🏗️ NYC Building Permits Scraper

🚀 Extract building permit records from NYC Open Data. Filter by borough, ZIP code, job type, and date range. Get owner names, addresses, costs, GPS coordinates, and 42 normalized fields per permit.

🕒 Last updated: 2026-04-16

Collect building permit data from NYC Open Data without coding. Extract owner names, addresses, permit types, costs, GPS coordinates, and 42 normalized fields from 4.87M+ active and historical permits. Filter by borough, ZIP code, job type, and filing date to monitor construction activity, track contractor projects, or discover neighborhood development patterns.

Whether you are a real estate investor tracking new construction, a contractor identifying project leads, or a market analyst studying development trends across NYC boroughs, this tool delivers structured permit data ready for analysis. No browser needed - fast, reliable API-based extraction.

Target	NYC Open Data - Department of Buildings permits
Use Cases	Construction monitoring, contractor research, real estate intelligence, neighborhood analysis

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📋 What it does

• 🏢 Extracts job numbers, permit types, and current filing status for every permit record
• 📍 Collects full street addresses plus GPS latitude and longitude for mapping and location analysis
• 👤 Returns owner names, business types, phone numbers, and license numbers for applicants and permittees
• 💰 Captures estimated project costs to track investment scale and neighborhood development spending
• 📅 Includes filing, issuance, expiration, and job start dates for monitoring permit lifecycle
• 🏘️ Provides community board, council district, census tract, and NTA code for geographic segmentation

Each permit record is normalized across both the active DOB NOW and historical datasets, giving you a consistent 42-field output regardless of the data source. This makes it easy to compare permits across time periods and boroughs without manual cleanup.

💡 Why it matters: NYC issues thousands of building permits each month. Manual tracking through the DOB website is slow and limited to one-at-a-time lookups. This scraper automates bulk collection with filtering so you can focus on analysis instead of data gathering.

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🎬 Full Demo

🚧 Coming soon

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⚙️ Input

Field	Type	Description
Borough	Select	Filter by NYC borough (Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx, Staten Island). Leave empty for all.
Zip Code	Text	Limit results to a specific ZIP code (e.g., 10001)
Job Type	Select	NB (New Building), A1 (Major Alteration), A2/A3 (Minor), DM (Demolition)
Date From	Text	Only include permits filed on or after this date (YYYY-MM-DD)
Date To	Text	Only include permits filed on or before this date (YYYY-MM-DD)
Dataset	Select	Choose dob_now (active), historical, or both (default)
Max Items	Number	Free users: Limited to 10 items. Paid users: up to 1,000,000

Example 1: New buildings in Manhattan

{
  "borough": "MANHATTAN",
  "jobType": "NB",
  "dateFrom": "2025-01-01",
  "maxItems": 100
}

Example 2: All permits in a specific ZIP code

{
  "zipCode": "10001",
  "dataset": "both",
  "maxItems": 50
}

⚠️ Good to Know: Free users are limited to 10 results per run. Date filters use YYYY-MM-DD format. When no borough or ZIP is specified, the scraper returns permits across all five boroughs.

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📊 Output

🧾 Schema

Emoji	Field	Type	Description
🏢	jobNumber	String	Unique construction project identifier
🗺️	borough	String	NYC borough name
📍	address	String	Full street address
📮	zipCode	String	ZIP code
🗂️	block	String	Tax block number
🏷️	lot	String	Tax lot number
🔑	bbl	String	Borough-block-lot identifier
🏢	bin	String	Building identification number
🏗️	jobType	String	Permit job type (NB, A1, A2, A3, DM)
🔨	workType	String	Type of work performed
📄	jobDescription	String	Description of the construction project
💰	estimatedCost	Number	Estimated project cost
👤	ownerName	String	Property owner name
💼	ownerBusiness	String	Owner business name
🏢	ownerBusinessType	String	Owner business entity type
📞	ownerPhone	String	Owner phone number
👤	applicantName	String	Applicant name
💼	applicantBusiness	String	Applicant business name
📜	applicantLicense	String	Applicant license number
👤	permitteeName	String	Permittee name
💼	permitteeBusiness	String	Permittee business name
📞	permitteePhone	String	Permittee phone number
📜	permitteeLicense	String	Permittee license number
🏷️	permitType	String	Type of permit issued
📅	filingDate	String	Date the permit was filed
📅	issuanceDate	String	Date the permit was issued
⏰	expirationDate	String	Permit expiration date
🚀	jobStartDate	String	Project start date
✅	permitStatus	String	Current permit status
📋	filingStatus	String	Filing status
✔️	selfCertified	Boolean	Whether the permit is self-certified
🤝	nonProfitStatus	String	Non-profit status indicator
🏢	buildingType	String	Type of building
🏘️	communityBoard	String	Community board number
🗳️	councilDistrict	String	City council district
📊	censusTract	String	Census tract code
🌍	ntaCode	String	Neighborhood tabulation area code
📍	latitude	Number	GPS latitude coordinate
📍	longitude	Number	GPS longitude coordinate
📦	sourceDataset	String	Which dataset the record came from
📅	scrapedAt	String	Timestamp when data was collected
⚠️	error	String	Error message if extraction failed

