Building Permits Leads: Contractor & Construction Data

Every week thousands of building permits are issued across major U.S. cities. This Actor turns official city permit records into ready-to-use leads: site address, permit type, job valuation and the contractor's business name where the city publishes one, filtered to your city, work type and date range.

What you get

• Fresh permits from five official city open-data portals: New York City, Chicago, Austin, Seattle and San Francisco. Each record has site address, permit type, issue date, job valuation and status where published.
• Contractor's business name included only when the source clearly identifies a registered business; personal names, phone numbers and email addresses are never collected.
• Filters for date, city, ZIP, work type and minimum job valuation, plus an alert mode that returns only permits you have not seen yet.

Quick start

1. Choose a date range: the last N days (default 30) or an exact start date.
2. Add filters if you want them: cities, permit types, ZIP prefixes and a minimum valuation.
3. Click Start, then export the results.

Worked example: city Austin, work type new construction, minimum valuation $100,000, last 7 days. Your count will vary week to week. Set a maximum cost per run and the Actor stops cleanly when your budget is reached.

Who uses it

• Suppliers and subcontractors: reach projects before they buy materials or staff a job. Filter by type and valuation to prioritise high-value work in your area.

• Lenders and insurers: flag properties under active development for construction loans and builder's risk insurance by city and valuation.

• Accountants and bookkeeping firms: capture newly permitted contractors running active projects with payroll and tax needs.

Sample output

Example rows showing the format:

Issued	City	Type	Address	Contractor
2026-09-18	Austin	new_construction	100 ELM ST	HILL COUNTRY BUILDERS LLC
2026-09-20	Seattle	electrical	2401 N 45TH ST	APEX ELECTRIC INC
2026-09-22	Chicago	addition_alteration	1847 W MADISON ST

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
Cities	array	all 5	New York, Chicago, Austin, Seattle, San Francisco.
Permits issued in the last N days	integer	30	Look back N days from today.
Issued on or after	date	none	Start date in YYYY-MM-DD format.
Permit / work type	array	all types	New construction, alteration, demolition, electrical, plumbing, mechanical, other.
Minimum job valuation (USD)	integer	none	Only permits at or above this amount.
ZIP codes or ZIP prefixes	array	none	Full ZIP or prefix. Chicago has no ZIP code.
Maximum results	integer	20	Results returned. You pay per result.

Alert mode: only new records

Run the Actor on a schedule and get only the permits issued since your last run. The first run returns normal results; every run after that returns only new permits. You pay only for new results, so a run with nothing new costs nothing.

Set it up in three steps:

1. Create a Task in Apify Console with all your filters (cities, work types, valuation).
2. In the Task input, set "Only new since" to lastRun.
3. Go to the Task Schedule tab, click Add Schedule and choose daily or weekly.

Keep your filters the same on every run. How the Actor remembers what it already sent is explained in the FAQ.

Pricing

$3.00 per 1,000 results ($0.003 per permit).

Worked examples: 100 results cost $0.30, 1,000 results cost $3.00, and 10,000 results cost $30.00. Set a maximum cost per run in the run options and the Actor stops cleanly when your budget is reached.

Integrations

• Google Sheets: send every run's results to a sheet automatically.
• Zapier and Make: trigger a workflow for each new permit, for example add it to your CRM.
• Slack: post a message when a run finds new permits.
• Apify API: download results as CSV, Excel or JSON from your own code.
• Export: CSV, Excel and JSON downloads straight from the dataset view.

Data source and compliance

The data is published as open data by each city and accessed through each city's official public API without login. Only the contractor's registered business name is included; owner names, applicant names, phone numbers and email addresses are never collected.

You are responsible for compliance with CAN-SPAM and TCPA when contacting businesses. Only contact business decision-makers at the business address. This Actor is not affiliated with any city and data should be verified before relying on it for business decisions.

FAQ

How current is the data? The Actor queries each city's live dataset every time it runs, so results are as current as each city's latest publication.

Why do some records have null values? Not every city publishes every field. Chicago has no site ZIP code and San Francisco publishes no contractor name. Contractor names are only included when they look like registered businesses (LLC, Inc., Corp., etc.).

What do the permit types mean? Permit types are normalised categories (new construction, addition, demolition, electrical, plumbing, mechanical, other) derived from each city's free-text classifications and used as a convenience filter only.

Could workDescription contain a name? Occasionally, as it is the city's own free text published as-is.

Can I use this for cold outreach? Yes, but comply with CAN-SPAM and TCPA laws. Only contact business decision-makers at the business address.

How does alert mode work? The Actor saves delivered permit ids to a key value store (alert-building-permits-{code}) and skips them on future runs. It looks back 7 days by default to catch late-posted permits and never charges twice. To reset, delete the store in Apify Console or set a custom alert mode stable state name.

Where are the city data portals? NYC: https://data.cityofnewyork.us/dataset/rbx6-tga4. Chicago: https://data.cityofchicago.org/dataset/ydr8-5enu. Austin: https://data.austintexas.gov/dataset/3syk-w9eu. Seattle: https://data.seattle.gov/dataset/76t5-zqzr. San Francisco: https://data.sf.gov/dataset/i98e-djp9.

More from Ledgerstar

• Texas New Business Leads: weekly new sales tax permits from the Texas Comptroller: https://apify.com/ledgerstar/texas-sales-tax-permits

• New Business Filings: Colorado and New York business formation data: https://apify.com/ledgerstar/state-business-filings

• Nonprofit Finder: IRS Exempt Organizations by state: https://apify.com/ledgerstar/nonprofit-finder

• Chamber of Commerce Directory Scraper: Local Chamber of Commerce business lists: https://apify.com/ledgerstar/chamber-directory-scraper

Support

Support: open an issue on this Actor's Issues tab in Apify Console.