US Building Permits Scraper | Construction & Real Estate Leads

US Open Data Scraper — Socrata Permits & Public Records

Extract building permits and other public records from any open-data portal powered by Socrata. Point the actor at a city domain and dataset ID, and it returns clean, deduplicated rows with permit numbers, dates, addresses, contractor details, valuations and coordinates. Built for roofing, solar and HVAC contractors, building-material suppliers, real-estate investors and construction-market researchers.

How It Works

The actor downloads the dataset's public CSV export from https://{domain}/api/views/{datasetId}/rows.csv?accessType=DOWNLOAD, reads it as a stream, applies your filters and saves mapped records. There is no login, no API key and no browser.

Socrata portals publish thousands of different schemas, so the actor maps common permit columns through alias lists. For example, permit_number can come from job_filing_number, permit_number, permit_no, permitid, permit_id or filing_number. The full original row is always preserved in raw, so no source column is lost when a dataset uses an unfamiliar name.

What You Can Scrape

• Building and construction permits — NYC DOB, Chicago, San Francisco, Austin, Seattle, Los Angeles and hundreds of other Socrata portals.
• Contractor and owner leads — applicant business name, licence number, owner name and job address, ready for CRM enrichment.
• Job valuations — filter by estimated cost to find larger projects.
• Geocoded records — latitude and longitude when the source dataset publishes them.
• Any tabular Socrata dataset — the same mapping works for business licences, inspections, code violations and other public records with permit-like columns.

Input

Field	Type	Required	Default	Notes
domain	string	Yes	—	Socrata host, for example data.cityofnewyork.us or data.sfgov.org. Do not include https://.
datasetId	string	Yes	—	Four-by-four dataset identifier from the portal URL, for example ipu4-2q9a.
searchQuery	string	No	—	Case-insensitive full-text search across every text column, applied locally while streaming.
dateField	string	No	—	Column to filter by date, for example issued_date.
dateFrom	string	No	—	Keep rows on or after this date (YYYY-MM-DD). Requires dateField.
dateTo	string	No	—	Keep rows on or before this date (YYYY-MM-DD). Requires dateField.
whereClause	string	No	—	Simple filter such as borough='MANHATTAN' or estimated_job_costs > 50000. Supports =, !=, >, >=, <, <= and AND.
select	string	No	—	Comma-separated source columns to keep inside raw. It does not remove the 14 mapped fields.
limit	integer	No	1000	Maximum records to return (1–50,000).
offset	integer	No	0	Records to skip in the filtered stream.
proxyConfiguration	object	No	Apify Proxy	Optional. Useful for very large downloads or rate-limited portals.

Example input

{
  "domain": "data.cityofnewyork.us",
  "datasetId": "ipu4-2q9a",
  "dateField": "issued_date",
  "dateFrom": "2025-01-01",
  "whereClause": "borough='BROOKLYN' AND estimated_job_costs > 50000",
  "limit": 500
}

Output

One dataset item per filtered source row. The actor returns 14 mapped fields plus raw:

Field	Source examples	Description
permit_number	job_filing_number, permit_number	Permit or filing identifier
permit_type	work_type, permit_type	Work or permit category
status	permit_status, status	Current permit status
issue_date	issued_date, issuance_date	Issue or approval date
address	address, site_address	Site address
work_description	job_description, description	Scope of work
valuation	estimated_job_costs, job_cost	Declared job value
contractor_name	applicant_business_name, contractor_name	Contractor or applicant business
contractor_license	applicant_license, license_number	Contractor licence
owner_name	owner_name, owner_business_name	Property owner
latitude	latitude, lat, gis_latitude	Latitude when published
longitude	longitude, lon, lng	Longitude when published
city	city, borough, municipality	City or borough
parcel_id	bbl, parcel_id, lot	Parcel, block/lot or lot identifier
raw	all columns	Original CSV row, optionally narrowed with select

Missing or unmapped values are returned as null; the actor does not invent data.

Data Behaviour and Limits

• One dataset per run. Use separate runs for different cities or datasets.
• Filters run locally. searchQuery, dateFrom, dateTo and whereClause are evaluated while the CSV is streamed; they are not pushed down as SoQL. Large portals can therefore download a large file even when limit is small.
• Scan cap. The actor reads at most 200,000 rows in one run to protect memory. limit can be up to 50,000.
• Date sorting. When dateField is set, the actor needs the filtered list before slicing, so expect a longer scan on very large datasets.
• Column aliases are finite. Most permit portals match the built-in aliases. If a dataset uses a completely different schema, mapped fields can be null while raw still contains the values.
• Coordinates are source-dependent. The actor does not geocode addresses.
• CSV export must be public. Private or disabled exports return an HTTP error.

Pricing

Pay-per-result with no subscription:

Event	Price	What triggers it
Actor start	$0.00005	Once per run
Result row	$0.002	Each saved dataset item

That is $2 per 1,000 rows. Free Apify accounts can preview 10 rows; paid runs are bounded by limit (default 1,000, maximum 50,000).

FAQ

How do I find the Socrata domain and dataset ID?

Open the dataset in your browser. The domain is the host, such as data.cityofnewyork.us. The dataset ID is the four-by-four code in the path, such as ipu4-2q9a in /d/ipu4-2q9a.

Do I need a Socrata API token?

No. The actor uses the public CSV export, which does not require an app token. A proxy can help if the portal rate-limits repeated large downloads.

Does this work outside the US?

Technically it works with any public Socrata portal, but the field aliases and documentation are optimised for US municipal permit data.

Can I get every original column?

Yes. raw contains the full source row. Use select if you want to keep only specific columns inside raw.

SEO Keywords

socrata scraper, open data scraper, us building permits, building permit data, construction leads, contractor leads, nyc dob permits, socrata api alternative, permit dataset, public records scraper, construction market research, solar leads, roofing leads, hvac leads, socrata csv export

Legal & Compliance Disclaimer

This actor accesses publicly available open-data exports. You are responsible for complying with the source portal's terms, local laws and any restrictions on using permit or contractor data for marketing. Verify records before making business or legal decisions.