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✨ Why choose NYC Building Permits Scraper

Feature	Details
🏢 4.87M+ permit records	Access active and historical permits across all five NYC boroughs
🎯 Targeted filtering	Filter by borough, ZIP code, job type, and date range
📊 42 normalized fields	Consistent output format across DOB NOW and historical datasets
📍 GPS coordinates	Latitude and longitude for every permit for mapping and spatial analysis
👤 Contact details	Owner, applicant, and permittee names, phone numbers, and license numbers
⚡ Fast API extraction	No browser overhead - direct API calls for quick results
📦 Multiple exports	Download as JSON, CSV, or Excel

📊 20 successful runs in the last 30 days with 100% success rate

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📈 How it compares

Feature	NYC Building Permits Scraper	Other Tools
Records available	4.87M+	Limited
Borough + ZIP + Job Type filters	Yes	Partial
42 normalized fields per record	Yes	Fewer fields
GPS coordinates included	Yes	Rarely
Owner and permittee contacts	Yes	No
Active + historical datasets	Yes	Usually one
No browser required	Yes	Often needs browser
Export formats	JSON, CSV, Excel	Varies

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🚀 How to use

1. Sign up - Create a free account with $5 credit
2. Find the tool - Search for "NYC Building Permits Scraper" in the Apify Store
3. Configure filters - Select your borough, ZIP code, job type, and date range
4. Run it - Click "Start" and wait for results
5. Export data - Download as JSON, CSV, or Excel, or connect to Google Sheets

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💼 Business use cases

📊 Real Estate Investors Monitor new construction permits in target neighborhoods to identify emerging development hotspots before prices rise	🔨 Contractors Track competitor activity and find new building projects with known budgets for subcontracting leads
🏢 Market Analysts Analyze permit trends by borough and job type to forecast construction spending and validate real estate hypotheses	📋 Compliance Teams Monitor permit status and expiration dates across your portfolio of construction projects

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🌟 Beyond business use cases

Data like this powers more than commercial workflows. The same structured records support research, education, civic projects, and personal initiatives.

🎓 Research and academia Empirical datasets for papers, thesis work, and coursework Longitudinal studies tracking changes across snapshots Reproducible research with cited, versioned data pulls Classroom exercises on data analysis and ethical scraping	🎨 Personal and creative Side projects, portfolio demos, and indie app launches Data visualizations, dashboards, and infographics Content research for bloggers, YouTubers, and podcasters Hobbyist collections and personal trackers
🤝 Non-profit and civic Transparency reporting and accountability projects Advocacy campaigns backed by public-interest data Community-run databases for local issues Investigative journalism on public records	🧪 Experimentation Prototype AI and machine-learning pipelines with real data Validate product-market hypotheses before engineering spend Train small domain-specific models on niche corpora Test dashboard concepts with live input

🤖 Ask an AI assistant about this scraper

Open a ready-to-send prompt about this ParseForge actor in the AI of your choice:

• 💬 ChatGPT
• 🧠 Claude
• 🔍 Perplexity
• 🅒 Copilot

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

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🔌 Automating with code

Node.js example:

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';
const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_API_TOKEN' });
const run = await client.actor("parseforge/nyc-building-permits-scraper").call({
  borough: "MANHATTAN",
  jobType: "NB",
  maxItems: 100
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

Python example:

from apify_client import ApifyClient
client = ApifyClient("YOUR_API_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("parseforge/nyc-building-permits-scraper").call(run_input={
    "borough": "MANHATTAN",
    "jobType": "NB",
    "maxItems": 100
})
items = list(client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items())
print(items)

See the Apify API docs for more integration options.

🔌 Integrate with your tools

• Make - Automate workflows with permit data
• Zapier - Connect with 5,000+ apps
• GitHub - Version control integration
• Slack - Get notifications when runs complete
• Airbyte - Data pipeline integration
• Google Drive - Export directly to spreadsheets

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🆘 Need Help?

• Check the FAQ section above for common questions
• Visit the Apify documentation for platform guides
• Contact us to request a new scraper, propose a custom project, or report an issue at Tally contact form

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Disclaimer: This Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by NYC Open Data, the New York City Department of Buildings, or the City of New York. All trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners.