Building Permits Open Data Scraper

Pull building permit records from US city and county open-data portals that run on Socrata (the SODA API behind data.cityofchicago.org, data.cityofnewyork.us, data.sf.gov and hundreds of other government sites) and get them back in one normalized JSON schema: permit number, type, status, work description, site address, coordinates, applied/issued/completed dates, declared valuation, fees and the contractor's company name. No login, no API key, pay per permit.

What does Building Permits Open Data Scraper do?

Every city publishes permits with different column names (permit_, permitnum, work_permit, permit_nbr...), different date formats and different ideas of what "cost" means. This Actor hides that. Pick the cities you care about, optionally narrow by issue date, permit type or minimum valuation, and receive a flat dataset you can drop into a spreadsheet, CRM or BI tool. Each record also keeps sourceKey, sourceDomain, sourceDatasetId and sourceUrl, so you always know which portal it came from, and includeRaw gives you the untouched original row when you need a field that is not in the common schema.

The Actor talks directly to each portal's JSON endpoint (https://<domain>/resource/<id>.json), pages through results 1,000 rows at a time ordered by issue date (newest first), retries on rate limits and server errors with exponential backoff, and processes cities one after another so it stays well within the portals' anonymous rate limits. Supplying a free Socrata appToken raises those limits.

Supported cities

All datasets below were verified live against the SODA endpoint (field names taken from each dataset's /api/views metadata) and had permits issued within the last week at the time of writing.

Key	City / county	Dataset	Typical fields available
chicago	Chicago, IL	data.cityofchicago.org ydr8-5enu	number, type, work type, status, description, address, lat/lon, applied + issued dates, reported cost, total fee, contractor company
nyc	New York City, NY (DOB NOW: Build - Approved Permits)	data.cityofnewyork.us rbx6-tga4	permit, work type, filing reason, status, description, address, borough, ZIP, lat/lon, approved/issued/expiration dates, estimated job cost, applicant business + license, BIN/BBL
nyc_bis	New York City, NY (legacy DOB BIS Permit Issuance)	data.cityofnewyork.us ipu4-2q9a	job/doc/sequence number, permit type + subtype, status, address, borough, ZIP, lat/lon, filing/issuance/expiration dates, permittee business + license
sf	San Francisco, CA	data.sf.gov i98e-djp9	number, permit type, status, description, address, ZIP, lat/lon, filed/approved/issued/completed dates, estimated + revised cost, proposed units and stories
la	Los Angeles, CA (permits issued 2020 to present)	data.lacity.org pi9x-tg5x	number, type, subtype, status, description, address, ZIP, lat/lon, submitted/issued/CofO dates, valuation, use description, square footage
seattle	Seattle, WA	data.seattle.gov 76t5-zqzr	number, type, class, status, description, address, ZIP, lat/lon, applied/issued/expires/completed dates, est. project cost, contractor company, housing units, record link
austin	Austin, TX (Issued Construction Permits)	data.austintexas.gov 3syk-w9eu	number, type, work class, status, description, address, ZIP, lat/lon, applied/issued/expires/completed dates, job valuation, contractor company + trade, floors/units, record link
cincinnati	Cincinnati, OH	data.cincinnati-oh.gov uhjb-xac9	number, type, work class, status, description, address, ZIP, lat/lon, applied/issued/expires/completed dates, est. cost, fee, company, units, record link
mesa	Mesa, AZ	citydata.mesaaz.gov dzpk-hxfb	number, type, type of work, status, description, address, lat/lon, opened/issued/finaled dates, total valuation, fees, contractor company + license, dwelling units
montgomery_county_md_residential	Montgomery County, MD (residential)	data.montgomerycountymd.gov m88u-pqki	number, application type, work type, use code, status, description, address, city, ZIP, lat/lon, added/issued/finaled dates, declared valuation, building area
montgomery_county_md_commercial	Montgomery County, MD (commercial)	data.montgomerycountymd.gov i26v-w6bd	same as residential
baton_rouge	East Baton Rouge Parish, LA	data.brla.gov 7fq7-8j7r	number, type, designation, description, address, city, ZIP, lat/lon, creation/issued dates, project value, permit fee, contractor company, square footage
marin_county	Marin County, CA	data.marincounty.gov mkbn-caye	number, type, work class, category, description, address, city/town, ZIP, lat/lon, received/issued dates, construction value, contractor company + license
cambridge	Cambridge, MA (Addition/Alteration permits)	data.cambridgema.gov qu2z-8suj	id, type, building use, status, description, address, ZIP, lat/lon, submitted/issued dates, total cost, firm name, units, stories

Not every portal publishes every field. San Francisco, Los Angeles and Montgomery County do not publish a contractor column at all, Chicago and Mesa have no site ZIP code, and Baton Rouge and Marin have no status field; those normalized fields are null for such sources. Any other Socrata portal can be added on the fly with the custom mode described below.

