Building Permit API - Permits, Contractors, Property Data

Find out who is building what, where, and what it cost, from the permits US cities and counties issue.

What it collects

• Permits: number, type and subtype, description and the provider's cleaned version of it, issuing jurisdiction, status, declared job value and fees, filing, issue, start, end and final dates, approval and construction duration in days, inspection pass rate and work tags.
• Contractors: legal and business name, trading name, licence number with issue and expiry dates, the trade classifications derived from a firm's actual work, business phone, email, website and LinkedIn, SIC and NAICS codes, revenue and employee count bands, review count and rating, plus permit count, average and total job value, average construction duration and average inspection pass rate.
• Properties: parcel number, type, legal owner and owner type, year built, lot size, building area, storey and unit counts, assessed market value, coordinates, and the whole permit history summarised on one record, including the last permit date by tag and by status.
• Zoning and land use decisions: title, date, description, asset class, category and subcategory, previous and new zoning with the uses the change allows, project value, lot size, the applicant, owner, representative and developer named on it, and the source URL.
• Market metrics: permit count, active and in-review counts, contractor count, average and total job value, average approval and construction duration and average inspection pass rate, by month, for an address, city, county, jurisdiction or a single contractor.
• Coverage and reference data: which fields are thin in a given area and date range, every permit tag you can filter on, every covered ZIP code, the current data release date, and your own credit usage.

FAQ

What is building permit data used for?

Finding work before it is visible any other way. A filed permit names the property, the job, its declared value and the contractor, weeks or months before the work happens, which is why it drives lead generation for trades and suppliers, market sizing for manufacturers, property condition checks for insurers and lenders, and competitive tracking for contractors.

How do I search a city or a ZIP code?

Run the Geography lookup service first. This API identifies a place by its own geo_id, not by name, so a city typed as text will not work anywhere else in the actor. Look up the city, county, jurisdiction, ZIP or address, copy the geo_id from the result, and paste it into the Geography id field for the search you actually want. The actor refuses a search with no geo_id and says this, rather than returning an empty run you have to diagnose.

Can I find contractors by trade?

Yes, and by more than the licence says. The contractor trade filter uses classifications this API derives from the permits a firm has actually pulled, so a firm licensed as a general contractor that only does roofing is findable as a roofer. Select several trades and a firm must match all of them. Prefix a value with a minus to exclude it.

How do I find solar, roofing or HVAC jobs specifically?

Use permit tags. Tags are the work type as the provider classifies it, independent of how each jurisdiction words its own permit types, which is what makes a query comparable across the 20,000-plus authorities that issue permits. A minus prefix excludes, so solar with -roofing means solar work on jobs that are not roofing. Run the Permit tag list service to see every tag available.

Can I find properties that have not had work done?

Yes. Property search returns one record per property with its permit history summarised on it, including the last permit date by tag, so you can look for properties with no roofing permit on record, or none in the last fifteen years. That is the search that is hard to do from a permit feed alone, because absence is not an event.

What is a jurisdiction, and why does it matter?

The authority that issues the permit, which is often not the city the property sits in. Permit availability and the fields each authority publishes vary between them, so the same query returns richer data in one place than another. Run the Data coverage service for a geography and date range before a large collection: it reports which fields are thin or missing there, so an empty column is a known fact rather than a surprise.

Why did my filter seem to do nothing?

It may not have been sent. Each service accepts its own set of filters, and this provider refuses an unknown parameter outright rather than ignoring it, so the actor drops filters the chosen service does not take before the request and names every one of them in the run log. An empty run here is an explained one.

Does this actor change anything in my account?

No. Every route it calls is a read. This API has no write surface at all, so a scheduled run cannot alter anything beyond spending your provider credits on the rows it returns.

Does it return personal data about homeowners?

No. This API publishes two endpoints that return named individuals with personal email, phone, income range, net worth and household attributes, and neither is exposed here. Contractor rows carry business contact details for the firm, which is what the construction use case needs.

Do I need my own API key?

Yes. This actor is bring-your-own-key and never ships a key of its own. Paste your key from your provider account, or set it once as the DATA_API_KEY environment secret. The provider bills per record returned, and the actor reads the credit headers on every response so the run log tells you what it spent and what is left.

What does it cost?

Pay per result. A contractor or property row costs the most, because each one summarises a whole history; a permit row less; a market metric a fraction of that, because it is an aggregate you use to size a market before collecting it; and a geography lookup or coverage row is priced near zero, because finding the geo_id you need should not cost anything worth counting. Platform usage is included. Searches that match nothing are never charged.

Example output

{
  "recordType": "permit",
  "requested": "abc123def456",
  "found": true,
  "geoId": "abc123def456",
  "recordId": "9f2c1b7ae4",
  "permitNumber": "BP-2026-004871",
  "permitType": "Residential Alteration",
  "permitStatus": "final",
  "description": "INSTALL 8.4KW ROOF MOUNTED PV SYSTEM",
  "jurisdiction": "City of Austin",
  "jobValueUsd": 24500,
  "feesUsd": 312,
  "issueDate": "2026-03-11",
  "finalDate": "2026-05-02",
  "constructionDurationDays": 38,
  "approvalDurationDays": 14,
  "inspectionPassRate": 100,
  "tags": ["solar"],
  "contractorId": "c71a90ff23",
  "propertyType": "residential",
  "propertyYearBuilt": 1998,
  "propertyBuildingArea": 2140,
  "propertyMarketValueUsd": 486000,
  "addressStreet": "W 35TH ST",
  "addressCity": "AUSTIN",
  "addressState": "TX",
  "addressZipCode": "78703",
  "record": { "...": "every field the provider published, unchanged" }
}

Keyword map

building permit API, construction permit data API, contractor data API, contractor leads API, roofing leads, solar permit data, HVAC contractor list, building permit search by address, permit records by city, construction project data, property permit history, zoning decision data, land use decision API, construction market data, permit data by ZIP code, licensed contractor lookup, construction lead generation, remodel permit data, US building permits.