Building Permits Scraper: construction leads from 47 US cities and counties (one schema, no API key)

Get newly issued building permits from the official open-data portals of 47 US cities and counties, including Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Austin, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Baltimore, San Antonio, San Jose, Pittsburgh, Nashville, Louisville, Columbus, Cleveland, Orlando, Miami-Dade County, San Diego County and the whole state of New Jersey. Use it as a building permit API for contractor and construction lead generation (roofing, solar, HVAC, remodeling, new construction). Every city comes back in one clean, unified schema: permit number, type, normalized work category, description, issue date, job valuation, project address, ZIP, coordinates, and the contractor business name where the city publishes one.

No scraping, no browser, no proxies. The Actor reads each city's public API (Socrata, ArcGIS REST, CKAN or Carto), so runs take seconds. A 7-day, 9-city pull (before the 2026-10 expansion) returns about 5,900 permits in about 4 seconds.

Who uses this

• Contractors, subcontractors and suppliers looking for fresh project leads: new construction, roofing, solar, HVAC, electrical, demolition.
• Building-material and equipment-rental sales teams tracking where work is starting.
• Proptech, insurance and lending analysts monitoring renovation and new-construction activity by ZIP or neighborhood.
• Market researchers and journalists comparing construction activity and valuations across major US cities.

Cities and sources (49 feeds, 47 cities and counties, 20 states + DC)

Place	State	cities ID	Platform	Contractor business names	Source
Mesa	AZ	mesa_az	socrata	yes	dataset
Anaheim	CA	anaheim_ca	arcgis	yes	dataset
Citrus Heights	CA	citrus_heights_ca	arcgis	yes	dataset
Corona	CA	corona_ca	socrata	no	dataset
Los Angeles	CA	los_angeles	socrata	no	dataset
Marin County	CA	marin_county_ca	socrata	yes	dataset
San Diego County (unincorporated)	CA	san_diego_county_ca	socrata	yes	dataset
San Francisco	CA	san_francisco	socrata	no	dataset
San Jose (last 30 days feed)	CA	san_jose_ca	ckan	yes	dataset
Boulder	CO	boulder_co	arcgis	yes	dataset
Washington, DC (last 30 days feed)	DC	washington_dc	arcgis	some	dataset
Miami-Dade County (unincorporated)	FL	miami_dade_fl	arcgis	yes	dataset
Orlando	FL	orlando_fl	socrata	yes	dataset
Boise (high-impact permits)	ID	boise_id	arcgis	no	dataset
Chicago	IL	chicago	socrata	yes	dataset
Overland Park	KS	overland_park_ks	arcgis	no	dataset
Louisville Metro (active construction permits)	KY	louisville_ky	arcgis	some	dataset
Baton Rouge (East Baton Rouge Parish)	LA	baton_rouge	socrata	yes	dataset
New Orleans	LA	new_orleans	socrata	yes	dataset
Boston	MA	boston	ckan	some	dataset
Cambridge, MA (additions/alterations)	MA	cambridge_ma_alterations	socrata	yes	dataset
Cambridge, MA (new construction)	MA	cambridge_ma_new	socrata	no	dataset
Worcester	MA	worcester_ma	arcgis	some	dataset
Baltimore	MD	baltimore_md	arcgis	no	dataset
Montgomery County, MD (commercial)	MD	montgomery_county_md_commercial	socrata	no	dataset
Montgomery County, MD (residential)	MD	montgomery_county_md_residential	socrata	no	dataset
New Jersey (statewide, all municipalities)	NJ	new_jersey	socrata	n/a	dataset
New York City	NY	nyc	socrata	yes	dataset
Cincinnati	OH	cincinnati	socrata	yes	dataset
Cleveland	OH	cleveland_oh	arcgis	yes	dataset
Columbus	OH	columbus_oh	arcgis	yes	dataset
Delaware County (townships)	OH	delaware_county_oh	arcgis	yes	dataset
Philadelphia	PA	philadelphia	carto	yes	dataset
Pittsburgh	PA	pittsburgh_pa	ckan	no	dataset
Sumter	SC	sumter_sc	arcgis	no	dataset
Nashville (Davidson County)	TN	nashville_tn	arcgis	yes	dataset
Austin	TX	austin	socrata	yes	dataset
College Station	TX	college_station_tx	socrata	no	dataset
Collin County (appraisal district)	TX	collin_county_tx	socrata	some	dataset
Hutto	TX	hutto_tx	arcgis	no	dataset
San Antonio	TX	san_antonio_tx	ckan	yes	dataset
Tyler	TX	tyler_tx	arcgis	yes	dataset
Chesapeake	VA	chesapeake_va	arcgis	yes	dataset
Norfolk	VA	norfolk_va	socrata	no	dataset
Virginia Beach	VA	virginia_beach_va	ckan	no	dataset
Bellevue	WA	bellevue_wa	arcgis	yes	dataset
Everett	WA	everett_wa	socrata	yes	dataset
Pierce County (unincorporated)	WA	pierce_county_wa	socrata	no	dataset
Seattle	WA	seattle	socrata	some	dataset

Refresh notes: most feeds update daily. Los Angeles updates weekly. New Jersey (statewide, every municipality) is published with a 2–3 month lag, so use issuedWithinDays of 120 or more for it. Washington DC's and San Jose's feeds cover the last 30 days only. Boise is high-impact permits only.

