Building Permits Search – US City Construction Leads (Official Open Data)

Get newly issued building permits from the official open-data portals of New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Austin, Seattle, Montgomery County (MD), New Orleans, Cambridge (MA), Cincinnati and Norfolk (VA), all in one clean schema. Every row has the permit number, type, work description, address, ZIP, estimated job cost, contractor, owner (where the city publishes it), status, issue and application dates, coordinates and a link to the city record.

No scraping of login-protected portals: the data comes from each city's public Socrata open-data API. $1 per 1,000 permits. Filtered permits are free.

What it does

• 11 jurisdictions (choose any or "All cities"). Each city's columns are mapped to the same fields, so you can combine cities in one spreadsheet or CRM.
• Date filters: issued in the last N days, or an exact date range. Newest first.
• Keyword search over the full permit record: solar, roof, pool, hvac, adu, demolition, new construction, tenant improvement...
• Lead filters: minimum estimated cost, ZIP codes, only permits that name a contractor.
• Monitoring mode: onlyNew on a daily or weekly schedule returns only permits you have not seen before.
• Optional raw field with every original column the city publishes (fees, parcel, zoning, plan-review days...).

City	Dataset	Contractor	Owner	Cost
New York, NY	DOB NOW: Build – Approved Permits	✓ (applicant business, license)	✓ (name + address)	✓
Chicago, IL	Building Permits	✓	✓	✓
Los Angeles, CA	Building Permits Issued 2020–present	–	–	✓ (+ sq ft, solar, EV, ADU flags)
San Francisco, CA	Building Permits	–	–	✓ (+ units, stories)
Austin, TX	Issued Construction Permits	✓ (company, name, phone, trade)	–	✓
Seattle, WA	Building Permits	✓	–	✓
Montgomery County, MD	Commercial Permits	–	–	✓
New Orleans, LA	Permits	✓	✓	✓
Cambridge, MA	New Construction	✓	–	✓
Cincinnati, OH	Building Permits	✓	–	✓
Norfolk, VA	Permits	–	–	✓

Use cases

• Contractor and home-services lead generation: roofers, solar installers, HVAC, pool builders, landscapers, window and door companies, electricians.
• Suppliers and distributors: find active general contractors and big projects (filter by minimum cost).
• Real-estate and investment research: track new construction, ADUs and demolitions by ZIP code.
• Insurance, lending and market analysis: construction activity by city and permit type.

Input example

{
  "cities": ["austin-tx", "seattle-wa", "san-francisco-ca"],
  "issuedLastDays": 7,
  "keywords": ["solar", "roof"],
  "minEstimatedCost": 10000,
  "onlyNew": true
}

Output example

{
  "city": "Seattle, WA", "source": "seattle-wa", "permitNumber": "7109400-CN",
  "permitType": "Addition/Alteration", "workType": "Building", "permitClass": "Commercial",
  "description": "Construct alterations to existing minor telecommunication array (AT&T) on roof of multifamily building (ADRIATIC) per plan.",
  "status": "Issued", "address": "3200 NW 65TH ST", "zip": "98117", "estimatedCost": 30000,
  "contractor": null, "latitude": 47.676, "longitude": -122.398625,
  "link": "https://services.seattle.gov/portal/customize/LinkToRecord.aspx?altId=7109400-CN",
  "issuedDate": "2026-10-16", "appliedDate": "2026-09-01", "expiresDate": "2028-04-16",
  "dataset": "https://data.seattle.gov/d/76t5-zqzr"
}

Pricing (pay per event)

Event	Price
Permit	$0.001
Actor start	$0.00005

Permits removed by your filters (cost, ZIP, contractor) and onlyNew repeats are free. Set a maximum cost per run and the Actor stops cleanly at that limit.

Actor	Price per permit
This Actor	$0.001
pink_comic/building-permits-construction-leads	$0.002

Competitor price from the Apify Store on 2026-10-18.

FAQ

Why not every US city? Only cities that publish permits as open data with an API are included, and each dataset was checked to be current. More cities will be added; tell us which ones you need.

Are phone numbers and emails included? Only where the city publishes them (Austin publishes contractor and applicant phone numbers). The Actor does not look up or guess contact details.

How fresh is the data? Each city updates its dataset on its own schedule, most of them daily.

Data licenses: each row links to its source dataset; most are public domain or published under the city's open-data terms. Not affiliated with any city.

Use with AI agents (Apify MCP)

Works as a tool in the Apify MCP server: "List roofing permits over $20,000 issued in Austin this week with the contractor name."