NYC Building Permits & Construction Leads Scraper

Export current NYC DOB NOW approved building permits as clean, analysis-ready records. Each result combines the project address, issue date, work type, estimated job cost, applicant or contractor identity, license, owner details, job description and coordinates. The Actor uses the City of New York's public data service, needs no external API key and can produce hundreds of thousands of construction-market records.

What can you do with this Actor?

• Build fresh construction lead lists by borough, work type, issue date and project value.
• Find contractors, permit applicants, filing representatives and property owners already involved in active work.
• Monitor renovation, plumbing, electrical, HVAC, structural and general-construction demand.
• Enrich real-estate, insurance, lending, building-material and local-market datasets.
• Export repeatable permit snapshots to Google Sheets, a database, BI tooling or your own API.

This is a bulk data Actor rather than a browser automation workflow. It reads the official DOB NOW: Build – Approved Permits dataset directly, so runs are fast, deterministic and not affected by website layout changes.

Input

All filters are optional. An empty input exports the newest permits first.

Field	Type	Description
boroughs	string[]	Exact borough names such as MANHATTAN, BROOKLYN or QUEENS.
workTypes	string[]	Exact DOB work-type names, for example Plumbing, Electrical, General Construction or Mechanical Systems.
permitStatuses	string[]	Exact permit statuses to include.
issuedSince	date	Earliest permit issue date, inclusive.
issuedBefore	date	Latest boundary date, exclusive.
zipCodes	string[]	Project ZIP codes.
applicantBusinessContains	string	Case-insensitive applicant or contractor company search.
ownerBusinessContains	string	Case-insensitive property-owner company search.
minEstimatedJobCost	number	Minimum estimated project cost in USD.
maxResults	integer	Maximum unique permits to save, up to 500,000.

Example for recent higher-value Brooklyn work:

{
  "boroughs": ["BROOKLYN"],
  "issuedSince": "2026-01-01",
  "minEstimatedJobCost": 100000,
  "maxResults": 10000
}

Output

One dataset item represents one approved work-permit record. Important fields include:

Field	Meaning
permitRecordId, workPermitNumber, jobFilingNumber	Stable DOB identifiers for matching and deduplication.
issuedDate, approvedDate, expiredDate, permitStatus	Permit lifecycle.
borough, address, zipCode, latitude, longitude	Project location.
workType, workOnFloor, jobDescription, estimatedJobCost	Scope and value signals.
applicantName, applicantBusinessName, applicantLicense	Applicant or contractor lead fields.
filingRepresentativeName, filingRepresentativeBusinessName	Filing representative fields.
ownerName, ownerBusinessName, ownerAddress	Property-owner information available in the source.
bin, block, lot, bbl	NYC property identifiers.
sourceUrl, scrapedAt	Lineage and export timestamp.

{
  "workPermitNumber": "B01234567-I1-PL",
  "issuedDate": "2026-07-31",
  "borough": "BROOKLYN",
  "address": "125 EXAMPLE AVENUE",
  "workType": "Plumbing",
  "estimatedJobCost": 185000,
  "applicantBusinessName": "EXAMPLE CONTRACTING LLC",
  "ownerBusinessName": "EXAMPLE OWNER LLC",
  "latitude": 40.68,
  "longitude": -73.95
}

Practical lead-generation patterns

For the freshest leads, set issuedSince to the beginning of the current month and sort downstream by issuedDate. Suppliers can segment by workType; lenders and insurers can combine project cost with address and owner fields; contractors can monitor filings outside their existing accounts. Large exports are paginated automatically, and each record is deduplicated by its DOB tracking identifier.

The source occasionally leaves individual columns blank because not every filing requires every field. The Actor preserves meaningful null values rather than inventing data.

Integrations and API

Run the Actor from the Apify Console, Scheduler, REST API, JavaScript or Python client. Dataset results can be downloaded as JSON, JSONL, CSV, Excel, XML or RSS, or connected to webhooks, Google Sheets, Make, Zapier and other Apify integrations.

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/logiover~nyc-dob-now-building-permits-scraper/runs?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"boroughs":["QUEENS"],"maxResults":5000}'

The Actor can also be exposed as a tool through Apify's MCP server, allowing an AI agent to request current permit leads with structured filters.

FAQ

Does it need a NYC Open Data token? No. It works without an external API key.

How much data can it return? Up to 500,000 unique records per run, subject to the filters and records available in the official dataset.

Is this historical or current data? The source is the current DOB NOW approved-permits dataset and is updated by NYC.

Are contractor phone numbers or emails included? No. The source exposes business, person, address and license fields, not guaranteed phone or email data.

Why is estimated cost sometimes null? Some permit rows do not report a usable cost value.

Can I run it every day? Yes. Use an Apify schedule and an issue-date window, then deduplicate downstream by permitRecordId.

Can I filter arbitrary text in job descriptions? The current version focuses on stable lead filters. Export the records and apply free-text classification downstream when needed.

Is the data legal to use? The Actor accesses public NYC data. You remain responsible for your use, outreach rules and applicable privacy or marketing law.

Responsible use

This Actor is not affiliated with or endorsed by the New York City Department of Buildings. Data is provided as reported by the public source and may be corrected or updated later. Verify critical decisions against official records and use personal information responsibly.

Changelog

2026-08-04

• Initial release using the current DOB NOW approved-permits dataset.
• Added bulk pagination, stable deduplication and no-key operation.
• Added borough, work type, date, ZIP, business-name and project-cost filters.
• Validated normalized identifiers, dates, lead fields, cost values and geolocation output.