DOB Permit Issuance Data — NYC Open Data

The Department of Buildings (DOB) issues permits for construction and demolition activities in the City of New York. The construction industry must submit an application to DOB with details of the construction job they would like to complete. The primary types of application, aka job type, are: New Building, Demolition, and Alterations Type 1, 2, and 3. This Actor returns it as one flat JSON row per record, with 60 declared fields — typed, named and documented in the dataset schema, so a spreadsheet or an agent can use it without guessing.

What you get

Field	Type	Meaning
superintendent_first___last_name	string	Superintendent First & Last Name
block	number	Block
gis_census_tract	number	CENSUS_TRACT
non_profit	string	Non-Profit
permittee_s_last_name	string	Permittee's Last Name
owner_s_business_name	string	Owner's Business Name
site_safety_mgr_business_name	string	Site Safety Mgr Business Name
permit_sequence__	number	Permit Sequence #
permit_type	string	Permit Type
bldg_type	number	Bldg Type
job_type	string	Job Type
site_safety_mgr_s_last_name	string	Site Safety Mgr's Last Name
hic_license	string	HIC License
owner_s_house__	string	Owner's House #
job_doc___	number	Job doc. #
expiration_date	string	Expiration Date
owner_s_zip_code	number	Owner’s House Zip Code
permittee_s_phone__	number	Permittee's Phone #
permit_status	string	Permit Status
house__	number	House #

The output schema lists all 60 fields; the table above is the first twenty.

Every row also carries sourceRowId, sourceUpdatedAt and scrapedAt, so a pipeline can tell one record from another and know exactly when it was read.

{
  "superintendent_first___last_name": "JORGE LOPEZ",
  "block": 6861,
  "gis_census_tract": 300,
  "non_profit": "N",
  "permittee_s_last_name": "SHEN",
  "owner_s_business_name": "N/A",
  "site_safety_mgr_business_name": "text",
  "permit_sequence__": 1
}

Inputs

Field	What it does
Filter (SoQL)	Applied at the source, so a narrow question fetches a narrow page instead of downloading everything.
Order	Empty keeps the publisher's own order; set a column to sort, for example amount DESC.
Maximum rows	Hard cap. The source is paged 1,000 rows at a time.
Time budget	Stops cleanly and reports how far it got.
Pause between pages	Keeps the run inside the publisher's rate limits.

Limitations

• This is one dataset, from one publisher. It is the DOB Permit Issuance dataset as Department of Buildings (DOB) publishes it — not a national or cross-city equivalent, and not a merge with other sources.
• The publisher can change it. Columns are added, renamed and retired upstream; the field list here is the schema the Actor was generated from. A renamed column arrives as a new field only after the Actor is updated.
• Fields are typed from live records. A column that was empty in the sample is declared as text; a value that does not fit the declared type comes back null rather than being coerced into a wrong number.
• Records are what the publisher publishes. No geocoding, no de-duplication across datasets, no enrichment.
• Freshness is the publisher's. The data was last changed upstream on 2026-10-24. Where the publisher supplies a row timestamp it appears as sourceUpdatedAt; scrapedAt records when this Actor read the row.

Why this is different

• DOB Permit Issuance Data — NYC Open Data declares all 60 of its output fields in the dataset schema, each with a type, a description and an example.
• The Actor reads the DOB Permit Issuance dataset directly from NYC Open Data; no key, login or account is needed.
• Filters run at the source with SoQL, so a narrow request returns a narrow page rather than a full download.
• Every row is flat JSON: nested location objects become latitude and longitude, and no field holds a nested object.
• The row id is stable, so the same request de-duplicates instead of returning the same record twice.

FAQ

Do I need an API key? No. NYC Open Data publishes this dataset openly.

How fresh is it? The Actor reads the dataset live. scrapedAt records when each row was read, and sourceUpdatedAt carries the publisher's own row timestamp where it supplies one.

Can I filter by date or status? Yes — use the Filter field with SoQL, for example status = 'Active'.

What happens if my filter is wrong? The run stops with the portal's own message and the hint to check SoQL, rather than returning an empty dataset that looks like "no data".

Is this the whole dataset? Up to your row cap, paged 1,000 at a time. Raise the cap to read more.

What is sourceRowId? The publisher's own row id when it supplies one, otherwise a stable hash of the row. Either way it is what makes de-duplication and joins possible.

Pricing

Pay per result: $0.0005 per row. Each stored dataset row is billed, including any diagnostic row returned instead of results.

An Actor-start event is also charged at $0.0001 per GB of allocated memory (minimum one event), even if no rows are returned. At 1 GB or less, 1,000 result rows cost $0.5001 before any applicable Store discount.

Data source

NYC Open Data — DOB Permit Issuance, published by Department of Buildings (DOB). Public data under the portal's open-data terms.