Building Permits Scraper — Construction & Contractor Leads

Construction and contractor leads from building permit data, pulled from ten city open-data portals and merged into one schema: New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Austin, Cincinnati, Calgary, Edmonton and Winnipeg. Permit number, type and work class, status, the description of the work, full address with coordinates, applied and issued dates, declared value, housing units, square feet, and the contractor and applicant behind it.

Every portal names its columns differently — permitnum here, job__ there, permit_nbr somewhere else — and this Actor maps all of them onto the same twenty-five columns, so one spreadsheet covers ten cities.

No API key, no account: these are the cities' own open-data endpoints.

Why this Actor

• Ten cities, one schema. Every portal names its columns differently; this Actor maps them onto the same twenty-five, so a sweep across New York, Chicago and Calgary lands in one spreadsheet.
• Built for a schedule. Only new since the last run remembers what each city has already returned, so a daily run is a clean list of permits filed since yesterday — the shape a lead list actually needs.
• Contractors, not just addresses. The company on the permit is the lead — suppliers, roofers and equipment rental buy exactly this list, and it is published the day the permit is issued.
• Current by default. Results come back newest first and the date filter runs on the portal's side, so 30 days is one fast request per city rather than a crawl through a decade.
• No key and no quota. These are the cities' own open-data endpoints, which also means the data is free to reuse.

Sample output

One item of the dataset (long values shortened):

See the Output tab of any run.

What you get

• Fresh permits, newest first. A run with Issued since 30 days returns this month's permits — New York permits issued yesterday came back with the contractor's company name and a $50,000 declared value in testing
• The contractor and the applicant on every row where the city publishes them, which is what turns a permit feed into a lead list for suppliers, roofers, solar installers and equipment rental
• Filters that matter: keyword over the whole record, permit type, status, minimum declared value, and a contractor name to watch a single competitor across cities
• One schema for ten cities, with the city, portal and dataset named on every row so a number can always be traced back
• Coordinates where the portal has them, addresses assembled from house number and street where it does not

Only new since the last run. Turn it on and the Actor remembers the permits it has already returned for each city and starts the next run there — a daily schedule becomes a feed of permits filed since yesterday, with no duplicates to filter out and nothing charged on a quiet day. Cities enter permits a day or two late, so a watching run re-reads a three-day overlap and drops what it has seen before. The state lives in a key-value store on your own account, one per task.

Dates are normalised to plain days, values to numbers, and shouting addresses (100 MAIN ST) to readable ones.

Input example

{
  "cities": [
    "new-york",
    "chicago"
  ],
  "issuedSince": "30 days",
  "onlyNew": false,
  "minValue": 0,
  "maxResultsPerCity": 200
}

How much does it cost?

Pay per permit — no subscription, no minimum, no charge for platform usage.

Volume	Price
1,000 permits	$1.00
10,000 permits	$10.00
100,000 permits	$100.00

The Apify free plan includes $5 of usage every month — about 5,000 permits with this Actor, no card needed. Nothing else is charged: platform usage is included in the price, and Apify Bronze, Silver and Gold subscribers get 10%, 20% and 30% off these prices.

Use it from code, n8n, Make, Zapier or an AI agent

Run the Actor and download the dataset in one call (JSON by default; add &format=csv or xlsx):

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/chorelet~building-permits-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"cities": ["new-york", "chicago"], "issuedSince": "30 days", "onlyNew": false, "minValue": 0, "maxResultsPerCity": 200}'

Python:

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("chorelet/building-permits-scraper").call(run_input={"cities": ["new-york", "chicago"], "issuedSince": "30 days", "onlyNew": false, "minValue": 0, "maxResultsPerCity": 200})
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item)

• n8n, Make, Zapier — use the Apify node/module: run the Actor, then "get dataset items".
• Google Sheets, Slack, webhooks — add an integration on the run's Integrations tab.
• AI agents — the Actor is available as a tool through the Apify MCP server; the dataset schema describes every field for the model.
• Schedules — run it hourly, daily or weekly from the Schedules tab.

FAQ

Which cities are covered?

New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Austin, Cincinnati, Calgary, Edmonton and Winnipeg. Each one was checked for permits issued in the last days — portals that stopped publishing years ago were left out on purpose.

Can I get only the permits that appeared since my last run?

Yes — switch on Only new since the last run. The Actor remembers the permit numbers it returned per city in a key-value store on your account and re-reads a three-day overlap, because cities enter permits late. Quiet days cost only the run start.

Why is the contractor empty for some cities?

Not every portal publishes it. New York, Chicago, Calgary and Cincinnati do; Seattle and Austin do not. The column is there either way so the shape never changes.

How far back can I go?

As far as the portal keeps records — most hold a decade or more. Set Issued since to a date instead of a relative window, and raise the per-city cap.

Can I watch one builder across cities?

Yes — put their name in Contractor or applicant and list several cities. Matching is partial and case-insensitive.

Is the declared value reliable?

It is what the applicant declared, which is a good relative signal and a poor absolute one. Some permits declare nothing, which is why the minimum-value filter keeps zero-value rows unless you raise it.

Do I need an API key?

No. Each city publishes through an open Socrata endpoint that answers without a token.

Support

Questions, missing fields or a source that changed? Open an issue on the Issues tab or write to support@chorelet.app — problems are usually fixed within a day, and the Actor is checked every morning by an automated test run. If the Actor saved you time, a short review on its Store page helps other people find it.