Building Permit Monitor — new permits daily across 30 US cities

Get a daily feed of only the NEW building permits (and status changes) issued across NYC, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, Denver, Boston, Philadelphia, Nashville, Washington DC, Detroit, Miami and 18 more cities, filtered by permit type, job value, description keywords and contractor. The monitor remembers every permit it has already reported, so a scheduled run emits just the delta, posts a summary to your webhook, and costs you only for what is actually new. One actor instead of 30 single-city scrapers.

Built for contractors, building-material suppliers, and solar / roofing / HVAC / plumbing lead-gen teams who need to know today which jobs were just permitted, where, for how much, and by whom.

Coverage

All sources are official open-data feeds (Socrata, ArcGIS FeatureServer, CKAN, Carto). Every one was verified live on 2026-09-28. "Typical lag" is how far behind the calendar the newest published permit usually is — set lookbackDays above the lag for slow cities.

Key	City	Source	Issue-date field	Typical lag	Contractor	Value
nyc	New York City, NY	DOB NOW: Build Approved Permits (Socrata rbx6-tga4)	issued_date	daily	yes + license	yes
los-angeles	Los Angeles, CA	LADBS Permits (Socrata pi9x-tg5x)	issue_date	daily	no	yes
chicago	Chicago, IL	Building Permits (Socrata ydr8-5enu)	issue_date	daily	yes	yes
san-francisco	San Francisco, CA	DBI Building Permits (Socrata i98e-djp9)	issued_date	daily	no	yes
seattle	Seattle, WA	SDCI Building Permits (Socrata 76t5-zqzr)	issueddate	daily	no	yes
austin	Austin, TX	Issued Construction Permits (Socrata quv8-5ckq)	issue_date	2–4 weeks	no	yes
denver	Denver, CO	Residential + Commercial Construction Permits (ArcGIS)	DATE_ISSUED	daily	yes	yes
boston	Boston, MA	Approved Building Permits (CKAN)	issued_date	daily	applicant	yes
philadelphia	Philadelphia, PA	L&I Permits (Carto permits)	permitissuedate	daily	yes	no
nashville	Nashville, TN	Building Permits Issued (ArcGIS)	Date_Issued	daily	contact	yes
washington-dc	Washington, DC	Building Permits in Last 30 Days (ArcGIS)	ISSUE_DATE	daily, 30-day window	applicant	no
detroit	Detroit, MI	BSEED Building Permits (ArcGIS)	issued_date	daily	no	yes
fort-worth	Fort Worth, TX	Development Permits, status = Issued (ArcGIS)	Status_Date	daily	no	yes
charlotte	Charlotte / Mecklenburg County, NC	Building Permits (ArcGIS)	issuedate	daily	no	yes
raleigh	Raleigh, NC	Building Permits (ArcGIS)	issueddate	daily	yes + license	yes
columbus	Columbus, OH	Building Permits (ArcGIS)	ISSUED_DT	daily	applicant business	yes
cleveland	Cleveland, OH	Building Permits (ArcGIS)	ISSUE_DATE	daily	yes + license	yes
minneapolis	Minneapolis, MN	CCS Permits (ArcGIS)	issueDate	daily	applicant	yes
miami	Miami, FL	Building Permits Since 2014 (ArcGIS)	IssuedDate	daily	yes	yes
san-antonio	San Antonio, TX	Building Permits (CKAN)	DATE ISSUED	daily	no	yes
pittsburgh	Pittsburgh, PA	PLI Permits (WPRDC CKAN)	issue_date	weekly	yes	yes
cincinnati	Cincinnati, OH	Building Permits (Socrata uhjb-xac9)	issueddate	daily	yes	yes
mesa	Mesa, AZ	Building Permits (Socrata dzpk-hxfb)	issued_date	daily	yes + license	yes
tucson	Tucson, AZ	Permits (ArcGIS)	ISSUEDATE	daily	no	yes
tacoma	Tacoma, WA	Accela Permits (ArcGIS)	issued_date	daily	no	yes
tempe	Tempe, AZ	Building Permits (ArcGIS)	IssuedDateDtm	daily	yes + license	yes
scottsdale	Scottsdale, AZ	Permits (ArcGIS)	IssueDate	daily	builder	yes
memphis	Memphis, TN	DPD Building Permits (ArcGIS)	Issued_Date	2–4 weeks	no	yes
montgomery-county-md	Montgomery County, MD	Residential Building Permits (Socrata m88u-pqki)	issueddate	daily	no	yes
portland	Portland, OR	Building Permits (PortlandMaps ArcGIS)	ISSUEDATE	4–8 weeks	no	yes
dallas	Dallas, TX	Permits 2008–2024 (ArcGIS)	ISSUE_DATE	stale — feed stopped Nov 2024	no	yes

cities: ["all"] runs every live city. dallas is excluded from all and from the defaults; request it explicitly only if you want historical data. Houston and Phoenix publish no machine-readable permit feed and are not covered (Mesa, Tempe and Scottsdale cover much of the Phoenix metro).

How it works

1. For each selected city, queries the official feed for permits issued in the last lookbackDays (server-side date filter, newest first, up to 5,000 per city per run).
2. Normalises every row into the same 20-field record (see Output) and applies your filters.
3. Compares each permit against the monitor's saved state (city → permitNumber → status).
4. Emits a record when the permit is unseen (changeType: "new") or its status changed since last seen (changeType: "status_change", with previousStatus).
5. Saves the state, then POSTs a run summary to webhookUrl if set.

State lives in a named key-value store permit-monitor-<hash of monitorId> in your Apify account, capped at 50,000 permits (oldest are dropped first). Delete the store to reset a monitor.

