US Building Permits (10 cities, one schema)

Recently issued building permits from ten US open-data portals, returned in a single normalized table. Pick the cities, a date range and optional keywords such as solar, roof, demolition or pool, and get permit number, type, work description, status, address with coordinates, applied/issued/expiry dates, estimated project cost and the contractor company where the city publishes it.

Sources (all official open-data portals, no login, no browser):

Key	Source	Updated
nyc	NYC DOB NOW: Build – Approved Permits	daily
chicago	City of Chicago Building Permits	daily
san-francisco	San Francisco Building Permits	daily
los-angeles	LADBS Building Permits	daily
austin	City of Austin Issued Construction Permits	daily
seattle	Seattle Building Permits	daily
new-orleans	City of New Orleans Building Permits	daily
montgomery-county-md	Montgomery County MD Residential and Commercial Permits	daily
cincinnati	City of Cincinnati Building Permits	daily
baton-rouge	East Baton Rouge Parish Building Permits	daily

Each city publishes different columns; this Actor maps them onto the same fields so you can build one pipeline for all of them. Need another city? Open an issue with a link to its open-data permit dataset.

What you get

{
  "source": "austin",
  "sourceName": "City of Austin Issued Construction Permits",
  "state": "TX",
  "city": "AUSTIN",
  "permitNumber": "2026-133771 PP",
  "permitType": "Plumbing Permit",
  "permitSubtype": "C-1000 Commercial Remodel / Remodel",
  "description": "Interior renovation of a two-story multi-family building...",
  "status": "Active",
  "address": "1105 CLAYTON LN UNIT 207",
  "zip": "78723",
  "latitude": 30.3043,
  "longitude": -97.7013,
  "appliedDate": "2026-09-29T00:00:00",
  "issuedDate": "2026-10-22T00:00:00",
  "expiresDate": "2027-04-20T00:00:00",
  "estimatedCost": 185000,
  "contractorCompany": "ABC Plumbing LLC",
  "recordUrl": "https://abc.austintexas.gov/web/permit/public-search-other?t_detail=1&t_selected_folderrsn=...",
  "datasetUrl": "https://data.austintexas.gov/d/3syk-w9eu",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-10-22T19:04:11+00:00"
}

Columns a city does not publish are null. Names of individuals (owners, applicants, contacts) are never included in the normalized fields; contractorCompany is filled only from columns that hold a business name.

Input

Field	Type	Notes
cities	array	Source keys from the table above. Empty = all.
issuedAfter	YYYY-MM-DD	Default: 7 days ago.
issuedBefore	YYYY-MM-DD	Exclusive upper bound.
keywords	array	Work description contains any keyword (case-insensitive).
minEstimatedCost	integer	Skip small jobs. Ignored by sources without a cost column.
includeRawRecord	boolean	Attach the original row under raw.
maxPermitsPerCity / maxPermits	integer	Caps (0 = unlimited).
socrataAppToken	string	Optional; only needed for very large pulls.

Example – solar and roofing leads from the last 30 days, three cities:

{
  "cities": ["chicago", "austin", "seattle"],
  "issuedAfter": "2026-09-22",
  "keywords": ["solar", "roof", "reroof"],
  "minEstimatedCost": 5000
}

Pricing

Pay per event: $0.002 per permit saved ($2 per 1,000), plus Apify's standard Actor start fee. Filters are applied server-side at the portal, so you are not charged for permits you filtered out. A daily run over all ten cities with a 1-day window is typically 1,000–3,000 permits, i.e. $2–6; narrow it with keywords or minEstimatedCost to pay cents.

Use cases

• Contractor and supplier lead generation: new roofs, HVAC, solar, pools, demolitions, with the address and project value.
• Real-estate and construction analytics: permit volume and value by city, ZIP or type over time.
• Property research: what work was permitted at an address.
• Proptech and insurance data pipelines: a single schema instead of ten.

How it works

Each source is a Socrata SODA endpoint (https://<portal>/resource/<id>.json). The Actor sends one SoQL query per page ($where on the issued-date column, keyword like filters, $order newest first, 1,000 rows per page) with polite rate limiting and retries, then maps the rows to the shared schema. Open-data portals occasionally lag a day or two behind the city's permit system.

FAQ

Why is status or estimatedCost missing for a city? That portal does not publish the column (for example Baton Rouge has no status field).

Can I get owner or applicant names? No. The normalized output excludes personal names by design; use includeRawRecord only if you need other city-specific columns and have a lawful basis for processing whatever the city publishes.

Dates look like 2026-10-22T00:00:00 without a timezone. They are local civil dates as published by each city.