Use cases

• Contractor lead generation: new residential and commercial permits are a signal that a property owner is spending money right now. Filter by permitTypeContains ("roof", "solar", "hvac", "plumbing", "demolition") and minEstimatedCost to build daily call lists by ZIP code.
• Market research and construction analytics: track permit volume and declared valuation by city, permit type and month; compare markets on the same schema without writing one parser per city.
• Real-estate analytics: enrich property records with renovation history, ADU conversions, unit changes and new construction, and spot neighborhoods where activity is accelerating.
• Insurance and risk: monitor structural, electrical, roofing and demolition work at insured addresses; verify that declared work was actually permitted.
• Supplier and services sales: building-material suppliers, dumpster rental, equipment leasing and cleaning companies use issued permits to reach general contractors as jobs start.

Input

Field	Type	Description
cities	array	Registry keys from the table above. Default ["chicago", "nyc"]. Processed sequentially.
custom	object	Optional extra Socrata dataset: { "domain", "datasetId", "fieldMap", "city", "state" }. See Custom portals.
issuedAfter	string	ISO date YYYY-MM-DD. Only permits issued on or after this date.
issuedBefore	string	ISO date YYYY-MM-DD. Only permits issued before this date (exclusive).
permitTypeContains	string	Case-insensitive substring match on the permit type field (upper(field) like '%X%').
minEstimatedCost	number	Skip permits with a declared valuation below this amount. Ignored for sources without a cost column.
maxResultsPerCity	integer	Stop each city after this many permits. Default 500, maximum 100,000.
includeRaw	boolean	Attach the untouched portal row under raw. Default false.
appToken	string (secret)	Optional Socrata application token sent as X-App-Token.

Example input:

{
  "cities": ["chicago", "nyc", "sf"],
  "issuedAfter": "2026-08-30",
  "permitTypeContains": "alteration",
  "minEstimatedCost": 500000,
  "maxResultsPerCity": 1000
}

Output example

Real records from a test run on 2026-09-29 (cities: ["chicago", "nyc", "sf"], issuedAfter 30 days back, 20 permits per city). Fields that a given portal does not publish are null; a few sources add extra source-specific fields such as contractorType, approvedDate, bin, proposedUnits or recordUrl.

{
  "permitNumber": "B01358922-S2-GC-CX",
  "permitType": "General Construction",
  "permitSubtype": "Initial Permit",
  "status": "Permit Issued",
  "workDescription": "This subsequent filing SI MS/GC (Job B01358922-S1) to correct and update plan for legalization since amendment is not allowed under the initial I1 filing Job B01358922-I1.  No change in occupancy, use, bulk or egress under this application.",
  "address": "147 DIAMOND STREET",
  "city": "Brooklyn",
  "state": "NY",
  "zip": "11222",
  "latitude": 40.727487,
  "longitude": -73.947937,
  "appliedDate": null,
  "issuedDate": "2026-09-25",
  "completedDate": null,
  "expirationDate": "2026-10-27",
  "estimatedCost": 6050,
  "fees": null,
  "contractorName": "CLIFF REFRIGERATION & A/C",
  "contractorLicense": "614451",
  "unitsOrStories": null,
  "recordUrl": null,
  "approvedDate": "2026-09-03",
  "contractorLicenseType": "GC",
  "workOnFloor": "Cellar, Cellar, Floor Number(s) 002 through 002, Floor Number(s) 002 through 002, Open Space, Roof",
  "jobFilingNumber": "B01358922-S2",
  "bin": "3065795",
  "bbl": "3026240018",
  "sourceKey": "nyc",
  "sourceName": "New York City, NY (DOB NOW)",
  "sourceDomain": "data.cityofnewyork.us",
  "sourceDatasetId": "rbx6-tga4",
  "sourceUrl": "https://data.cityofnewyork.us/d/rbx6-tga4",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-29T15:50:09.855Z"
}

{
  "permitNumber": "B200510330",
  "permitType": "PERMIT – EXPRESS PERMIT PROGRAM",
  "permitSubtype": "Electrical Work",
  "status": "ACTIVE",
  "workDescription": "LOW VOLTAGE/COMMUNICATION ELECTRICAL WORK. INSTALL SECURITY. SPECIFIC LOCATION: LOWER LEVEL.",
  "address": "50 W WASHINGTON ST",
  "city": "Chicago",
  "state": "IL",
  "zip": null,
  "latitude": 41.88332219914999,
  "longitude": -87.62977509664286,
  "appliedDate": "2026-09-03",
  "issuedDate": "2026-09-28",
  "completedDate": null,
  "expirationDate": null,
  "estimatedCost": 19000,
  "fees": 100,
  "contractorName": "CECO, INC.",
  "contractorLicense": null,
  "unitsOrStories": null,
  "recordUrl": null,
  "contractorType": "ELECTRICAL CONTRACTOR",
  "sourceKey": "chicago",
  "sourceName": "Chicago, IL",
  "sourceDomain": "data.cityofchicago.org",
  "sourceDatasetId": "ydr8-5enu",
  "sourceUrl": "https://data.cityofchicago.org/d/ydr8-5enu",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-29T15:50:09.425Z"
}

