Multi City Building Permit Aggregator

Each US city publishes its building permit dataset in its own JSON shape. Normalizing them is the work nobody wants to maintain.

This Actor wraps public city open data feeds and returns a consistent permit schema for real estate researchers, market analysts, supply distributors, builder intelligence teams, and local service businesses. v1 covers NYC Open Data and the Chicago Data Portal. Both sources are public Socrata datasets published by city governments under their open data programs.

The Actor does not use browser automation, XML, screenshots, or private data sources. It calls the public JSON APIs directly, normalizes the field names, and excludes individual personal name fields from output. Builder and property fields are limited to public business-name fields.

Quick Start

Fetch recent Chicago permits:

curl "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/YOUR_ACTOR_ID/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"city":"chicago","since":"2026-04-01","limit":10}'

Use Standby mode for an instant API response:

$curl "https://YOUR_STANDBY_URL/permits?city=chicago&since=2026-04-01&min_cost=25000&limit=5"

Standby Endpoints

Endpoint	Purpose	PPE event
GET / and GET /health	Service info and readiness	none
GET /permits?city=<nyc|chicago>&since=<YYYY-MM-DD>&permit_type=<>&min_cost=<>&limit=<N>	Filtered normalized permits	permit-row per row
GET /permit?city=<>&permit_id=<>	One permit detail	permit-row x 1
GET /builder?city=<>&business_name=<>	Builder activity summary	contractor-roundup x 1
GET /properties?city=<>&since=<YYYY-MM-DD>&min_permit_count=<N>&limit=<N>	Active property addresses by permit count	permit-row per property row
POST /permits/bulk	Multi-city pull with { "cities": [...], "since": "...", "limit_per_city": N }	permit-row per row

Bulk requests accept up to 4 cities and 200 rows per city. v1 intentionally supports NYC and Chicago only.

Permit Schema

Field	Type	Notes
permit_id	string	City permit/job identifier
city	string	nyc or chicago
permit_type	string	City permit type code or label
permit_status	string	Normalized to issued, filed, in-process, approved, signed-off, or inactive
filing_date	ISO8601/null	Parsed defensively from city date formats
issuance_date	ISO8601/null	Permit issue date when available
expiration_date	ISO8601/null	Expiration date when available
work_type	string	Work category or description
estimated_cost_usd	number/null	Reported cost where the city provides it
address	string	Normalized street address
borough_or_ward	string/null	NYC borough or Chicago ward
zip_code	string/null	Source zip where available
block_lot	string/null	NYC block/lot or source equivalent
gis_latitude, gis_longitude	number/null	Coordinates from source dataset
builder_business	string/null	Public permittee or contractor business field
builder_license_number	string/null	Public license field where available
property_business	string/null	Public owner business field where available
property_business_type	string/null	individual, corporation, llc, partnership, or null
source_url	string	Public city dataset URL
fetched_at	ISO8601	Fetch timestamp

Builder Roundup Schema

Field	Type	Notes
roundup_id	string	Stable city plus business identifier
city	string	City key
builder_business	string	Builder business used for lookup
permit_count_3y	number	Permit count in the last 3 years
permit_count_1y	number	Permit count in the last year
total_value_3y_usd	number	Sum of reported permit values
top_permit_types	string[]	Most frequent permit types
top_property_businesses_served	object[]	Top public owner business fields
top_zip_codes	string[]	Top zip codes where available
first_permit_date	ISO8601/null	Earliest permit in window
last_permit_date	ISO8601/null	Latest permit in window
activity_tier	string	low, active, or high-volume
fetched_at	ISO8601	Fetch timestamp

Activity tier is deterministic: under 5 permits is low, 5 to 49 is active, and 50 or more is high-volume.

Flow

flowchart LR
  A[Input] --> B[City router]
  B --> C[NYC Open Data]
  B --> D[Chicago Data Portal]
  C --> E[Normalize permit schema]
  D --> E
  E --> F{Builder endpoint?}
  F -->|yes| G[Builder roundup aggregation]
  F -->|no| H[Dataset output]
  G --> H

Pricing

Event	Price	When charged
actor-start	$1.00	Once per paid Standby request or batch run
permit-row	$0.05	Each normalized permit or property activity row returned
contractor-roundup	$0.30	Each builder activity summary returned

Healthcheck and mock probe payloads short-circuit without fetching city data.

Comparison

Option	What you get	Tradeoff
City open data portals	Free public datasets	No shared schema, different field names, separate parser per city
BuildZoom or similar SaaS	Polished contractor and permit intelligence	Higher cost and less direct API control
This Actor	Normalized JSON API over public city permit datasets	v1 city coverage is narrow, but output is direct and automation-friendly

Use Cases

Use this Actor for market research, builder activity tracking, real estate research, neighborhood permit volume monitoring, and supply distributor regional planning. It is also useful for analysts who already trust city open data but do not want to keep rewriting field maps for every local portal.

FAQ

Which cities are covered? v1 covers NYC and Chicago only.

How fresh is the data? The Actor reads live public Socrata APIs. Freshness depends on each city dataset’s publishing cadence.

Where does the business name come from? NYC uses the public permittee business field. Chicago uses public contractor contact fields when they identify a business.

Are personal names included? No. The normalized output deliberately excludes personal name fields.

What about Socrata rate limits? Keep limits small for interactive use and use bulk mode responsibly. Socrata may throttle very large repeated pulls.

Refunds or issues? Contact the Actor owner through Apify with the run ID and endpoint used.