Austin Building Permits API — Daily, Normalized JSON (Construction, Solar, Roofing, HVAC Leads)

Get fresh Austin, TX building permits every day as clean, normalized JSON. New residential and commercial construction, roofing, solar, HVAC, electrical, and plumbing permits — each record carries the contractor, address, permit type, work class, status, valuation, and (where available) geo-coordinates. Built for lead generation, proptech, and AI agents, deduplicated so you never pay twice for the same permit.

This Actor reads the City of Austin's official open-data API (Socrata dataset 3syk-w9eu, "Issued Construction Permits"), which the city refreshes daily. No scraping, no stale snapshots — just the authoritative source, normalized.

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Who this is for

🌞 Solar, roofing & HVAC lead generation

A new roofing, solar, mechanical, or plumbing permit is a high-intent buying signal. Pull newly issued permits by work class every morning, filter to your trade, and feed your sales pipeline addresses that just committed to a project — often with the contractor name and phone already attached. Set it on a daily schedule and you get a continuous, deduplicated stream of fresh jobs in your service area.

🏠 Proptech & real estate

Permits are a leading indicator of property activity — renovations, additions, new builds, and valuations before they show up anywhere else. Use this feed to enrich property records, score neighborhoods, track construction velocity, and flag value-add events by parcel (parcel_id / TCAD ID) and address.

🤖 AI agents & MCP / automation users

Stable schema, one record per permit, JSON-native, pay-per-result. Drop it into an agent workflow, MCP tool, or scheduled pipeline and get deterministic, well-typed permit data without writing a Socrata client or babysitting field-name changes. The full original record is preserved under _raw for power users.

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Why not just call the city API directly?

The raw Socrata endpoint is workable but rough: inconsistent and occasionally mislabeled field names, nested objects (the source URL is buried in a nested link.url), fields that appear on some records and not others, and no deduplication for daily pulls. This Actor gives you:

• One stable output schema — the same keys on every record, forever. Missing source data is null-filled, never dropped.
• Daily fresh — schedule it; the city updates daily and this Actor pulls only what's new in your chosen window.
• Deduplicated across runs — keyed on permit ID and persisted between runs, so daily schedules don't re-deliver or re-charge for permits you already have.
• Pay only for results — empty runs cost nothing.

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Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	enum	delta	delta = permits issued in the last N days (best for daily schedules). backfill = a fixed issued_date range.
days_back	int	7	Delta mode: how many days back from today to pull.
start_date	string	—	Backfill mode: inclusive lower bound on issued date (YYYY-MM-DD).
end_date	string	today	Backfill mode: inclusive upper bound (YYYY-MM-DD).
max_results	int	5000	Safety cap on new records pushed (and charged) per run.
app_token	string (secret)	—	Optional Socrata app token for higher rate limits. Not required.
reset_dedup	bool	false	Clears the seen-ID memory before the run. Testing / deliberate re-pull only.

Example — daily lead-gen schedule

{ "mode": "delta", "days_back": 2, "max_results": 5000 }

Example — one-time historical backfill

{ "mode": "backfill", "start_date": "2026-01-01", "end_date": "2026-03-31" }

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Output

Every record has exactly these keys. Missing source data is null-filled. The full untouched source record is preserved under _raw.

{
  "permit_id": "2026-066944 PP",
  "jurisdiction": "Austin, TX",
  "source_dataset": "3syk-w9eu",
  "permit_type": "Plumbing Permit",
  "permit_class": "Residential",
  "work_class": "Repair",
  "status": "Active",
  "applied_date": "2026-05-27T00:00:00.000",
  "issued_date": "2026-06-02T00:00:00.000",
  "expiration_date": "2026-11-29T00:00:00.000",
  "address": "5418 FAIRMONT CIR",
  "city": "AUSTIN",
  "state": "TX",
  "zip": "78745",
  "latitude": 30.21829231,
  "longitude": -97.79863071,
  "valuation": null,
  "work_description": "Gas test",
  "contractor_name": "Sal's Plumbing",
  "contractor_full_name": "Salomon Garcia",
  "contractor_trade": "Plumbing Contractor",
  "contractor_phone": "5127487537",
  "contractor_city": "Austin",
  "contractor_zip": "78745",
  "owner_or_applicant_name": null,
  "parcel_id": "0412131402",
  "source_url": "https://abc.austintexas.gov/web/permit/public-search-other?...",
  "pulled_at": "2026-06-04T09:12:25.338Z",
  "_raw": { "...": "full original source record" }
}

When a run finds no new permits, it pushes a single informational item ({"info": "no_new_results", ...}) and does not charge you.

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Coverage & honest limitations (please read before buying)

We'd rather you buy with clear expectations than leave a bad review.

• City: Austin, TX only in v1. Other US cities are planned, but not here yet — buy this only if you want Austin.
• Freshness: The City of Austin refreshes the source dataset daily. Schedule this Actor daily to stay current. We do not control the city's update timing.
• Geo is partial. latitude / longitude are present on most but not all records. Keys are always present; null when the city didn't publish coordinates for that permit. Don't assume 100% geocoding.
• Valuation is partial. valuation is frequently absent on trade permits (electrical, plumbing, mechanical) and null-filled there. Each run logs how often it was missing.
• No owner / applicant data. The Austin dataset does not include property owner or applicant names. owner_or_applicant_name is always null. If you need owner data, this source can't provide it.
• Contractor phone is raw and dirty. Source phone/zip values are inconsistent and sometimes junk. We pass them through unmodified — no cleaning or validation. Validate on your side before dialing.
• Deduplication is keyed on permit_id, so daily runs won't re-deliver or re-charge permits you've already received.

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Pricing

Pay per result: $2.50 per 1,000 permit records ($0.0025 each). You are charged only for new, delivered records. Deduplicated records and empty runs are not charged.

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Legal

This Actor delivers public open-government data published by the City of Austin. It is NOT an FCRA consumer report and must not be used for credit, employment, tenant screening, insurance eligibility, or any other FCRA-regulated decision. Use it for market research, lead generation, analytics, and similar permitted purposes. You are responsible for your own compliance, including any applicable do-not-call obligations when contacting contractors.

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Source: City of Austin Open Data — Issued Construction Permits (3syk-w9eu)