US Building Permits API — NYC, Chicago, SF, Austin, Seattle, LA

Extract building permit data from 6 major US cities through their official open data APIs. Get permit numbers, addresses, estimated costs, contractor details, filing dates, and GPS coordinates.

Why this scraper?

Building permit data is publicly available but scattered across different city portals with different formats. This Actor normalizes permits from 6 cities into one consistent format — query once, get standardized data.

No browser. No proxy. No anti-bot. Direct API access to official government open data.

Supported cities

City	Data Source	Fields	Historical Data
New York City	NYC Open Data (DOB)	Permit #, address, cost, contractor, owner, description	Decades
Chicago	Chicago Data Portal	Permit #, address, cost, fees, contractor, architect	2006+
San Francisco	SF Open Data	Permit #, address, cost, use change, unit counts	2013+
Austin	Austin Open Data	Permit #, address, valuation, class, housing units	1987+
Seattle	Seattle Open Data	Permit #, address, class, type, status	Historical
Los Angeles	LA Open Data	Permit #, address, contractor, license, applicant	2013+

Data extracted

Field	Description	Example
city	City name	"New York City"
permitNumber	Official permit number	"B00834752-I1"
permitType	Type of permit	"New Building"
status	Current status	"Issued"
issuedDate	When the permit was issued	"2026-03-15T00:00:00"
address	Full street address	"123 Broadway Manhattan"
cost	Estimated project cost	"1500000"
description	Description of work	"New 5-story mixed use building"
contractorName	Contractor or applicant name	"ABC Construction LLC"
latitude / longitude	GPS coordinates	40.7128, -74.0060

Use cases

• Real estate investment — identify construction hotspots and development trends by neighborhood
• Market research — track building activity as economic indicator
• Competitive intelligence — monitor what competitors are building and where
• Lead generation — find contractors, developers, and property owners filing permits
• Urban planning research — analyze development patterns across cities
• PropTech products — feed permit data into property analytics platforms

Cost estimate

This Actor uses no browser and no proxy — it queries public APIs directly.

• ~0.01 CU per 1,000 records (minimal compute, just HTTP requests)
• 10,000 permits across all 6 cities: 0.1 CU ($0.03)
• One of the cheapest Actors possible — no browser overhead, no proxy costs

How to use

1. Select cities — pick one or more from the 6 supported cities
2. Set filters — date range, minimum cost, address keyword, max records
3. Run — results available in JSON, CSV, or Excel

Filters

• Date range — only permits issued between two dates (YYYY-MM-DD)
• Minimum cost — only permits above a dollar threshold (great for filtering major projects)
• Address filter — search by street name (e.g., "Broadway", "Michigan Ave")
• Max records — limit results per city (default: 100, set to 0 for all)

FAQ

Is this legal? Yes. All data comes from official city open data portals that are explicitly published for public use. No login, no terms of service issues.

How fresh is the data? Most city APIs update daily. You're getting the same data that's on the official portal.

Can I schedule regular runs? Yes — set up a daily or weekly schedule to monitor new permits in your target areas.

Why only 6 cities? These cities publish structured APIs (SODA/Socrata format). More cities coming — request your city in the Issues tab.

Changelog

• 1.0 — Initial release: 6 cities, date/cost/address filters, standardized output