🏗️ Seattle Building Permits Scraper

🚀 Export every Seattle DCI building permit in seconds. Filter by date, permit type, class, status, ZIP, or keyword, and pull permit numbers, costs, descriptions, housing units, contractor, lat/lon, and 27 more fields. No API key, no registration.

🕒 Last updated: 2026-05-13 · 📊 27 fields per record · 🏗️ All Seattle DCI permits · 🏙️ City of Seattle · 🔢 17 permit types

The Seattle Building Permits Scraper exports the live Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections permit catalog directly from the City of Seattle Open Data portal (Socrata SODA API). Every record returns 27 normalized fields, including permit number, permit class (residential, commercial, industrial, institutional, multifamily), permit type description, current status, applied/issued/expires/completed dates, estimated project cost, housing units added or removed, original address, latitude and longitude, contractor company, applicant name, related Master Use Permit ID, days out of corrections, review cycle count, and a direct link to the official DCI portal record.

The catalog covers every permit DCI has ever issued, going back decades, refreshed multiple times per day on data.seattle.gov. This Actor lets you slice that dataset by 17 permit types (New Construction, Addition/Alteration, Demolition, Tenant Improvement, Curb Cut, Relocation, Shoreline Exemption, and more), 24 status values, 7 property-use classes, ZIP code, applied-date range, and full-text keyword search.

🎯 Target Audience	💡 Primary Use Cases
Real-estate developers, contractors, architects, market analysts, journalists, GIS engineers, civic researchers, prop-tech startups	Lead generation, comparable-project benchmarking, permit pipeline tracking, contractor competitive intelligence, housing-supply analysis, FOIA-style civic research

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📋 What the Seattle Permits Scraper does

Seven filtering workflows in a single run:

• 🏗️ Permit type filter. 17 DCI permit-type descriptions, from New Construction to Curb Cut.
• 🏘️ Permit class filter. Commercial, Industrial, Institutional, Multifamily, Single Family/Duplex, Vacant Land, or N/A.
• 📋 Status filter. 24 current-status values (Issued, Completed, Under Review, Canceled, Expired, and more).
• 📅 Applied date range. Inclusive appliedFrom and appliedTo in YYYY-MM-DD format.
• 📮 ZIP filter. Restrict to one Seattle ZIP code (e.g. 98101, 98115).
• 🔍 Keyword full-text search. Match permit number, description, or address.

Each record includes permit number, official DCI portal URL, permit class and mapping, type description and mapping, status, project description, key dates (applied, issued, expires, completed), estimated cost, housing unit deltas, address, ZIP, lat/lon, contractor company, applicant, related MUP, days out of corrections, and number of review cycles.

💡 Why it matters: Seattle DCI's portal is searchable but designed for case-by-case lookups, not bulk export. This Actor turns the city's open-data feed into a clean, filtered CSV or JSON of every permit that matches your filters, so analysts and contractors can build dashboards and pipelines without wrestling with Socrata SoQL.

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🎬 Full Demo

🚧 Coming soon: a 3-minute walkthrough showing how to go from sign-up to a downloaded permits dataset.

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⚙️ Input

Input	Type	Default	Behavior
maxItems	integer	10	Records to return. Free plan caps at 10, paid plan at 1,000,000.
permitType	enum	""	One of 17 permit-type descriptions. Empty = all.
permitClass	enum	""	One of 7 use classes (Commercial, Industrial, Institutional, Multifamily, Single Family/Duplex, Vacant Land, N/A).
status	enum	""	One of 24 current-status values.
appliedFrom / appliedTo	string (YYYY-MM-DD)	null	Inclusive lower / upper bound for applied date.
zip	string	""	Seattle ZIP code (e.g. 98101).
keyword	string	""	Full-text search across permit number, description, address.

Example: every new commercial construction permit applied in Q1 2026.

{
    "maxItems": 500,
    "permitType": "New",
    "permitClass": "Commercial",
    "appliedFrom": "2026-01-01",
    "appliedTo": "2026-03-31"
}

Example: all Issued multifamily permits in 98115.

{
    "maxItems": 200,
    "permitClass": "Multifamily",
    "status": "Issued",
    "zip": "98115"
}

⚠️ Good to Know: estimated project cost reflects what the applicant declared at the time of filing and is not necessarily the final spend. Housing-unit deltas are city-defined and apply to the parcel as a whole, not always to the single building described.

