Census Building Permits Monitor

Fetch official U.S. Census Building Permits Survey records by county, state, or CBSA/metro area and export them as source-linked Apify dataset rows.

Use this Actor for market monitoring, construction research, economic-development analysis, real-estate research, and dashboards that need repeatable permit-activity data without manually downloading Census text files.

Unofficial / not affiliated: this Actor is independently developed and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, or maintained by the U.S. Census Bureau. It does not provide investment, legal, permitting, construction, financial, or compliance advice.

Common use cases

• Track recent authorized building permits by county, state, or metro area.
• Compare monthly, year-to-date, or annual permit activity across geographies.
• Feed market-research dashboards with official source-linked BPS rows.
• Filter for areas above a total-unit threshold.
• Export Census BPS records to JSON, CSV, Excel, or an API integration.

What you get

Each dataset row can include:

• survey date / period
• geography level and official geography codes
• county, state, or CBSA/metro name
• buildings, units, and permit value for:
  • 1-unit structures
  • 2-unit structures
  • 3–4 unit structures
  • 5+ unit structures
• total buildings, total units, and total permit value
• source URL
• collection timestamp
• optional raw source fields for reconciliation

Input filters

Field	Description
geographyLevel	County, State, or CBSA.
period	Latest monthly, latest year-to-date, or latest annual data.
stateFips	Optional two-digit state filter for County/State runs.
minTotalUnits	Optional threshold for total authorized units.
sortBy / sortDescending	Output ordering before truncation.
maxItems	Maximum rows to save.
includeRawFields	Include raw source fields for debugging/reconciliation.

Example input

{
  "geographyLevel": "County",
  "period": "latestMonthly",
  "stateFips": "12",
  "minTotalUnits": 25,
  "sortBy": "totalUnits",
  "sortDescending": true,
  "maxItems": 10,
  "includeRawFields": false
}

Pricing

from $0.50 / 1,000 Census building-permit aggregate rows

This Actor uses Apify Pay per Event pricing with platform usage included. The row event is charged only for useful rows written to the default dataset.

Event	Price	Unit
Actor start (apify-actor-start)	$0.00005	Once when the run starts.
Census Building Permit Aggregate Row (apify-default-dataset-item)	$0.0005	Per Census building-permit aggregate row.

A row is one Census Building Permits Survey aggregate geography row. Apify plan discounts, user-configured max-charge limits, and any future Apify pricing UI changes may affect final charges.

Official source

• Census BPS overview: https://www.census.gov/permits
• Official Census file directory: https://www2.census.gov/econ/bps/

Limitations and responsible use

Census BPS files are estimates and may be revised over time. Treat rows as official source records as of collection time and verify against Census release notes and official Census files for formal reporting, investment, permitting, policy, or compliance decisions.

This Actor does not provide investment, legal, permitting, real-estate, construction, financial, or compliance advice.

Related Actors in this portfolio

This Actor is part of the Property, infrastructure, and grants datasets group. These are narrow, source-specific Apify Actors intended for scheduled checks and repeatable dataset exports — not broad scraped-content feeds.

• Florida DEP Cleanup Sites Monitor — Official Florida DEP cleanup-site rows for property/environmental review.
• Census Building Permits Monitor — Official Census building-permit rows for construction and local-market monitoring.
• California Grants Opportunities Monitor — Official California Grants Portal opportunities for funding-discovery workflows.
• EPA WaterSense Labeled Products — Official EPA WaterSense labeled-product rows for product and procurement research.

Each listing includes its own source notes, limits, pricing, and responsible-use caveats. Use the official source links in each Actor when decisions require verification.