All dates are ISO YYYY-MM-DD; estimatedCost and fees are numbers in USD; latitude/longitude are WGS84 decimals.

How much does it cost?

The Actor uses pay-per-event pricing: $0.006 per permit pushed to the dataset (event permit). There is no charge for pages that return nothing or for records skipped by your filters. 1,000 permits cost about $6, and 10,000 permits about $60. Use maxResultsPerCity, date and cost filters to cap spend, or set a maximum charge on the run; the Actor stops cleanly when the charge limit is reached.

Data privacy

All records come from public government open-data portals published under each city's open-data terms. The Actor is deliberately conservative about people:

• Only business / contractor company names are mapped to contractorName. Columns that hold an individual's name (property owner, applicant, permittee first/last name, licensed individual, filing representative, architect of record) are never mapped. Where a portal column mixes companies with sole proprietors (Chicago contacts, Marin, Mesa, Baton Rouge), a business-name heuristic keeps values like "ADICORP ELECTRIC INC" and drops values like "CRUZ, MARIO G".
• Owner names, owner addresses, owner phone numbers and personal emails are never included in the normalized output.
• In custom mode, pass-through columns whose names look personal (owner, applicant, permittee, contact, first/last name, phone, email, and similar) are dropped, and name-like columns are filtered with the same business heuristic.
• includeRaw: true attaches the original row exactly as the portal publishes it, which may contain fields the normalized output omits. Turn it on only when you need it and handle the data responsibly.

Custom portals

Any Socrata dataset works, not just the built-in ones. Find the dataset id in the portal URL (the xxxx-xxxx part, e.g. https://data.example.gov/d/abcd-1234) and map the columns you care about:

{
  "cities": [],
  "custom": {
    "domain": "data.honolulu.gov",
    "datasetId": "4vab-c87q",
    "city": "Honolulu",
    "state": "HI",
    "fieldMap": {
      "permitNumber": "buildingpermitno",
      "permitType": "buildingpermittype",
      "status": "statusdescription",
      "address": "address",
      "issuedDate": "issuedate",
      "completedDate": "completeddate",
      "estimatedCost": "estimatedvalueofwork",
      "fees": "bpfeescollected",
      "contractorName": "contractor"
    }
  },
  "maxResultsPerCity": 100
}

fieldMap keys are the normalized output names; values are the dataset's column names. issuedDate is used for the $where date filters and $order; permitType and estimatedCost enable the type and cost filters. Columns you do not map are passed through under their original names (minus personal-looking ones). If the dataset stores dates as MM/DD/YYYY text, add "dateKind": "textMDY"; if the cost column is text, add "costIsText": true. Point coordinates in a location column are picked up automatically.

Integrations and API

Run it on a schedule, connect it to Google Sheets, Slack, Zapier, Make or a webhook through Apify integrations, or call it from your own code with the Apify API and client libraries for JavaScript and Python. Results are available as JSON, CSV, Excel or XML from the dataset endpoint, and you can filter the dataset view to just the columns you need.

FAQ

Why is contractorName empty for San Francisco or Los Angeles? Those portals do not publish a contractor column in their permit dataset. The field is null rather than guessed.

Why do some Chicago permits have no contractor? Chicago lists up to fifteen contacts per permit; when none of them is a contractor company (for example owner-as-general-contractor jobs, or a sole proprietor listed by personal name), the field is left empty by design.

Why does the legacy NYC dataset (nyc_bis) behave differently? DOB BIS stores issuance dates as MM/DD/YYYY text, so the Actor restricts the query by month and applies the exact date range client-side. Use nyc (DOB NOW) for current filings; BIS mostly holds older jobs.

Do I need a Socrata app token? No. Anonymous requests work; a token only raises rate limits for very large pulls.

Can I get every permit ever issued? Yes, leave the date filters empty and raise maxResultsPerCity (up to 100,000 per run). For full historical exports run once per city or per year range.

Why are Dallas, Nashville, Baltimore or Kansas City missing? They either moved off Socrata or stopped updating their Socrata dataset. If they publish a Socrata dataset again it can be used through custom mode immediately.