations are a direct demand signal by ZIP code.

One closed job pays for years of runs at $0.03 per permit.

Covered cities and what each one publishes

Coverage is honest and verified — these 15 sources, not "1,000+ cities". Each city's government API publishes different fields:

City	Valuation	Contractor name	Contractor phone	Owner name
Chicago, IL	✅	✅	—	✅
New York City, NY	✅	✅	—	✅
Austin, TX	✅	✅	✅	✅ (applicant)
San Francisco, CA	✅	—	—	—
Seattle, WA	✅	✅	—	—
Los Angeles, CA	✅	—	—	—
New Orleans, LA	✅	✅	—	✅
Maricopa County, AZ	—	—	—	—
Miami-Dade County, FL	✅	✅	✅	✅
Miami (city), FL	✅	✅	—	—
Philadelphia, PA	—	✅	—	✅
Mesa, AZ	✅	—	—	—
Nashville, TN	✅	✅	—	—
Fort Worth, TX	✅	—	—	✅
San Antonio, TX	rare	✅ (primary contact)	—	—

All cities always include: permit number, permit type, status, issue date, address, coordinates (where published), and work description. Mesa note: the city publishes application (opened) dates rather than issue dates, with a status column showing where each permit stands.

How to get fresh roofing, solar, or HVAC leads every morning

1. Set Cities to your service area and Trade filter to your trade (e.g. Roofing).
2. Turn on Only new results — the Actor remembers the newest permit per city and returns only newer ones next time.
3. Schedule the Actor daily in the Apify Console.
4. Add an integration (webhook, email, Google Sheets, Slack) so each morning's new permits land where you work.

That's a self-updating lead feed for a few cents a day.

Input

Field	Type	Default	Notes
cities	array	chicago, austin, miami-dade	Any of the 15 covered cities
dateFrom / dateTo	string	last 7 days	Issue-date window, YYYY-MM-DD
tradeFilter	enum	any	roofing / solar / hvac / electrical / plumbing / remodel
permitTypes	array	[]	Extra keywords matched against type + description
minValuation	integer	0	Drops permits below this value (and cities that don't publish valuations)
onlyNewResults	boolean	false	Watermark mode for scheduled runs
maxItems	integer	0	Hard cap on results (cost control)
socrataAppToken	string	—	Optional free token raises rate limits

{
    "cities": ["miami-dade", "austin"],
    "tradeFilter": "roofing",
    "onlyNewResults": true
}

Output

One JSON object per permit. Download as JSON, CSV, Excel, or HTML, or read via API.

{
    "city": "miami-dade",
    "permit_number": "2026050634",
    "permit_type": "BLDG ENT REPLACEMENT",
    "status": null,
    "issue_date": "2026-06-08T00:00:00",
    "address": "12035 SW 18 ST MIAMI FL",
    "latitude": 25.7479,
    "longitude": -80.3893,
    "valuation": 600,
    "contractor_name": "D Y D CONSTRUCTION CORP",
    "contractor_phone": "(305)970-3553",
    "owner_name": "GISELA HERNANDEZ",
    "description": "DOOR",
    "source_url": "https://gis-mdc.opendata.arcgis.com/"
}

How much does building permit data cost?

$0.03 per permit. A targeted daily run (one city, one trade) typically returns 5–50 permits — pennies per day for leads that lead services resell at $96–149/month. Use maxItems to cap any run's spend.

Tips

• Trade filter + minValuation is the highest-signal combo: roofing + minValuation: 10000 returns funded reroofs, not repairs.
• Austin and Miami-Dade publish contractor phone numbers — useful for B2B outreach (suppliers, subs) as well as homeowner-side leads.
• Los Angeles has a native solar flag, so tradeFilter: "solar" is exact there, not keyword-based.
• Miami (city) permits also appear in Miami-Dade county data; the Actor dedupes automatically when both are selected.

FAQ

Is this legal? Yes. The Actor reads public records from official government open-data APIs published for exactly this purpose. No scraping of private sites, no PII beyond the public record.

Why only 15 cities? Because these are verified working. Competing tools claim huge coverage and fail at run time; this Actor's promise is that every listed city returns real data. More cities are added as their open-data feeds are verified — request one in the Issues tab.

A city returned nothing? Check the date window (some cities publish with a 1–3 day lag), and note that minValuation drops cities that don't publish valuations (Maricopa, Philadelphia).

Found a problem? Open an issue in the Issues tab — reliability reports are acted on quickly.

More docs and use cases: apify.alecrodriguez.net/building-permits

STATUS: VERIFIED — built green (tsc+30 tests+lint), local smoke all 11 cities, cloud-verified 3x (Socrata run d6oBV2cJaTddQPeDA, ArcGIS run Seg1eUxV7dhDtXhr9, Carto run #3) on 2026-06-10.