US Building Permits Scraper: Construction Leads, 17 Cities

Get newly issued building permits from the official open-data portals of 17 US cities and counties in one clean schema, with filters for project value, property type, kind of work and keywords, plus an "only new" mode for daily lead alerts.

Every portal publishes permits with its own column names, date formats and quirks. This Actor reads each city's official Socrata API, maps everything to the same fields and gives you one table you can drop into a CRM, a spreadsheet or a webhook.

What does US Building Permits Scraper do?

US Building Permits Scraper collects new building permits from the official open-data portals of 17 US cities and counties (Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Austin and more) in one normalized schema: permit type, work tags (solar, roofing, new construction...), job value, address, dates and contractor company. Use it for daily construction leads for contractors, suppliers and solar installers.

How to use US Building Permits Scraper

1. Click Try for free on this page (a free Apify account is enough to start).
2. Fill in the input (see the examples below) or keep the prefilled example.
3. Click Start and wait for the run to finish.
4. Download the results from the Output tab as JSON, CSV, Excel or HTML, or read them with the Apify API.
5. Optional: create a Schedule to run it daily or weekly, and connect a webhook or an integration (Make, Zapier, n8n, Slack).

Who uses it

• Contractors and subcontractors: roofers, electricians, HVAC, plumbers, pool builders, fence and window companies looking for jobs that just got permitted.
• Building material suppliers and equipment rental: find new construction and large remodels early.
• Solar, EV charger and battery installers: track solar and EV permits by city to size the market or watch competitors.
• Real-estate, lenders and market analysts: new construction and ADU activity by ZIP code.

Cities and counties covered

Source key	Jurisdiction	Portal	Contractor company
chicago	Chicago, IL	data.cityofchicago.org	yes
new-york-city	New York City, NY (DOB NOW: Build)	data.cityofnewyork.us	yes
los-angeles	Los Angeles, CA	data.lacity.org	no
san-francisco	San Francisco, CA	data.sf.gov	no
seattle	Seattle, WA	data.seattle.gov	yes
austin	Austin, TX	data.austintexas.gov	yes
cincinnati	Cincinnati, OH	data.cincinnati-oh.gov	yes
norfolk	Norfolk, VA	data.norfolk.gov	no
montgomery-county-md	Montgomery County, MD (residential + commercial)	data.montgomerycountymd.gov	no
cambridge	Cambridge, MA (new construction + additions/alterations)	data.cambridgema.gov	partial
marin-county	Marin County, CA	data.marincounty.gov	yes
corona	Corona, CA	corstat.coronaca.gov	no
baton-rouge	East Baton Rouge Parish, LA	data.brla.gov	yes
new-orleans	New Orleans, LA	data.nola.gov	yes
mesa	Mesa, AZ	citydata.mesaaz.gov	yes
buffalo	Buffalo, NY	data.buffalony.gov	partial
orlando	Orlando, FL	data.cityoforlando.net	yes

Most portals update daily; a few weekly (Corona). New permits usually show up 1-5 days after they are issued.

Privacy by design

Permit datasets often include owner names, applicant names and phone numbers. This Actor never outputs them. Only these are returned:

• the contractor company name, and only when it is clearly a business (a legal suffix like LLC / Inc / Corp, or a trade name like "Roofing", "Electric", "Construction"). Names that look like a person are dropped, and "Company LLC - John Smith" becomes "Company LLC";
• the job site address, permit type, work description, value and dates.

Phone numbers, email addresses and long account numbers that some cities leave inside the free-text description are replaced with [phone removed], [email removed] or [number removed].

Input

Field	What it does
Cities / counties	Any combination of the sources above.
Days back / Issued from / to	Issue-date window (up to 366 days per run).
Minimum / maximum project value	Declared job value in USD. Permits without a value are dropped unless you turn on Keep permits without a value.
Property type	Residential or commercial (from the city's class field when there is one, otherwise from type and use).
Work tags	New construction, addition/alteration, demolition, roofing, solar, electrical, plumbing, mechanical/HVAC, pool, sign, fence, EV charger, ADU, windows/doors, fire protection, elevator.
Keywords	Any word or phrase in the type, work class, description or contractor.
Only new permits + Alert name	Incremental mode: each run returns only permits not delivered before for that alert. Schedule it daily.
Max permits per run / per city, Max pages per city	Limits.
Socrata app token	Optional, only for very large pulls.

Example: daily alert of new homes and solar jobs over USD 50,000

{
  "sources": ["chicago", "austin", "los-angeles", "seattle"],
  "daysBack": 7,
  "minValue": 50000,
  "workTags": ["new-construction", "solar"],
  "onlyNew": true,
  "alertName": "new-homes-and-solar"
}

Output

One row per permit, always with the same keys (null when a city does not publish that field):

{
  "source": "seattle",
  "city": "Seattle",
  "state": "WA",
  "permitId": "7120118-CN",
  "permitType": "Addition/Alteration",
  "workType": "Single Family/Duplex",
  "description": "Allow housing for new detached housing unit per land use code. Existing detached dwelling to remain. Construct new one family dwelling per plan.",
  "status": "Issued",
  "valuationUsd": 258470,
  "squareFeet": null,
  "housingUnits": 1,
  "appliedDate": "2026-04-20",
  "issuedDate": "2026-10-23",
  "expiresDate": null,
  "address": "510 N 143RD ST",
  "zip": "98133",
  "latitude": 47.73262864,
  "longitude": -122.35252131,
  "contractorCompany": null,
  "propertyClass": "residential",
  "recordUrl": "https://services.seattle.gov/portal/customize/LinkToRecord.aspx?altId=7120118-CN",
  "workTags": ["new-construction", "addition-alteration"],
  "matchedKeywords": [],
  "datasetUrl": "https://data.seattle.gov/d/76t5-zqzr",
  "fetchedAt": "2026-10-26T22:01:00.247Z"
}

A RUN_SUMMARY record in the key-value store lists rows read, output, filtered and already seen per city, plus any source errors.

Export as JSON, CSV, Excel or send to Make, Zapier, n8n, Google Sheets or a webhook with Apify integrations.

Pricing

Pay per event:

• USD 0.01 per run (start).
• USD 4 per 1,000 permits in your results (USD 0.004 each).

Permits removed by your filters, duplicates and (in "only new" mode) permits already delivered are not charged. If a city's portal is down, that city is skipped with an error in the summary and nothing is charged for it. The Actor stops when your "max charge per run" is reached.

Good to know

• Values are the declared job value from the application, not a final cost. Many trade permits (electrical, plumbing, mechanical) carry no value.
• Work tags and residential/commercial come from the city's own fields and text matching: good for filtering, not a legal classification.
• Each city decides what it publishes. Some cities do not publish contractor names at all (see the table).
• Data comes from official public open-data APIs, read politely (about 1 request per second per portal, as their robots.txt asks). Check each portal's terms for your use case.

FAQ

Can I call it from my own code or from an AI agent? Yes. Start runs and fetch results with the Apify API or the JavaScript / Python clients, or use it as a tool from Claude, Cursor and other MCP clients through the Apify MCP server (mcp.apify.com).

Can I run it automatically? Yes. Create a Schedule in Apify Console (for example every morning) and add a webhook or an integration to get the results where you need them.

Which export formats are available? JSON, JSONL, CSV, Excel (XLSX), XML, RSS and HTML table, from the Output tab or the API.

What does it cost? See the Pricing section above. You only pay for the events listed there.

Changelog

• 0.1 (2026-10): first version, 19 datasets in 17 jurisdictions.