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📊 Output

Each permit record contains 27 fields. Download the dataset as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

🧾 Schema

Field	Type	Example
🆔 permitNumber	string	"7133441-CN"
🔗 url	string	"https://services.seattle.gov/portal/customize/LinkToRecord.aspx?altId=7133441-CN"
🏘️ permitClass	string | null	"Single Family/Duplex"
🗂️ permitClassMapped	string | null	"Residential"
🏗️ permitTypeDesc	string | null	"New"
🧭 permitTypeMapped	string | null	"Building"
📋 statusCurrent	string | null	"Scheduled"
📝 description	string | null	"Construct new SFR/DADU..."
📅 appliedDate	ISO 8601 | null	"2026-05-08T00:00:00.000"
📅 issuedDate	ISO 8601 | null	null
📅 expiresDate	ISO 8601 | null	null
📅 completedDate	ISO 8601 (optional)	"2026-04-22T..."
💵 estimatedProjectCost	number | null	200000
🏠 housingUnits	number | null	0
🏚️ housingUnitsRemoved	number | null	1
🏘️ housingUnitsAdded	number | null	1
🏷️ housingCategory	string | null	"N/A"
📍 originalAddress	string | null	"7802 ROOSEVELT WAY NE"
🏙️ originalCity	string | null	"SEATTLE"
🌎 originalState	string | null	"WA"
📮 originalZip	string | null	"98115"
📍 latitude / longitude	number | null	47.685 / -122.317
🛠️ contractorCompanyName	string | null	"ABC Builders LLC"
👤 applicantName	string (optional)	"Jane Doe"
🔗 relatedMup	string | null	"3036123-LU"
🔁 daysOutCorrections	number | null	0
🔍 numberReviewCycles	number | null	0
🏗️ dependentBuilding	number | null	0
🕒 scrapedAt	ISO 8601	"2026-05-13T10:00:00.000Z"

📦 Sample records

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✨ Why choose this Actor

	Capability
🏗️	Every Seattle DCI permit. Decades of filings, refreshed multiple times per day from the city's official open-data feed.
🎯	Seven combinable filters. Permit type, class, status, applied date range, ZIP, keyword.
💵	Project cost and unit counts. Estimated cost plus housing-units added and removed for every record.
📍	Geocoded. Lat/lon on every permit, ready to drop into Mapbox, Kepler, or QGIS.
🛠️	Contractor and applicant. Surface the parties behind each project for lead generation and competitive intel.
⚡	Fast. 1,000 permits in under 10 seconds via Socrata's SODA API.
🚫	No login. The data is public open data. No credentials, no rate-limit hassle.

📊 Permit data is the leading indicator of construction activity, displacement, and neighborhood change in any U.S. city.

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📈 How it compares to alternatives

Approach	Cost	Coverage	Refresh	Filters	Setup
⭐ Seattle Permits Scraper (this Actor)	$5 free credit, then pay-per-use	All Seattle DCI permits	Live per run	type, class, status, date, ZIP, keyword	⚡ 2 min
Seattle DCI portal lookups	Free	Per permit	Live	UI search only	🐢 Manual
Raw Socrata SoQL queries	Free	Full	Live	SoQL	🛠️ Code required
Paid construction-data feeds	$300+/month	Bundled cities	Daily	Vendor-defined	⏳ Hours

Pick this Actor when you want clean Seattle permit data without writing a Socrata query yourself.

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🚀 How to use

1. 📝 Sign up. Create a free account with $5 credit (takes 2 minutes).
2. 🌐 Open the Actor. Go to the Seattle Building Permits Scraper page on the Apify Store.
3. 🎯 Set input. Pick a permit type, class, status, date range, ZIP, or keyword, and set maxItems.
4. 🚀 Run it. Click Start and let the Actor collect your data.
5. 📥 Download. Grab your results in the Dataset tab as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

⏱️ Total time from signup to downloaded dataset: 3-5 minutes. No coding required.

