Hamilton Building Permits 2017–2023 – Open Data
Pricing
$3.00 / 1,000 permit results
Hamilton Building Permits 2017–2023 – Open Data
Hamilton, ON building & demolition permits from official open data (~51,800 source rows, 2017–Dec 2023): type, work type, status, issue date, community and more. One clean row per permit, JSON/CSV. City of Hamilton Open Data Licence. No addresses. $0.003 per permit, no start fee.
Building & Demolition Permits for Hamilton only, from the city's official open dataset (~51,800 source rows, 2017–Dec 2023), via the ArcGIS REST API — no website scraping. Historical only: the City's feed ends at 2023-12-22.
- Key fields:
permitNumber,permitType,workType,status,issuedDate,community,postalCode. - Licence: City of Hamilton Open Data Licence; every record carries the required credit and licence link.
- Output: structured JSON, or CSV / Excel from the Apify dataset. Filters run at the source (type, status, issued dates and more), up to 50,000 permits per run.
- Privacy: street addresses and free-text descriptions removed; postal codes cut to FSA and coordinates rounded to ~1 km where present.
Why not build it yourself? No ArcGIS/Socrata paging, field mapping, date normalising or de-duplication to write and maintain. You get one tidy row per permit with consistent field names and ISO dates.
Price: $0.003 per result (three-tenths of a cent; 1,000 results = $3.00), no start fee. You pay only for permits returned.
What it does
This Actor reads historical building and demolition permits from the City of Hamilton's official open dataset (Hamilton open data, about 51,800 source rows) through the ArcGIS REST query API. It does not scrape any website. Historical data: the City's feed ends at 2023-12-22.
Rows are deduplicated so you get one record per permit number.
Free open data vs. this Actor
The dataset is free on the Hamilton open-data portal. Use that for a one-off download. This Actor is for:
- Filters at the source: permit type, status, issued dates, keyword
- Clean JSON: ISO dates, consistent field names, one row per permit
- Privacy trimming: no street addresses, no free-text descriptions, no names
- Scheduled runs and Apify API / Sheets / Make / Zapier exports
Who it's for
- Planners, housing and urban researchers measuring construction and land-use activity
- Analysts and journalists tracking building and demolition permits over time
- Teams building dashboards on official municipal open data
What data you get
| Field | Meaning |
|---|---|
permitNumber | City permit number |
permitType | Permit type / class |
workType | Kind of work |
status | Permit status |
applicationDate | YYYY-MM-DD |
issuedDate | YYYY-MM-DD |
completedDate | YYYY-MM-DD |
community | Community / former municipality |
postalCode | Postal code |
source | Source portal |
licence | The City's required attribution statement, plus the licence link |
Input
| Field | Key | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Permit type contains | permitType | e.g. Single Family Dwelling, Multiple Dwelling (case-insensitive). |
| Work type contains | workType | e.g. Alteration, New Construction, Partial Demolition. |
| Status contains | status | e.g. Closed, Issued. |
| Issued on/after (YYYY-MM-DD) | issuedFrom | Optional start date. |
| Issued on/before (YYYY-MM-DD) | issuedTo | Optional end date. |
| Keyword | keyword | Server-side filter on permit class, work class and permit number. |
| Max permits | maxItems | Stop after this many permits. |
Bad dates or an inverted date range fail before any API call, with a clear error.
Example input:
Pricing
Pay per result: $0.003 per permit result (one result = one permit), with no start fee. You pay only for permits returned.
Licence and privacy
- Licence: City of Hamilton Open Data Licence. The licence grants a worldwide, royalty-free licence to use the Data "including for commercial purposes" and to copy, modify, publish, adapt and distribute it. You must include the attribution statement "Contains public sector Data made available under the City of Hamilton’s Open Data Licence", which every record carries. The licence does not cover personal information.
- No endorsement: this Actor is independent. It does not suggest any official status or City of Hamilton endorsement and does not use City names, crests or logos as branding.
- Privacy: The output is reduced, not anonymous: permit numbers can be looked up in City records and may be tied to a property, and a permit can still relate to an identifiable homeowner. Street addresses (civic number, street name and unit) and free-text work descriptions are removed. Postal codes, where present, are cut to the first 3 characters (FSA). Owner, applicant and contractor names are not exported. Records still include permit number, permit type, work type, status, application/issue/completion dates, community and postal FSA. Also not exported: the province column (always ON). The source has no owner, applicant or contractor name fields.
Limits
- Coverage is the City of Hamilton only.
- The source feed appears frozen: despite its "2017 to Present" title, the newest issue date in the City's layer is 2023-12-22 (checked Oct 16, 2026). Treat this as a 2017–2023 historical dataset unless the City resumes updates.
- Data freshness and completeness match the Hamilton open-data feed. This Actor does not add or correct permits.
- Max 50,000 permits per run. Pages of 1,000 with a 1 s pause between pages.
- Fields can be null when the source left them blank.
FAQ
Is this scraping? No. It queries the city's public ArcGIS REST API.
Does it include owner or applicant names or addresses? No. Street addresses and descriptions are removed to reduce the link to a specific home. The output is reduced, not anonymous.
Can I use it commercially? Yes. The City of Hamilton Open Data Licence allows commercial use with the City's attribution statement (in every record). Don't imply City endorsement or misrepresent the data.
