🏗️ US Building Permits Scraper — Construction Leads for Solar, Roofing, HVAC & Contractors

Get fresh US building permits as sales leads. This actor pulls building-permit records straight from official city open-data APIs (public records) and turns them into clean, filterable construction leads — with trade categories, a lead score, fresh-permit flags, and contractor contact info (name + phone where the city publishes it).

A new building permit = a project about to start. Typical lead window is 2–6 weeks before construction begins — exactly when solar installers, roofers, HVAC companies, remodelers, suppliers and real-estate pros want to reach the homeowner or contractor.

No proxies. No CAPTCHAs. No blocks. 100% public records.

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✅ Why this is the best permit scraper on Apify

	This actor	Typical permit actors
Lead scoring (🔥 HOT / 🟡 WARM / ⚪ COLD)	✅	❌ raw dump
Trade filter (Solar, Roofing, HVAC, Pool…)	✅	❌
Fresh-lead flag (issued in last N days)	✅	❌
Contractor name + PHONE (where available)	✅ Austin, NYC	partial
Owner name	✅ NYC, Baton Rouge	partial
ZIP / date / keyword filtering	✅ server-side	often post-filter only
One normalized schema across cities	✅	❌ different fields per city

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🏙️ Supported cities

Chicago (IL) · Austin (TX) · San Francisco (CA) · New York City (NY) · Baton Rouge (LA)

All with issue-date → fresh-lead support. More cities added regularly.

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⚙️ Input

Field	What it does	Example
cities	Cities to pull from (empty = all)	["austin","chicago"]
lastNDays	Only permits from the last N days (fresh leads)	30
issuedAfter / issuedBefore	Exact date range (YYYY-MM-DD)	2026-01-01
tradeCategories	Filter by trade	["Solar","Roofing"]
freshLeadsOnly	Keep only last-30-day permits	true
zipCodes	Filter by ZIP	["78704","60614"]
keyword	Full-text search in type + description	"pool"
minProjectValue	Minimum $ value	25000
maxResultsPerCity	Cap per city	1000
socrataAppToken	Optional free token for big runs	—

Example input — fresh solar leads in Austin

{
  "cities": ["austin"],
  "lastNDays": 30,
  "tradeCategories": ["Solar"],
  "freshLeadsOnly": true
}

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📤 Output (one row per permit)

{
  "lead_emoji": "🔥",
  "lead_grade": "HOT",
  "lead_score": 73,
  "trade_category": "Solar",
  "city": "Austin",
  "state": "TX",
  "address": "5708 FORKS RD",
  "zip": "78747",
  "permit_type": "Electrical Permit",
  "work_description": "Install roof-mounted solar PV system, 7.2kW",
  "project_value": null,
  "status": "Active",
  "applied_date": "2026-04-15T00:00:00.000",
  "issue_date": "2026-06-09T00:00:00.000",
  "expiration_date": "2026-12-05T00:00:00.000",
  "days_since_issued": 2,
  "is_fresh_lead": true,
  "lead_window": "2-6 weeks (construction starting soon)",
  "is_residential": true,
  "has_contact": true,
  "contractor_company": "Bright Solar LLC",
  "contractor_name": "John Smith",
  "contractor_trade": "Electrical Contractor",
  "contractor_phone": "5125551234",
  "contractor_license": null,
  "owner_name": null,
  "source_dataset": "https://data.austintexas.gov",
  "scraped_at": "2026-06-11T00:00:00+00:00"
}

Full field list: city, state, permit_number, permit_type, trade_category, work_description, address, zip, latitude, longitude, project_value, status, applied_date, issue_date, expiration_date, days_since_issued, is_fresh_lead, lead_window, is_residential, has_contact, contractor_company, contractor_name, contractor_trade, contractor_phone, contractor_license, contractor_city, contractor_zip, owner_name, owner_business, owner_address, lead_score, lead_grade, lead_emoji, source_dataset, scraped_at.

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💡 Who uses this

Solar installers · Roofing companies · HVAC / plumbing contractors · Remodelers & general contractors · Building-material suppliers · Real-estate investors · Construction-market researchers · Lead-gen agencies

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🔌 Use it from code / n8n / Make

Run it via the Apify API and pull results from the dataset — or wire it into n8n / Make / Zapier to drip fresh permits into your CRM every morning.

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❓ FAQ

Is this legal? Yes — building permits are public records, served by each city's official open-data portal.

Why are some fields empty? Each city publishes different data. Austin & NYC expose contractor/owner contacts; San Francisco doesn't publish contractor names. The schema is unified, so missing fields are simply null.

How fresh is the data? Cities update their open-data portals every 24–72 hours.

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Keywords: building permits scraper, construction leads, solar leads, roofing leads, HVAC leads, contractor leads, permit data, building permit API, new construction leads, Austin permits, Chicago permits, NYC DOB permits, San Francisco permits, real estate leads, permit tracker.