US Building Permits with Job Types & Solar kW

Recent building permits from the official open-data portals of 11 US cities and counties (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Seattle, Austin, Washington DC, Minneapolis, Sacramento County, Miami-Dade County), in one table, with every permit tagged by job type and the numbers you filter on:

• Job types: solar PV, battery storage, EV charger, electrical service/panel, roof, HVAC/heat pump, water heater, plumbing, pool/spa, ADU, new single-family, new multifamily, new commercial, addition, remodel, kitchen/bath, windows/doors, foundation/structural, fence/deck/patio, demolition, fire alarm/sprinkler, sign.
• Numbers: solar system size (kW), battery capacity (kWh), number of EV chargers, new housing units, and whether the property is residential.
• Area context: median household income and median home value of the permit's ZIP code (US Census), and the state's average residential electricity price (US EIA).
• Contractor license status: in New York City, San Francisco, Sacramento County, Seattle and Austin, the contractor on the permit is matched to the state or city license board's own list: license number, classes, status (active, expired, suspended...), expiry, and bond and workers' compensation where the board publishes them.

Permit descriptions are free text written differently in every city ("installing 20 solar pv modules … total no. of rating 8.8 kw … 3 energy storage unit … 9.02 kwh each", "Installation of a roof-mounted … PV system, not exceeding 38.4kW"). This Actor reads them for you: keyword rules always run, and an optional AI step (Claude Haiku) fixes the job types and reads the numbers, adding up battery units (3 × 9.02 kWh = 27.06 kWh) and ignoring permit-class limits such as "not exceeding 38.4kW" that are not the system size.

Use cases

• Market research: how many solar, battery, heat-pump or ADU permits were issued this week, by city and ZIP code.
• Supplier and distributor sales: new construction and large remodels with their job value and contractor.
• Contractor intelligence: which contractors pull which kinds of permits, and whether their license is active, suspended or about to lapse.
• Prioritising leads: sort solar, battery or remodel permits by the ZIP code's income and home value, or compare states by electricity price.
• Daily lead feed: schedule it with Only new, your ZIP codes and job types (for example battery storage and EV chargers in five ZIP codes), and get each new permit once.

Input

Field	What it does
Cities	One or more of the 11 cities and counties below.
Days back / From / To	Issue-date window. Default: the last 7 days.
Job types	Only permits covering at least one of these types. Empty = all.
Property type	Any, residential only, or commercial only.
Minimum job value	Only permits stating at least this value.
ZIP codes	Only permits in these ZIP codes (filtered in the city's own data API).
Keywords	Only permits whose type or description contains one of these words, for work outside the job types (e.g. skylight, elevator).
Refine tags with AI	On by default; included in the price.
Add contractor license status	On by default; included in the price. See below for the cities it covers.
Max permits	Caps the number of permits, and so the cost of a run.
Only new since my last run	Remembers what it delivered (in a key-value store in your account) and returns only permits it has not sent before. Schedule the Actor daily to get each new permit once. Monitor name keeps separate memories for different filter sets.

Output

One item per permit:

{
  "id": "san-francisco:S20260727695",
  "city": "San Francisco",
  "state": "CA",
  "permitNumber": "S20260727695",
  "issuedDate": "2026-10-13",
  "address": "160 Upland Dr",
  "zipCode": "94127",
  "latitude": 37.728993193,
  "longitude": -122.462769069,
  "permitType": null,
  "workClass": null,
  "description": "solar permit: installing 20 solar pv modules, 440 watts per module, total no. of rating 8.8 kw. mounted: roof, ballasted: n, including 3 energy storage unit, of 240 vac, with 9.02 kwh each in capacity, ...",
  "valuationUsd": 50082,
  "contractor": null,
  "status": "issued",
  "jobTypes": ["solar", "battery"],
  "solarKw": 8.8,
  "batteryKwh": 27.06,
  "evChargers": null,
  "unitsAdded": null,
  "residential": null,
  "zipMedianHouseholdIncomeUsd": 214167,
  "zipMedianHomeValueUsd": 1847400,
  "stateResidentialElectricityCentsPerKwh": 33.25,
  "classifiedBy": "ai",
  "sourceDataset": "DBI Building Permits",
  "sourceUrl": "https://data.sf.gov/d/i98e-djp9"
}

classifiedBy is "ai" when the AI step reviewed the permit and "rules" when only keyword rules did (AI turned off, or unavailable for that batch). A number is null when the permit does not state it; nothing is guessed.

