Building Permits Scraper - Multi-City Open Data

Pull building & construction permits from 12 US cities into one clean, normalized schema - no API key, no account, no anti-bot. Every large US city publishes permits on its own open-data portal with its own column names; this actor translates all of them into the same record so you can query dozens of jurisdictions as one feed.

Great for contractors, roofers, solar & HVAC installers, remodelers, suppliers, and real-estate investors who want fresh permit leads and market intelligence - and for analysts tracking construction activity.

Supported cities

City	Source	Portal
Chicago, IL	Socrata	data.cityofchicago.org
New York, NY	Socrata	data.cityofnewyork.us (DOB NOW)
Los Angeles, CA	Socrata	data.lacity.org
San Francisco, CA	Socrata	data.sfgov.org
Austin, TX	Socrata	data.austintexas.gov
Seattle, WA	Socrata	data.seattle.gov
Cincinnati, OH	Socrata	data.cincinnati-oh.gov
Mesa, AZ	Socrata	citydata.mesaaz.gov
Montgomery County, MD	Socrata	data.montgomerycountymd.gov
Baton Rouge, LA	Socrata	data.brla.gov
Washington, DC	ArcGIS	maps2.dcgis.dc.gov
West Sacramento, CA	ArcGIS	gis.cityofwestsacramento.org

All data comes from official government open-data APIs (Socrata and ArcGIS FeatureServer). These are free, public, key-less endpoints, so runs are fast and cheap and need only Apify's default datacenter proxy.

Normalized schema (one row per permit)

{
  "city": "Austin, TX",
  "permit_number": "2026-074994 BP",
  "permit_type": "Building Permit - New",
  "status": "Active",
  "issue_date": "2026-07-10",
  "application_date": "2026-04-20",
  "address": "4102 CAT HOLLOW DR AUSTIN TX 78731",
  "work_description": "New construction in-ground pool and spa.",
  "valuation": 0.0,
  "contractor_name": "LOHR Homes",
  "applicant": "Gil Lohr",
  "latitude": 30.3623778,
  "longitude": -97.76570347,
  "source": "data.austintexas.gov",
  "source_type": "socrata",
  "source_url": "https://abc.austintexas.gov/web/permit/public-search-other?...",
  "scraped_at": "2026-07-10T21:56:20Z"
}

Not every city publishes every field (e.g. Chicago has no status column, Cincinnati has no coordinates, DC publishes fees rather than construction valuation) - missing values come back as null rather than being faked. Coordinates are populated wherever the source provides them (8 of 12 cities).

Input

Field	Type	Description
cities	array	Which cities to scrape (multi-select). Leave empty to scrape all supported cities.
issuedAfter	date	Only permits issued on/after this date (YYYY-MM-DD). Applied server-side per city.
permitType	string	Keyword filter, matched against permit type and work description - e.g. roof, solar, pool, electrical, demolition.
maxItems	integer	Max permits per city (so 3 cities x 500 = up to 1,500 rows). Default 1,000.
proxyConfiguration	object	Defaults to Apify datacenter proxy - no residential proxy required.

Example input

{
  "cities": ["austin", "los_angeles", "baton_rouge"],
  "issuedAfter": "2025-01-01",
  "permitType": "roof",
  "maxItems": 500
}

This returns every roofing permit issued since Jan 2025 across Austin, LA, and Baton Rouge - a ready-made call list for a roofing company.

Why this actor

• One schema, many cities. Stop writing a parser per portal - each city's fields are pre-mapped to the same keys.
• Fresh + filterable. Newest-first, with server-side date filtering and keyword type filtering.
• Complete records. Address, geo-coordinates, valuation, contractor/applicant, and a link back to the source record where available.
• Zero anti-bot. Public government JSON APIs - reliable and cheap.
• Export as JSON, CSV, Excel, or pull via the Apify API.

Extending it

Adding a city is a single entry in src/parser.py -> CITIES: point it at the Socrata dataset or ArcGIS FeatureServer, list the date_field, and map that portal's column names to the canonical keys. Address and permit-type can be composed from several columns. No fetch-layer changes needed.

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This data is aggregated from public government records for market research and lead generation. It is not a consumer report and must not be used for any FCRA-covered purpose (credit, employment, insurance, or tenant screening).