US Building Permits Scraper (Multi-City Construction Leads)

Get fresh building permits from 11 major US cities in one clean, normalized dataset: what is being built, where, for how much, and which contractor company pulled the permit. Filter by issue date, keyword, permit type and project value, then send the results straight to your CRM, spreadsheet or lead-routing workflow.

No API keys, no logins, no city-by-city wrangling. Every city's open-data portal is mapped into the same schema for you.

Why use it

• One schema, 11 cities: NYC, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, Austin, New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Cincinnati, Mesa and Montgomery County (MD). Same field names everywhere, values as real numbers, dates as YYYY-MM-DD.
• Fresh data: pulled live from each city's official open-data portal (most update daily). Around 30,000 permits are issued across these cities every month.
• Lead-ready filters: keywords (roof, solar, pool, HVAC, ADU, demolition…), permit type, minimum project value, "only permits with a contractor company".
• Fast: filtering happens on the city servers, so 2,000 permits across all cities come back in a few seconds.
• Privacy-safe by default: homeowner and applicant personal names, phone numbers and e-mails are never returned. Contractor names are included only when they are business names, and e-mails/phone numbers are scrubbed from free-text descriptions.

Who it's for

• Roofing, solar, HVAC, pool, windows and remodeling contractors looking for active jobs and new homeowners to reach.
• Building-materials and equipment sales teams tracking which contractors are busiest in each market.
• Construction-data, proptech and real-estate analysts measuring development activity, new housing units and project values.
• Subcontractors finding general contractors on large new-construction projects.

Supported cities

Key	City	Source dataset
chicago	Chicago, IL	data.cityofchicago.org ydr8-5enu
new_york	New York City, NY (DOB NOW: Build approved permits)	data.cityofnewyork.us rbx6-tga4
los_angeles	Los Angeles, CA (2020–present)	data.lacity.org pi9x-tg5x
san_francisco	San Francisco, CA	data.sf.gov i98e-djp9
seattle	Seattle, WA	data.seattle.gov 76t5-zqzr
austin	Austin, TX	data.austintexas.gov 3syk-w9eu
new_orleans	New Orleans, LA	data.nola.gov rcm3-fn58
baton_rouge	Baton Rouge, LA (East Baton Rouge Parish)	data.brla.gov 7fq7-8j7r
cincinnati	Cincinnati, OH	data.cincinnati-oh.gov uhjb-xac9
mesa	Mesa, AZ	citydata.mesaaz.gov dzpk-hxfb
montgomery_county_md	Montgomery County, MD (commercial permits)	data.montgomerycountymd.gov i26v-w6bd

More cities are on the way. Tell us which one you need in the Issues tab.

Input example

{
  "cities": ["austin", "seattle", "los_angeles"],
  "issuedWithinDays": 7,
  "keywords": ["roof", "re-roof"],
  "minValue": 10000,
  "requireContractor": true,
  "maxItemsPerCity": 200,
  "maxItems": 1000
}

Use dateFrom / dateTo (YYYY-MM-DD) instead of issuedWithinDays for a fixed window or a historical pull.

Output example

{
  "city": "Chicago",
  "state": "IL",
  "cityKey": "chicago",
  "permitNumber": "101081192",
  "permitType": "PERMIT - NEW CONSTRUCTION",
  "workDescription": "NEW CONSTRUCTION OF A 52 UNIT SENIOR RESIDENTIAL BUILDING ...",
  "status": "ACTIVE",
  "issueDate": "2026-10-09",
  "appliedDate": "2026-04-07",
  "estimatedValue": 25000000,
  "totalFees": 60460.8,
  "address": "8332 S DR MARTIN L KING JR DR",
  "zip": null,
  "latitude": 41.7428113,
  "longitude": -87.614845,
  "contractorName": "SKENDER CONSTRUCTION LLC",
  "allContractors": ["SKENDER CONSTRUCTION LLC", "JOLEN ELECTRIC, INC", "CHI-TOWN PLUMBERS INC"],
  "sourceUrl": null,
  "datasetId": "ydr8-5enu",
  "datasetUrl": "https://data.cityofchicago.org/d/ydr8-5enu"
}

Fields

city, state, cityKey, permitNumber, permitType, workType, workDescription, status, issueDate, appliedDate, estimatedValue (number, USD), address, zip, latitude, longitude, contractorName (primary contractor company), allContractors, sourceUrl (link to the city's permit record where the city provides one), datasetId, datasetUrl. Some cities add extras such as totalFees, contractorTrade, contractorLicense, housingUnitsAdded (Seattle), solar / evCharger flags (Los Angeles) and bin / bbl (NYC).

Tips

• Daily lead feed: schedule the actor every morning with issuedWithinDays: 1 and connect it to Google Sheets, HubSpot, Zapier or Make.
• Big projects only: set minValue: 1000000 and permitTypes: ["new"].
• Fair split across cities: use maxItemsPerCity so a big city like NYC does not use up your whole maxItems.

Notes

• Data comes from official municipal open-data portals and is as complete as each city publishes it. Not every city publishes every field (for example San Francisco, Los Angeles and Montgomery County do not publish contractor names; Chicago does not publish ZIP codes).
• Project values are the values declared on the permit application.
• Personal names of owners and applicants are deliberately excluded.

Pricing

Pay per result: $3 per 1,000 permits ($0.003 each), plus Apify platform usage. You are charged only for permits returned, so 1,000 permits cost $3. Use maxItems to cap cost.