Building Permit Lead Monitor

Apify Store title: Building Permit Lead Monitor for Contractors

Apify Store description:

Turn new building permits into ready-to-work sales leads. Every issued permit is a construction job about to start, which means a buyer for materials, equipment, subcontracting, roofing, solar, plumbing, insurance, and financing. This actor pulls the most-recent issued permits from New York City DOB open data (or any Socrata civic portal you point it at) and returns clean rows: address, work type, job description, estimated job cost, applicant business, owner, license, coordinates, a NYC.gov building record link, and a Google Maps link. Zero-config default run returns fresh permits immediately. 100% public government data: no login, no PII.

Source + legality

GET https://data.cityofnewyork.us/resource/rbx6-tga4.json?$where=...&$order=issued_date DESC&$limit=... - the NYC Department of Buildings "DOB NOW: Build - Approved Permits" dataset on the city's public Socrata (SODA) open-data portal. Statutorily public municipal records; no authentication, no API key needed for modest use, no consumer PII. A descriptive User-Agent is sent as good-citizen practice.

Which dataset (and why)

NYC publishes building permits in two Socrata datasets:

• rbx6-tga4 - "DOB NOW: Build - Approved Permits" (this actor's default). The current live system. Proper calendar_date columns, so "most recent" ordering is reliably chronological, and it carries the exact lead fields buyers want: job_description, applicant_business_name, and estimated_job_costs.
• ipu4-2q9a - "DOB Permit Issuance" (legacy BIS). Still updated but all date columns are stored as free text with mixed formats, so ordering by newest is unreliable, and it has no job description or estimated cost. Point the actor at it by setting datasetUrl to that resource and dateField to issuance_date if you need the legacy history; the field mapping falls back automatically.

Zero-config default run

Empty input pulls the newest issued NYC building permits (issued_date IS NOT NULL, ordered issued_date DESC, 25 rows) and returns real fresh leads, so the Store "try it" button works on first click.

Generalises to any city

datasetUrl and dateField are inputs. Point the actor at any Socrata building-permit dataset (Chicago, Los Angeles, Austin, Seattle, and many more) and it returns the newest records. Curated lead fields are mapped by name with multi-alias fallback across common NYC DOB schemas; the full original record is always included under raw, so no data is lost on an unmapped portal.

Inputs

Input	Default	Purpose
datasetUrl	NYC DOB NOW	Socrata resource endpoint ending in .json.
dateField	issued_date	Column used to sort newest-first and apply the lookback.
borough	all	Optional NYC borough filter (case-insensitive).
workType	all	Optional case-insensitive work_type contains filter (e.g. Solar, Plumbing).
minJobCost	0	Only permits with estimated cost at least this (bigger leads).
lookbackDays	0	Only permits within N days; 0 returns newest regardless of age.
maxResults	25	Rows per run.

Output fields

permitId, workPermitNo, permitType, workType, filingReason, permitStatus, houseNo, street, borough, zip, address, issuedDate, approvedDate, expiredDate, jobDescription, estimatedJobCost, applicantBusiness, applicantName, applicantLicenseType, applicantLicenseNo, ownerBusiness, ownerName, bin, latitude, longitude, neighborhood, permitLink, mapUrl, raw

Run locally (no Apify account)

npm install
npm test --workspace actors/building-permits-monitor
# or run the actor directly:
node actors/building-permits-monitor/src/main.js

Proposed pricing (set in Apify at publish - CJ-gated)

Pay-Per-Event in the documented winning band:

• ~$0.004 per permit lead returned

Pricing is NOT set here - configured on the Apify Store at publish, CJ-gated. No account, no publish, no spend happens in this repo.