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💼 Business use cases

🏗️ Developers and Contractors Spot every new commercial filing in your target submarket Track competitor pipeline and project values in real time Pull comparable cost-per-square-foot data for bids Identify multi-permit owners and likely repeat customers	📈 Real-Estate Analysts Track new-construction supply by ZIP and neighborhood Measure demolition rates and tear-down density Quantify housing-unit deltas city-wide month over month Build pipeline dashboards for prop-tech and investor decks
🛠️ Trades and Suppliers Generate leads from newly issued permits before competitors call Filter by contractor company to map competitor activity Spot tenant-improvement projects in commercial corridors Track ECA and shoreline projects for specialty suppliers	🗞️ Civic Research and Journalism Investigate displacement patterns by mapping demolitions Quantify upzoning impact in specific neighborhoods Track institutional building expansions over time Build interactive maps for local-news urban coverage

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🔌 Automating Seattle Permits Scraper

Control the scraper programmatically for scheduled runs and pipeline integrations:

• 🟢 Node.js. Install the apify-client NPM package.
• 🐍 Python. Use the apify-client PyPI package.
• 📚 See the Apify API documentation for full details.

The Apify Schedules feature lets you trigger this Actor on any cron interval. Hourly, daily, or weekly refreshes keep downstream databases in sync automatically.

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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 Urban-planning papers on permit volume and zoning policy Housing-economics theses with live filing data Reproducible studies on displacement and gentrification GIS coursework with geocoded municipal records	🎨 Personal and creative Neighborhood watch dashboards for new construction Side projects mapping every demolition in your ZIP Local-history blogs documenting architectural turnover Hobby visualizations of the city's growth over time
🤝 Non-profit and civic Housing-justice orgs tracking displacement filings Neighborhood councils monitoring large new projects Community land trusts spotting reuse opportunities Investigative journalism on permit-process equity	🧪 Experimentation Train cost-estimation ML models on declared project costs Prototype agent pipelines that flag interesting projects Test geocoding and address-normalization toolchains Validate civic-tech product hypotheses with live data

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🤖 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

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❓ Frequently Asked Questions

🧩 How does it work?

Pick filters in the input form, click Start, and the Actor builds a Socrata SoQL query against data.seattle.gov, fetches matching permits in pages of 1,000, and emits one normalized record per permit. No browser automation, no captchas, no setup.

🏗️ How far back does the data go?

Seattle DCI publishes its full permit history on data.seattle.gov, going back decades. The Actor reads whatever is currently exposed by the city's open-data feed.

🔄 How fresh is the data?

The city refreshes the underlying open-data feed multiple times per day. Every run of this Actor fetches the latest data, so your dataset reflects current records as of run time.

💵 Is the estimated project cost accurate?

Estimated project cost reflects what the applicant declared at the time of filing. It is a useful directional indicator but is not necessarily the final spend or the final assessed valuation.

🏠 What do housing-unit fields mean?

housingUnits is the count after the project. housingUnitsAdded and housingUnitsRemoved quantify the delta. For a teardown with a single replacement house, you typically see housingUnitsRemoved: 1 and housingUnitsAdded: 1.

📅 Can I filter by issued date instead of applied date?

The Actor's date filter targets applieddate, which is the most consistent and complete date across the dataset. If you need issued, expired, or completed dates, run the Actor on a broader applied-date window and filter the dataset downstream.

⏰ Can I schedule regular runs?

Yes. Use Apify Schedules to run this Actor on any cron interval (hourly, daily, weekly) and keep a downstream database in sync with new permits.

💳 Do I need a paid Apify plan to use this Actor?

No. The free Apify plan is enough for testing and small runs (10 records per run). A paid plan lifts the limit and gives you access to scheduling, higher concurrency, and larger datasets.

⚖️ Is this data legal to use?

Yes. Seattle building permit data is public open data published under the City of Seattle Open Data Policy. Republish and reuse with attribution to the City.

🆘 What if I need help?

Our support team is here to help. Contact us through the Apify platform or use the Tally form linked below.

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🔌 Integrate with any app

Seattle Permits Scraper connects to any cloud service via Apify integrations:

• Make - Automate multi-step workflows
• Zapier - Connect with 5,000+ apps
• Slack - Get notified when a new permit matches your filters
• Airbyte - Pipe permits into your warehouse
• GitHub - Trigger runs from commits and releases
• Google Drive - Export datasets straight to Sheets

You can also use webhooks to trigger downstream actions when a run finishes. Push fresh Seattle permits into your CRM or analytics backend.

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🔗 Recommended Actors

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💡 Pro Tip: browse the complete ParseForge collection for more public-data scrapers.

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🆘 Need Help? Open our contact form to request a new scraper, propose a custom data project, or report an issue.

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⚠️ Disclaimer: this Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the City of Seattle or the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections. All trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. Only publicly available open data is collected.