Privacy by design: no personal names

• Owner, applicant and individual contractor name columns are never requested from the city APIs.
• Where a city mixes people and companies in one column (Chicago contacts, Boston applicant, Cincinnati company), a name is kept only if it carries a legal-entity designator: LLC, Inc., Corp., Co., Company, Ltd., LP, LLP, PC, PLLC, or Joint Venture/JV. Strings like "ACME ELECTRIC CO / JOHN DOE" are split, and only the company part is kept.
• Emails and phone numbers inside free-text descriptions are masked.
• The address is the project site address the city publishes for the permit. Owner mailing addresses are never output.

Input

Field	What it does	Default
cities	Any IDs from the coverage table above	all
states	2-letter state codes, e.g. ["TX","FL"]; narrows the cities	none
regions	northeast, midwest, south, west (US Census regions)	none
issuedWithinDays	Permits issued in the last N days	7
issuedFrom / issuedTo	Exact issue-date window (YYYY-MM-DD)	none
workCategories	Normalized categories: New construction, Addition / alteration, Demolition, Roofing, Solar, Electrical, Plumbing, Mechanical / HVAC, Fire protection, Sign, Scaffold / shed / fence, Structural / foundation / earthwork, Other	all
permitTypes	Words in the city's own permit type or work class, e.g. Sidewalk Shed, Commercial	none
minValuation	Minimum declared job value in USD	none
keywords	Words in the description, e.g. restaurant, ADU, pool, battery	none
onlyWithContractor	Only permits that name a contractor business	false
maxResults	Total cap across cities, newest first	100
maxResultsPerCity	Optional cap per city	none

Example: new construction worth $1M or more in the last 90 days, all cities:

{ "issuedWithinDays": 90, "workCategories": ["New construction"], "minValuation": 1000000, "maxResults": 5000 }

Output

{
  "city": "Austin",
  "state": "TX",
  "permitNumber": "2025-036109 EP",
  "permitType": "Electrical Permit - Residential",
  "workClass": "New",
  "workCategory": "Electrical",
  "description": "New 2-story SFR with pool - 5 beds 6 baths ...",
  "status": "Active",
  "appliedDate": "2023-09-06",
  "issuedDate": "2026-10-17",
  "valuation": null,
  "address": "1902 HOLLY HILL DR",
  "zipCode": "78746",
  "latitude": 30.26199033,
  "longitude": -97.80259078,
  "housingUnitsChange": 1,
  "squareFeet": 5758,
  "contractorBusinessName": "Jd Trusted Electric LLC",
  "contractorRole": "Electrical Contractor",
  "contractors": [{ "name": "Jd Trusted Electric LLC", "role": "Electrical Contractor" }],
  "permitUrl": "https://abc.austintexas.gov/web/permit/public-search-other?...",
  "sourceUrl": "https://data.austintexas.gov/d/3syk-w9eu"
}

Results from all cities are merged newest first, with same-day permits balanced across cities. The dataset has two views: Permits and Contractor leads. A RUN_SUMMARY record gives per-city counts and any city that was temporarily unavailable. One city being down never fails the whole run.

Run it daily

Schedule the Actor daily with issuedWithinDays: 2 and send new permits to Google Sheets, a webhook, Make, Zapier or your CRM.

Pricing

Pay per result: you are charged only for the permits returned. maxResults and your run's spending limit both cap the cost. See the Pricing tab.

FAQ

Is this legal to use? Yes. All sources are official city, county or state open-data portals (Socrata, ArcGIS Hub/REST, CKAN, Carto) published for public reuse. Several are public domain (Seattle, Austin, Cincinnati, Baton Rouge, Montgomery County MD, New Orleans under CC0) or ODC-PDDL (San Francisco, Boston). San Antonio (City of San Antonio, data.sanantonio.gov) and Pittsburgh (City of Pittsburgh via WPRDC) data are used under CC BY 4.0, and San Jose data under CC0. Philadelphia data is used under the City of Philadelphia open-data terms via OpenDataPhilly. Required notice, per Chicago's Data Terms of Use: "This site provides applications using data that has been modified for use from its original source, www.cityofchicago.org, the official website of the City of Chicago. The City of Chicago makes no claims as to the content, accuracy, timeliness, or completeness of any of the data provided at this site. The data provided at this site is subject to change at any time. It is understood that the data provided at this site is being used at one's own risk."

Why is Los Angeles empty for the last few days? LA refreshes its permit dataset weekly. Use issuedWithinDays of 14 or more for LA.

Why do some permits have no valuation or contractor? Cities publish different fields. For example, San Francisco and LA don't publish contractor names, and NYC trade permits often omit a valuation. Missing values are null, never guessed.

How is workCategory assigned? From each city's permit type and work class, using fixed keyword rules, with the description as a fallback. Use permitTypes to filter on the city's original wording.

Can you add my city? The Actor is built to add any Socrata, CKAN or ArcGIS open-data city. Open an issue with the dataset link.

Not affiliated with or endorsed by any of the cities listed.