County Multifamily Building Permits Surge Radar — Find Apartment Construction Demand Shifts

For building-product suppliers, developers, lenders and brokers who need to spot where multifamily construction demand is accelerating. One run returns U.S. counties where 5+ unit residential building permit authorizations are accelerating year over year, ranked and ready to export. Pay-per-result: $0.01 per county signal — 100 signals = $1.00. You pay only for results delivered, capped by maxItems. Try it free with Apify's monthly platform credit.

Instead of downloading two Census files and joining counties manually, set a minimum unit count and growth threshold and get export-ready rows with current/prior authorizations, permit valuation, multifamily mix and source links.

Quick start (2 minutes)

1. Open the Input tab (no Census account or key needed — the source is public).
2. Use this prefill for fast-growing Texas/Florida counties:

{"states":["TX","FL"],"minCurrentFivePlusUnits":100,"minYoYGrowthPercent":50,"maxItems":50}

3. Click Start. Export the ranked county list to CSV/JSON, or pull it via the API shown below into your own territory model.

Why use this Actor?

Spot counties with accelerating apartment/multifamily authorization activity; use same-month year-over-year comparison rather than noisier month-over-month movement; prioritize territories with minimum-unit and growth filters; keep source facts separate from derived metrics; cap spend and output with maxItems.

Use cases

• Building-product suppliers planning sales territory coverage around counties with surging multifamily permit volume.
• Developers and land buyers screening markets for accelerating apartment demand before committing capital.
• Lenders and brokers building a monthly watchlist of counties worth a closer look for construction financing.
• Housing-supply analysts tracking geographic demand shifts for dashboards and market reports.

Run it weekly

Census revises county BPS data monthly, so a weekly run mostly re-confirms the same month until a new one posts:

1. Set your states/minCurrentFivePlusUnits/minYoYGrowthPercent filters, then click Schedule on the run page (or create one under Schedules in the Apify Console).
2. A monthly schedule matches Census's own release cadence; a weekly schedule catches a revised month sooner.
3. Compare currentPeriod across runs — a new value means Census has released a new county file, which is your signal to refresh your territory list.

How it works

1. Discovers official Census BPS county monthly files.
2. Uses the latest revised month by default, or your requested month.
3. Loads the same month one year earlier.
4. Joins by county FIPS, filters 5+ unit authorizations, calculates YoY/mix metrics and ranks signals.
5. Delivers up to maxItems rows.

Input

Field	Default	Description
targetMonth	latest	Optional YYYY-MM available from Census.
states	all	Optional U.S. postal codes.
minCurrentFivePlusUnits	20	Minimum current-month 5+ unit authorizations.
minYoYGrowthPercent	25	Minimum YoY growth when prior-year base is nonzero.
maxItems	100	Hard delivered/billable signal cap.

{"states":["TX","FL"],"minCurrentFivePlusUnits":100,"minYoYGrowthPercent":50,"maxItems":50}

Output

Source facts include county/FIPS, current and prior-year 5+ unit authorizations, current 5+ buildings and published permit valuation. Derived fields include yoyFivePlusUnitChange, yoyFivePlusGrowthPercent, derivedFivePlusValuePerUnit, derivedFivePlusSharePercent and derivedReportedCoveragePercent. A zero prior-year base is represented by priorYearBaseWasZero: true and a null percentage rather than an invented infinite growth rate.