Area context comes from public US government statistics bundled with the Actor, not from the permit:

• zipMedianHouseholdIncomeUsd, zipMedianHomeValueUsd: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2020–2024 5-year estimates (tables B19013 and B25077), by ZIP Code Tabulation Area, which matches the ZIP code for almost all street addresses. The Census caps the top values: 250001 means $250,000 or more, and 2000001 means $2,000,000 or more. null when the city publishes no ZIP code (Chicago, Minneapolis, Miami-Dade) or the Census has no estimate for that ZIP code.
• stateResidentialElectricityCentsPerKwh: US Energy Information Administration, Electric Power Monthly, table 5.6.B, average residential price from January to July 2026, in cents per kWh.

Contractor license status

contractorLicense is the contractor's license as the license board lists it, or null when the city publishes no contractor, the board has no list we can use, or no single license fits the name:

City	License board	How the contractor is matched
New York	NYC Department of Buildings (general contractors, master plumbers, fire suppression, riggers, sign hangers, oil burner installers)	License type and number on the permit
San Francisco	California Contractors State License Board (CSLB)	CSLB number from the city's permit contacts list
Sacramento County	CSLB	Business name
Seattle	Washington State Department of Labor & Industries	Business name
Austin	Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation	Business name; Texas licenses only electrical and air-conditioning contractors (no state general-contractor license)

A permit with a matched license (San Francisco):

{
  "contractor": "Redlog Flooring Services Corp",
  "contractorLicense": {
    "board": "California Contractors State License Board (CSLB)",
    "licenseNumber": "1033872",
    "licenseType": null,
    "classifications": ["B", "C15", "C33", "C54"],
    "status": "active",
    "statusDetail": null,
    "issuedDate": "2017-12-11",
    "expirationDate": "2027-12-31",
    "pendingSuspensionDate": null,
    "workersComp": "insured",
    "workersCompExpires": "2027-09-08",
    "bondAmountUsd": 25000,
    "bondImpaired": null,
    "liabilityInsuranceExpires": null,
    "disciplinaryBond": false,
    "soleProprietor": false,
    "matchedBy": "license number",
    "boardDataDate": "2026-10-26",
    "lookupUrl": "https://www.cslb.ca.gov/OnlineServices/CheckLicenseII/CheckLicense.aspx"
  }
}

• status is one of active, expired, suspended, revoked, inactive, or not listed (San Francisco only: the permit's CSLB number is not among the board's current or renewable licenses, which means it expired more than five years ago, was cancelled or revoked, or was mistyped on the permit). statusDetail gives the reason in plain words where the board publishes one (for example "workers' compensation insurance" for a CSLB suspension).
• Fields a board does not publish are null: California has classes, workers' compensation, bonds and pending suspensions; Washington has specialties, bonds and liability insurance; New York City has the license type and status only; Texas has the license type and expiry.
• matchedBy says how the license was found. License numbers match exactly. Business names are compared after removing punctuation, "Inc", "LLC" and common abbreviations, and only when one company fits; in our tests about 1 to 2 name matches in 100 pointed to the wrong company, so check lookupUrl before relying on a single license.
• boardDataDate is the date the board gives for its list: the date of the CSLB download file, or when the open-data dataset was last updated (Washington, New York City, Texas). We check each list once a day, but boards update on their own schedule, so the date can be several days old. A license can change after that date.

No personal names. Owner and applicant names published by some cities are not included. Contractor business names are, except for sole owners whose license the board lists under the owner's own name (soleProprietor: true): their contractor is null, and the license fields remain.

