Seattle Building Permit Leads

Extract fresh Seattle building permit records from the official City of Seattle open-data API and turn them into clean lead signals for construction, roofing, HVAC, solar, remodeling, and local market research workflows.

What this Actor does

This Actor queries Seattle's official Socrata dataset for building permits and returns normalized records with:

• permit number and type,
• issued/applied/expiry/completion dates,
• project description,
• estimated project cost,
• address and geolocation,
• contractor company name when available,
• source link,
• simple lead category and lead score.

Official source:

• https://data.seattle.gov/resource/76t5-zqzr.json

Who it is for

• roofing, HVAC, solar, and remodeling sales teams,
• construction-market researchers,
• local real-estate and development analysts,
• teams that want official public permit data in clean CSV/JSON form.

Input

{
  "startDate": "2026-01-01",
  "endDate": "2026-07-03",
  "permitTypes": ["Building", "Mechanical", "Electrical"],
  "keywords": ["solar", "reroof", "re-roof", "hvac", "furnace", "heat pump"],
  "excludedKeywords": ["telecommunication", "communication utility", "antenna", "wireless", "verizon"],
  "minEstimatedCost": 0,
  "maxItems": 100
}

All filters are optional except maxItems.

Output example

{
  "permitNumber": "6999999-CN",
  "permitClass": "Building",
  "permitType": "Building",
  "permitTypeDescription": "Alteration",
  "description": "Install rooftop solar panels and electrical equipment",
  "status": "Issued",
  "appliedDate": "2026-06-01",
  "issuedDate": "2026-06-12",
  "expiresDate": "2027-06-12",
  "completedDate": null,
  "estimatedProjectCost": 24500.0,
  "address": "700 5TH AVE",
  "city": "Seattle",
  "state": "WA",
  "zip": "98104",
  "contractorCompanyName": "SUNNY ROOFS LLC",
  "leadCategory": "solar",
  "leadScore": "hot",
  "sourceUrl": "https://cosaccela.seattle.gov/portal/permit/6999999-CN",
  "latitude": 47.6062,
  "longitude": -122.3321,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-07-03T12:00:00+00:00"
}

Lead categories

• solar: solar, photovoltaic, PV.
• roofing: reroof, re-roof, roof replacement, roof repair, new/existing roof work. Rooftop telecom antenna and communication-utility permits are intentionally excluded by the default input unless you remove those exclusions.
• hvac: HVAC, furnace, heat pump, air conditioning, mechanical.
• remodel: remodel, alteration, renovation, addition.
• general: other permit descriptions.
• unknown: missing description.

Lead score

• hot: solar/roofing/HVAC, or estimated project cost at least $10,000.
• warm: useful address plus contractor or project-cost signal.
• cold: missing or low-signal records.

Responsible use

This Actor uses public permit data from the City of Seattle. Use the output responsibly and comply with applicable laws, source terms, and outreach rules. The Actor intentionally avoids owner/person fields and focuses on permit/project signals and contractor company names when available.

Limitations

• This is not affiliated with or endorsed by the City of Seattle.
• Lead categories and scores are simple heuristics, not guarantees of buying intent.
• Dataset fields depend on the official source data and may be blank for some records.
• Monitoring/delta mode is not included in v0.1; schedule support can be added after usage signal.

Development

Run tests:

$python3 -m pytest tests/test_seattle_permits.py -q

Run locally with Apify CLI:

$npx apify-cli run

Changelog

• v0.1.0 — Initial Seattle permit lead extraction from official Socrata API.