Building Permits Scraper - Contractor & Construction Leads

Search official building permit records from 47 optimized US city/county open-data sources, with best-effort Socrata auto-discovery for other locations. No API key or authentication is required. Results are normalized into a consistent permit-evidence schema.

Fast first run: leave the defaults as city=austin, keyword=roof, maxResults=10. This stable fixture returns recent Austin permit records quickly and costs at most $0.0201 at the live $0.0001/start + $0.002/result price. Increase maxResults or change sources after confirming coverage and fields.

What This Gives You

• Permit activity signals -- identify source-reported construction and renovation records
• Contractor evidence -- compare contractor names when the jurisdiction publishes them
• Property context -- use source-reported addresses and owner fields when available
• Project-value evidence -- qualify records by estimated value when the source provides it
• Location context -- map records when the source includes usable coordinates

Supported Cities

Key	City	State
nyc	New York City	NY
chicago	Chicago	IL
la	Los Angeles	CA
sf	San Francisco	CA
seattle	Seattle	WA
austin	Austin	TX
dallas	Dallas	TX
boston	Boston	MA
nashville	Nashville	TN
raleigh	Raleigh	NC
fortworth	Fort Worth	TX
hartford	Hartford	CT
cincinnati	Cincinnati	OH
neworleans	New Orleans	LA
honolulu	Honolulu	HI
kansascity	Kansas City	MO
mesa	Mesa	AZ
norfolk	Norfolk	VA
batonrouge	Baton Rouge	LA
littlerock	Little Rock	AR
somerville	Somerville	MA
cambridge	Cambridge	MA
framingham	Framingham	MA
montgomerycounty	Montgomery County	MD
howardcounty	Howard County	MD
princegeorgescounty	Prince George's County	MD
frederick	Frederick	MD
gainesville	Gainesville	FL
sonomacounty	Sonoma County	CA
marincounty	Marin County	CA
sandiegocounty	San Diego County	CA
corona	Corona	CA
santarosa	Santa Rosa	CA
newjersey	New Jersey (Statewide)	NJ
newcastle	New Castle County	DE
henderson	Henderson	NV
collincounty	Collin County	TX
fortcollins	Fort Collins	CO
piercecounty	Pierce County	WA
auburn	Auburn	WA
redmond	Redmond	WA
rockford	Rockford	IL
saltlakecity	Salt Lake City	UT
richmond	Richmond	CA
parker	Parker	CO
providence	Providence	RI
williamsoncountytx	Williamson County	TX

Input

Field	Type	Description
city	string	City key from the table above (required)
keyword	string	Full-text search across all fields -- find "solar", "HVAC", "roofing", "demolition", or any term in descriptions, addresses, contractor names
permitType	string	Optional partial-match filter (e.g. "new building", "electrical")
dateFrom	string	Start of issue date range YYYY-MM-DD
dateTo	string	End of issue date range YYYY-MM-DD
maxResults	integer	Max records to return (default 10, max 50000). At current pricing, 10 results cost at most $0.0201.

Output Fields

Each record is normalized to a consistent schema regardless of city:

Field	Description
permitNumber	Permit or job number
permitType	Permit category (New Building, Alteration, Electrical, etc.)
status	Current permit status
issueDate	Date permit was issued
expirationDate	Permit expiration date
address	Property street address
city	City name
state	Two-letter state code
workDescription	Scope of work description
estimatedCost	Estimated project value
contractor	Contractor company name
owner	Property owner name
latitude	GPS latitude
longitude	GPS longitude

Example Use Cases

• Building material suppliers -- research contractors and source-reported project values
• Property and insurance teams -- add cited permit-event context to property-change or roof-age review
• Real estate researchers -- compare reported renovation activity by area
• Roofing, HVAC, solar, and plumbing teams -- find relevant permit records for market research and lead qualification
• Data teams -- monitor field coverage and source drift across selected jurisdictions

Use with AI Assistants (MCP)

This actor works as an MCP tool with Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code Copilot, and other MCP clients.

Setup: Add this to your MCP client configuration:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "building-permits": {
      "url": "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=pink_comic/building-permits-construction-leads"
    }
  }
}

Then ask your AI: "Find recent roofing permits in Austin" -- it will query the actor and return structured permit data. Chicago and other cities are available, but Austin is the safest quick-test default.

Data Sources and Evidence Limits

Data comes from official city/county open-data portals through public Socrata APIs. The 47 listed sources have optimized mappings; auto-discovery for other locations is best effort and may find no suitable dataset or map fewer fields.

Treat every result as point-in-time public-record evidence, not as independent verification:

• publication schedules, coverage periods, status meanings, and field completeness vary by jurisdiction
• a permit record does not prove work started, finished, passed inspection, remains active, or complies with code
• source-reported status, dates, values, contractors, owners, addresses, and coordinates can be missing, stale, corrected, or differently defined
• a missing result does not prove that no permit exists; the selected source, filters, and bounded result cap may exclude it
• owner/contractor names are not identity verification, contact consent, or a complete due-diligence determination

Confirm consequential decisions against the issuing jurisdiction and the underlying source record.