Input

Field	Default	Notes
cities	["nyc","los-angeles","chicago"]	City keys from the table above, or ["all"]
permitTypes	[]	Case-insensitive substrings matched against permit type and work class, e.g. ["electrical","roof","demolition"]. OR-ed
minValue	0	Minimum estimated/declared job value in USD. When set, permits with no published value are dropped, so Philadelphia and DC (no value field) will not match
keywords	[]	Case-insensitive substrings matched against the work description (plus type/class), e.g. ["solar","PV","photovoltaic"]
contractors	[]	Case-insensitive substrings matched against the contractor name
lookbackDays	7	Permits issued within N days. Raise it for Austin, Memphis, Portland (see lag column)
maxNewPerCity	5	Cap per city per run. Also bounded by maxItems / number of cities so one big city cannot starve the others. Permits beyond the cap stay unseen and come out next run
maxItems	10	Overall cap per run
firstRunMode	emitAll	emitAll reports every current match on the first run; baseline records them silently
webhookUrl	""	Optional POST target for the run summary
monitorId	default	One state store per ID, so several watchlists can run side by side

Where a city encodes the trade in its type or work class (Tucson Solar, Chicago Electrical Work, Philadelphia Electrical), use permitTypes. Where it only appears in the free-text description (Los Angeles, Mesa, Boston), use keywords. Using both with the same terms is safe: a permit matches if it passes each filter you set.

Recommended setup for a daily feed

1. Create a task with your cities and filters and set monitorId (solar-southwest, roofing-tx).
2. First run: set firstRunMode to baseline with lookbackDays 30. This records everything current and emits nothing, so day one is not a 5,000-row backlog.
3. Set lookbackDays back to 7 (or 30 for the slow cities), maxNewPerCity and maxItems high enough for your cities (NYC alone issues ~3,000 permits a week; Chicago ~500; Seattle ~50).
4. Schedule the task daily at 07:00 in your local time zone. Most cities refresh their feed overnight.
5. Point webhookUrl at Slack (incoming webhook), Zapier, Make, or your own endpoint.

The default input ({}) runs in emitAll mode on NYC, Los Angeles and Chicago so you see real permits on the first try.

Example: solar and roofing leads in the Southwest, jobs over $10,000

{
  "cities": ["los-angeles", "mesa", "tempe", "scottsdale", "tucson"],
  "keywords": ["solar", "photovoltaic", "PV", "reroof", "re-roof", "roofing"],
  "minValue": 10000,
  "lookbackDays": 7,
  "maxNewPerCity": 200,
  "maxItems": 1000,
  "firstRunMode": "baseline",
  "webhookUrl": "https://hooks.slack.com/services/XXX/YYY/ZZZ",
  "monitorId": "solar-southwest"
}

Other quick profiles:

• Commercial general contractors, big jobs: cities: ["nyc","chicago","denver","nashville","miami"], permitTypes: ["new building","commercial","new construction"], minValue: 250000
• Track a competitor: cities: ["all"], contractors: ["renewal by andersen"]
• Demolition (site-prep, hauling, salvage): permitTypes: ["demolition","demo"], cities: ["all"]

Output

One record per new or changed permit:

{
  "city": "New York City",
  "state": "NY",
  "permitNumber": "B01358922-S2-GC-CX",
  "permitType": "General Construction",
  "workClass": "Initial Permit",
  "description": "This subsequent filing SI MS/GC (Job B01358922-S1) to correct and update plan for legalization ...",
  "status": "Permit Issued",
  "issuedDate": "2026-09-25",
  "appliedDate": "2026-09-03",
  "address": "147 DIAMOND STREET, Brooklyn",
  "zip": "11222",
  "latitude": 40.727487,
  "longitude": -73.947937,
  "estimatedValue": 6050,
  "contractorName": "CLIFF REFRIGERATION & A/C",
  "contractorLicense": "GC 614451",
  "ownerName": "Maureen Marsh",
  "sourceUrl": "https://data.cityofnewyork.us/resource/rbx6-tga4.json",
  "changeType": "new",
  "previousStatus": null,
  "firstSeenAt": "2026-09-29T00:17:40.009Z",
  "monitorId": "default"
}

Fields a city does not publish are null (see the Contractor / Value columns above). sourceUrl is the permit's own page where the city provides one (Austin, Seattle, Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Tacoma, Tucson), otherwise the dataset endpoint. Descriptions are truncated to 300 characters.

Webhook payload

{
  "monitorId": "solar-southwest",
  "runAt": "2026-09-29T07:00:12.000Z",
  "since": "2026-09-22",
  "newCount": 14,
  "statusChangeCount": 2,
  "emitted": 16,
  "seenTotal": 1830,
  "baseline": false,
  "cities": { "tucson": { "fetched": 141, "matched": 18, "new": 12, "statusChange": 0, "emitted": 12, "deferred": 6, "latestIssuedDate": "2026-09-27", "error": null } },
  "permits": [ "...first 50 records..." ]
}

The same summary is saved as SUMMARY in the run's default key-value store.

Pricing

$0.005 per run start plus $0.01 per emitted permit ($10 per 1,000). Baseline runs and runs with nothing new cost only the start fee.

Notes and limits

• Only permits with an issue date inside the lookback window are considered; applications not yet issued are not reported (except Fort Worth, where the window is the date the status became Issued).
• Washington DC's feed only holds the last 30 days, so lookbackDays above 30 has no extra effect there.
• Pittsburgh publishes weekly; Austin and Memphis run 2–4 weeks behind; Portland 4–8 weeks.
• Permit numbers are unique within a city; the state is keyed per city so the same number in two cities does not collide.
• No login, API key or proxy is needed. The actor is MCP-ready for AI agents.