US Building Permits Monitor – Contractor Leads

Get new building permits from 9 major US cities in one clean, consistent format: what's being built, project value, address and the contractor on the job. Turn on Only new permits and schedule it daily for a steady stream of fresh construction leads.

Data comes straight from each city's official open-data portal. No API key, no login, no scraping of private sites.

Cities covered

City	Contractor info	Project value	Notes
Chicago, IL	✅ all contractors on the permit, by trade	✅
New York City, NY	✅ permittee business + license	✅	DOB NOW approved permits; published a few days after issue
Los Angeles, CA	–	✅
Austin, TX	✅ company, trade, phone	partial
Seattle, WA	partial	✅
San Francisco, CA	–	✅
New Orleans, LA	✅	✅
Cincinnati, OH	✅	✅
Baton Rouge, LA	partial	partial

About 5,000 permits a week across all cities. More cities coming; request yours in the Issues tab.

Who uses this

• Contractors and subcontractors (roofing, solar, HVAC, plumbing, electrical): find jobs and see who's winning them
• Building material suppliers and distributors: reach contractors with active projects
• Home services, insurance, security and moving companies: target properties with recent work
• Real estate investors and analysts: track development, ADUs, new housing units and renovation hot spots

Why this Actor

• 🔁 Only new permits: remembers what you've already received, so daily schedules return just the new ones.
• 🧹 One schema for every city: the same columns whether it's Chicago or San Francisco.
• 🎯 Lead filters: minimum project value, keywords (roof, solar, HVAC, kitchen, new construction…), exclude keywords, and "only permits with a contractor listed".
• ⚡ Fast and inexpensive: uses the cities' official data APIs, with no browser. All 9 cities for a week take under a minute.
• 🔒 Privacy-conscious: outputs permit, property and contractor/business information only. Homeowner and applicant names are never collected.

Example input

{
  "cities": ["chicago", "austin", "seattle"],
  "issuedWithinDays": 7,
  "keywords": ["roof", "solar"],
  "minValuation": 10000,
  "requireContractor": true,
  "onlyNew": true
}

Daily lead alerts: create a Task with your filters, turn on Only new permits, keep the window at 7 days (some cities publish with a delay), and add a daily Schedule. Connect the results to Google Sheets, Slack, email, Zapier or Make with Apify integrations.

Example output

{
  "id": "austin:2026-131140 EP",
  "city": "Austin",
  "state": "TX",
  "permitNumber": "2026-131140 EP",
  "permitType": "Electrical Permit",
  "workType": "Residential Upgrade",
  "description": "set new pole for new meter, run conduit to new exterior 200amp panel",
  "status": "Active",
  "issuedDate": "2026-10-20",
  "appliedDate": "2026-10-06",
  "address": "908 CALLE LIMON",
  "zip": "78702",
  "latitude": 30.2599,
  "longitude": -97.6959,
  "valuation": null,
  "contractorName": "The Service Electrician",
  "contractorTrade": "Electrical Contractor",
  "contractorPhone": "5124845907",
  "contractors": [{ "name": "The Service Electrician", "trade": "Electrical Contractor", "phone": "5124845907" }],
  "link": "https://abc.austintexas.gov/web/permit/public-search-other?...",
  "source": "https://data.austintexas.gov/d/3syk-w9eu"
}

Also included where the city provides it: squareFeet, housingUnits, contractorLicense, and every contractor on the permit in contractors (e.g. Chicago lists general, electrical and plumbing contractors separately).

Input reference

Field	What it does
Cities	Which cities to include (default: Chicago).
Issued within the last N days	Date window, 1–365 days (default 7).
Minimum project value	Only permits with a declared value at or above this amount.
Keywords / Exclude keywords	Match against the description, permit type and work type.
Only permits with a contractor listed	Lead-gen mode. LA and SF data have no contractor names.
Only new permits	Return only permits not seen in earlier runs with the same filters.
Maximum results	Cap per run, across all cities.
Socrata app token	Optional. Only for very large pulls if a portal rate-limits.

Notes on the data

• Values are as reported by each city. "Project value" is the applicant's declared cost, and some cities record placeholders (like $1), which this Actor removes.
• If a city's portal is temporarily down, that city is skipped for the run (with a warning) and the rest still complete.
• Permit data is public record published by each city under its open-data terms.

Related Actors

• US Contractor Licenses – Multi-State Leads: check license status, trade and expiry for the contractors on these permits, or find newly licensed contractors in WA, OR, TX, CO, CT, IL and NY.
• SAM.gov Contract Opportunities Monitor: new federal contract bids by NAICS and set-aside.

Support

Missing a city, field or filter you need? Open an issue on the Issues tab. I typically reply within one business day.