Baltimore City (MD) Building & Housing Permits

The live Baltimore City building-permit record - every permit's full file, from the scope-of-work text to the project cost and the before/after land use. One query API over the city's permit pipeline, 2019 to this week.

Data

Baltimore City government open data (public permit register). ~292,000 permits issued 2019-01-01 to present, live to this week.

Each record is the complete permit - this is not the shallow case-rows table, it carries the depth that makes a permit searchable:

• Scope-of-work text - the real description of what was permitted ("install new fire sprinkler system", "demolish existing front concrete stoop and rebuild", "change cabinets in existing kitchen")
• Project cost - where the city recorded a valuation (~68% of permits)
• Existing vs proposed land use - what the property was and what it becomes (rowhouse / single-family / commercial / vacant lot ...)
• Address, block & lot, neighborhood, council district
• Baltimore housing-market typology (A-J + rental categories)
• Original permit vs modification - the amendment flag, so you can separate new work from change-orders
• Issue + expiration dates

There is no separate "permit type" dropdown in the city's data - the type is written into the scope text, which is exactly why the full description matters. We keep every word of it.

Low cost

From $0.0003 per record.

City permit data comes as one long table with no obvious keys to cut it on, so most people end up either paying per-screen on the city portal or pulling the whole thing and filtering locally. We made the depth searchable directly: exact caseNumber, a keyword search over the scope-of-work text, cost range, address, neighborhood, council district, land-use words, original-vs- modification, and issue-date windows - all filtering happens before a single record is returned. Aggregates by neighborhood / district / housing market / use / original-vs-modification come back as clean counts. You query a permit pipeline that behaves like a database; the plumbing stays on our side.

Every record is one flat JSON object - no portal sessions, no pagination to chase, no screenshots.

Use cases

• Construction & renovation intelligence - what kind of work is being permitted where, by neighborhood or council district, over time
• Property diligence - every recent permit on a property or in a building, with real cost and use change
• Market & investment analysis - Baltimore's own housing-market typology dimension is built in; track which market segments are seeing permit activity

Inputs

Field	What it does
caseNumber	exact permit lookup (e.g. BRCM-26-005127)
keyword	search scope-of-work + project name
address / neighborhood / councilDistrict	geography filters
minCost / maxCost	project-cost range
use	land-use word (dwelling / rowhouse / commercial ...)
housingMarketTypology	A-J / rental market class
modification	original vs modification
issuedFrom / issuedTo	issue-date window
aggregate + groupBy	counts by neighborhood / district / typology / use / mod

Output fields

caseNumber / description / issuedDate / expirationDate / address / blockLot / existingUse / proposedUse / permitName / cost / neighborhood / councilDistrict / housingMarketTypology / isModification / parcel.

Honesty note: the city leaves project cost blank on roughly a third of permits and drops the parcel project-name on most - this API returns those fields only where the city actually recorded them, and never fills them in.

Source: Baltimore City open data (Housing & Community Development permit register, public records).