Output example

Illustrative only:

{"countyName":"Example County","state":"Texas","stateCode":"TX","currentPeriod":"2026-07","priorYearPeriod":"2025-07","currentFivePlusUnits":420,"priorYearFivePlusUnits":210,"yoyFivePlusUnitChange":210,"yoyFivePlusGrowthPercent":100,"currentFivePlusPermitValue":62000000,"derivedFivePlusValuePerUnit":147619.05,"priorYearBaseWasZero":false,"currentSourceUrl":"https://www2.census.gov/econ/bps/County/co2607c.txt"}

Field	Value (illustrative)
countyName / state	Example County, Texas
currentPeriod / priorYearPeriod	2026-07 / 2025-07
currentFivePlusUnits	420
priorYearFivePlusUnits	210
yoyFivePlusGrowthPercent	100
currentFivePlusPermitValue	62000000
derivedFivePlusValuePerUnit	147619.05

How the data is transformed

The Actor joins current and prior-year county records using stable state+county FIPS codes. It does not claim that an authorization is a construction start, completion, project lead or revenue event. Published permit valuation remains a source fact; ratios and growth measures are explicitly named as derived fields.

API usage

from apify_client import ApifyClient
client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("YOUR_USERNAME/county-multifamily-permit-surge-radar").call(run_input={"states":["TX"],"maxItems":50})
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item["countyName"], item["currentFivePlusUnits"], item["yoyFivePlusGrowthPercent"])

Scheduling / recurring use

Census releases revised county BPS data monthly. Schedule the Actor monthly to refresh territory, market and supply-pipeline watchlists.

Data source and trust

Source: U.S. Census Bureau Building Permits Survey (BPS), official County current-month ASCII files. Census publishes monthly county estimates for new privately owned residential construction authorized by permits. No account or API key is required.

Reliability and data quality

Built-in quality checks detect malformed or degraded source responses and reject data that no longer resembles expected Census county records instead of quietly treating it as valid. Individual source fields can still be revised or imputed by Census; the Actor preserves that limitation and does not guess missing commercial facts.

Pricing and cost control

$0.01 per county signal (100 signals = $1.00), one delivered county signal per event. maxItems is the hard result/billing cap. Filtered records, retries, failed parsing and empty output are not charged.

Important limitations

BPS measures permit authorizations for new privately owned residential construction, not starts or completions. County rows are market-level signals, not individual project leads. Census methodology includes imputation. Published valuation is permit valuation, not project market value or expected revenue.

FAQ

Does this find individual apartment projects? No. It identifies county-level multifamily authorization surges.

Why compare year over year? Comparing the same month helps reduce obvious seasonal effects.

What does 5+ units mean? Census groups residential buildings with five or more housing units as a structure category.

Can I monitor one state? Yes. Filter with postal codes such as TX, FL or CA.

Is this affiliated with the Census Bureau? No. It is an independent data transformation tool using public U.S. Census Bureau data.

Related Actors

Other data tools from the same developer, built to the same standard: official or public sources, hard cost caps, and honest documentation of limits.

• Zillow ZIP Code Property Search Scraper: for-sale listings by ZIP code with prices, price cuts and days on Zillow.
• Federal Register Rule Effective-Date Radar: final federal rules about to take effect, with citations, dockets and urgency.
• Chicago Contract Recompete & Extension Radar: expiring City of Chicago contracts with extension history, for recompete prospecting.
• Bank Branch Closings & Merger Radar (FDIC): new US bank branch closings, openings and mergers from the FDIC.
• Chicago New Business License Radar: newly licensed Chicago businesses as opening leads, grouped by category.
• NYC FDNY Contractor Leads & Hearing Radar: fresh NYC fire-code summonses routed by remediation trade, with hearing dates.
• RCRA Enforcement Response Leads: new EPA hazardous-waste (RCRA) enforcement actions and penalties, by state.
• Emerging Federal Contractor Radar: companies that just won their first federal contracts, from USAspending.gov.
• Hospital Price Transparency Enforcement Leads: hospitals with recent CMS price transparency warning notices, CAP requests and CMP notices.
• Hospital Ownership Change Radar: hospitals that just changed owner, with buyer, seller and effective date from CMS filings.
• Walmart Category Scraper: product names, prices, was-prices and ratings from Walmart category pages.
• New Healthcare Organization NPI Radar: newly registered healthcare organizations from CMS's weekly NPI file, by provider type.