Connecticut Town Permits - Colchester building permits, classified by trade

Use case

A roofer, electrician or HVAC company in eastern Connecticut runs this on Monday (3 pages reach back about 10 days) and walks away with the newest Colchester permits that mean work in their trade: owner, address, what the permit says, when it was issued. Knock, mail a card or leave a door hanger the same day.

Sample output

Input {"town": "Colchester", "pages": 2} -> 44 permits from the live portal (run 2026-10-29).

Example rows (made up, to show the columns; not real people or addresses):

owner	address	permit_type	description	status	category	owner_is_business
SAMPLE JANE	100 MAIN ST	Demo	Remove old siding off the house, install new vinyl siding	New	windows_doors_siding	false
EXAMPLE ROOFING LLC	200 OAK AVE	Building	Tear off and reshingle the roof	New	roofing	true

Columns: parcel_id, owner, house_no, street, permit_no, permit_type, issued, issued_date, fees, status, description, town, state, category, owner_is_business.

Rows with no permit_no and no issued date are applications that were filed but not issued yet (status Paid, New, Payment Due, Incomplete, Hold, Under Review and similar; now and then Canceled). They are the freshest leads, so they are kept. On 2026-10-29 the 2 newest pages held 19 of them.

Price

$0.02 per permit plus $0.01 per start. Pay per event only: no plan, no subscription, no platform-usage charge. One page (22 permits) costs $0.45; the default 2 pages cost $0.89. For comparison, Construction Monitor sells permit leads from $31 per month per jurisdiction and offers no Connecticut self-serve.

Input

• town - Colchester (the only town covered today).
• pages - 22 permits per page, newest first in the portal's own order (not strictly by issue date), 1 to 6, default 2. Measured on 2026-10-29: 2 pages = permits issued 10-25 to 10-27 plus filed ones not issued yet; 3 pages reach back to 10-18; 6 pages to 10-08. For a weekly run use 3 pages.
• trade - optional filter: roofing, electrical, hvac, plumbing, landscaping, excavation, handyman, general, auto. Each trade includes related work (roofing also returns solar, siding and demo permits). Empty = every permit.

Who uses it

• Roofers: strip-and-reshingle, solar and siding permits.
• Electricians: service upgrades, generators, EV chargers, solar.
• HVAC and plumbing: boilers, heat pumps, mini splits, gas lines, water heaters.
• Landscapers and excavators: driveways, foundations, pools, new builds.

How it works

We read the Town of Colchester public permit list (the PermitLink portal) with a real browser, newest first. Every row is tagged with the trade the work means - roofing, electrical, hvac, plumbing_gas, solar, generator, excavation, carpentry, windows_doors_siding, demo, pool, zoning_other or other - and flagged when the owner is a business. The trade filter uses contractor views, so roofing also sees solar, demo and siding permits.

What it does not do

• Only Colchester today. Any other town returns 0 rows, exit 0 and a message; only the start is charged.
• No phone numbers and no email addresses. Public records; the owner's name is on the permit itself. Do not cold-call home numbers.
• If the portal changes its layout, the run stops with an error instead of returning a half-empty table.
• If the portal times out, the run tries once more before it stops with an error.
• If the portal will not turn to the next page, the run keeps the pages it read and the status message says so (for example "read 1 of 2 page(s)"). You pay the start plus only the permits you get.

Tips

• Six pages (132 permits) is the most one run reads.