Data sources and freshness

City	Source (official open data)	Updated by the city	ZIP codes
New York, NY	NYC Department of Buildings, DOB NOW: Build – Approved Permits	Daily	Yes
Los Angeles, CA	LA Department of Building and Safety, Building and Electrical Permits Issued from 2020 to Present	Weekly	Yes
Chicago, IL	City of Chicago, Building Permits	Daily	No
Boston, MA	City of Boston, Approved Building Permits (last 12 months)	Daily, about 1 day behind; our copy currently ends on November 2, 2026 (see Limits)	Yes
San Francisco, CA	Department of Building Inspection, Building Permits	Daily	Yes
Seattle, WA	Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections, Building, Electrical and Trade Permits	Daily (building permits run a few days behind)	Yes
Austin, TX	City of Austin, Issued Construction Permits	Daily	Yes
Washington, DC	DC Department of Buildings, Building Permits (one dataset per year)	About a week behind	Yes
Minneapolis, MN	City of Minneapolis, CCS Permits	Daily	No
Sacramento County, CA	Sacramento County, Permits	Daily	Yes
Miami-Dade County, FL	Miami-Dade County, Building Permits (2 previous years to present)	Daily, about 2 days behind	No

Sources without ZIP codes are skipped when you filter by ZIP code. Washington DC publishes no job value.

Data is read live from each city's public data service every time you run the Actor, politely (requests are spaced as each site's robots.txt asks, and the Actor identifies itself). Boston publishes its permits only as one large file, so that file is read once a day instead and its last 12 months are kept. The contractor license lists are read once a day the same way: the CSLB statewide list of licensed contractors, and the open-data license datasets of Washington L&I (data.wa.gov), the NYC Department of Buildings (NYC Open Data) and Texas TDLR (data.texas.gov); only the license fields above and business names (for matching) are kept. Each item links to its source dataset. Source data: City of New York, City of Los Angeles, City of Chicago, City of Boston, City and County of San Francisco, City of Seattle, City of Austin (data.austintexas.gov), District of Columbia, City of Minneapolis, County of Sacramento, Miami-Dade County. Area context: US Census Bureau and US Energy Information Administration.

Required notice for Chicago data: "This site provides applications using data that has been modified for use from its original source, www.cityofchicago.org, the official website of the City of Chicago. The City of Chicago makes no claims as to the content, accuracy, timeliness, or completeness of any of the data provided at this site. The data provided at this site is subject to change at any time. It is understood that the data provided at this site is being used at one's own risk."

Pricing

One price per permit delivered, AI and contractor license status included, plus Apify's tiny run-start fee. Use Max permits, or a maximum charge per run, to cap the cost of a run: the Actor stops at the cap and the AI never reviews more permits than you pay for. Turning the AI step off does not change the price; it only leaves you with keyword-rule tags.

Permitted use

• Follow each city's open-data terms. Austin's terms ask that its data not be used to contact the individuals it represents, so use Austin permits for analysis, not outreach.
• Do not use the data for credit, employment, tenant screening or insurance decisions. This Actor is not a consumer reporting agency, and the license fields are not a background check: confirm a license with the board (lookupUrl) before relying on it.
• If you contact anyone listed in permits, you are responsible for complying with telemarketing, do-not-call and anti-spam laws.

Limits

• 11 cities and counties for now. Permits are only as complete and timely as each city's publication.
• Boston: since November 4, 2026 the City's data portal shows a browser check to automated requests, so we have paused reading it. Boston results currently end with permits issued on November 2, 2026. We are asking the City whether automated downloads are allowed, and will resume Boston or remove it depending on the answer.
• New York publishes one row per work type of a job, so one construction job can appear as several permits.
• Contractor licenses cover the five cities above. Los Angeles, Boston and Washington DC publish no contractor business name with their permits, and Minneapolis only the applicant's name; Illinois has no state general-contractor license; Florida's license files are not available to us.