US Building Permit Scraper

Pull building permits from US city open data portals. Built for construction lead generation - solar installers, roofing contractors, HVAC companies, and suppliers who need fresh permit data to find projects before competitors do.

What it returns

Every permit record includes:

Field	Description
city, state	City and state
permitNumber	Permit or job number
permitType	Type of permit (e.g. New Construction, Renovation, Electrical)
address	Full street address
projectValue	Reported construction value in USD (where available)
contractorName	Licensed contractor on the permit
contractorLicense	Contractor license number
contractorLicenseType	License type (General Contractor, Electrician, etc.)
issueDate	Date permit was issued
status	Permit status (where available)
description	Work description (where available)
latitude, longitude	Coordinates (where available)

Supported cities

City	State	Contractor data	Project value	Data freshness
Chicago	IL	Name + contact type	Yes (reported_cost)	Current (daily updates)
New York City (or NYC)	NY	License holder name + license no.	Yes (estimated_job_costs)	Current (DOB NOW dataset)
San Francisco (or SF)	CA	None in this dataset	Yes (revised_cost)	Current
Los Angeles (or LA)	CA	Business name + license	Yes (valuation)	Typically 12-24 months behind

Note on Los Angeles: The LA open data portal permit datasets are not regularly updated and currently reflect data through mid-2023. For current LA leads, the customEndpoints option can point to the LADBS permit portal directly if you have access to a more current source.

More cities coming. You can also add any Socrata-powered open data portal via customEndpoints.

Example inputs

Get all new construction permits in Chicago issued this year:

{
  "cities": ["Chicago"],
  "issuedAfter": "2026-01-01",
  "permitTypes": ["new construction"],
  "maxResultsPerSource": 1000
}

Multi-city lead gen sweep:

{
  "cities": ["Chicago", "Los Angeles", "New York City"],
  "issuedAfter": "2026-04-01",
  "maxResultsPerSource": 500
}

High-value projects only (Chicago):

{
  "cities": ["Chicago"],
  "issuedAfter": "2026-01-01",
  "minProjectValue": 50000
}

Adding your own city

Any city running Socrata open data can be added via customEndpoints:

{
  "cities": [],
  "customEndpoints": [
    {
      "domain": "data.seattle.gov",
      "datasetId": "your-dataset-id",
      "cityName": "Seattle",
      "stateCode": "WA",
      "fields": {
        "permitNumber": "application_permit_number",
        "permitType": "permit_type",
        "issueDate": "issue_date",
        "streetNumber": "address",
        "contractorName": "applicant_name"
      }
    }
  ],
  "issuedAfter": "2026-01-01"
}

Find your city's dataset at data.socrata.com or by searching [your city] open data building permits.

How permits become leads

A permit issued this week means a project is about to start. The lead window is short - typically 2-6 weeks before contractors are already on site. Run this actor on a weekly or daily schedule to catch permits while they're still warm.

Example workflow:

1. Run weekly on target cities filtered to relevant permit types
2. Export to CSV and import to your CRM
3. Call the contractor (or property owner) within 48 hours of issue date

Pricing

$1.50 per 1,000 permits (base). Results from all cities in a single run count toward the same total.

Data sources

All data is sourced from official government open data portals via the Socrata SODA API. All datasets are public domain. No scraping - direct API calls only.