Los Angeles Solar & ADU Permit Leads

Solar and ADU installer sales reps get one row per Los Angeles building permit flagged for solar, EV charging or an ADU, filtered and ready to call.

Introduction

Pick how far back to look. Get back one row per building permit the City of Los Angeles issued in that window, with a link to the city's own public record on every single row.

This covers the City of Los Angeles only. Not Los Angeles County, not Long Beach, Santa Monica, Pasadena, Burbank or Glendale. Those cities run their own permit counters and are not in this feed.

Each run reads the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety open-data feed live, at the moment the run starts. Nothing is served from a stored copy. The source is dataset pi9x-tg5x on data.lacity.org, "Building and Safety - Building Permits Issued from 2020 to Present". On 2026-09-14 that dataset held 412,133 permits, issued between 2020-01-01 and 2026-09-12.

What this Actor adds on top of the free portal is a rolling date window instead of hand-written dates, permit type, ZIP and minimum-valuation filters in one place, numbers parsed as numbers rather than text, a row cap that also caps what a run can cost, and a record link on every row so any figure can be checked at the source.

Every row carries these fields:

Field	What it holds
permit_number	The city's own permit number
permit_type	The city's permit type wording, unchanged
permit_subtype	Building use class, such as 1 or 2 Family Dwelling
use_description	What the building is used for, such as Apartment
status	The city's status wording, usually Issued
issue_date	Date the permit was issued, as YYYY-MM-DD
submitted_date	Date the application was filed, where published
address	Street address as the city published it
zip	5-digit postal code
council_district	Los Angeles council district number
valuation_usd	Declared job value in US dollars, as a number
square_feet	Floor area, where the city publishes one
construction_type	Building code construction type, such as Type V-B Construction
height_feet	Building height in feet, where published
dwelling_units_changed	Homes added or removed, negative when removed
adu_changed	Accessory dwelling units added or removed
junior_adu_changed	Junior accessory dwelling units added or removed
ev_charging	True when the permit is flagged for electric-vehicle charging
solar	True when the permit is flagged as solar
issuing_office	How the permit was issued, such as Express Permit
work_description	The city's description of the work
latitude, longitude	Point location, where the city publishes one
attribution	The credit line the City of Los Angeles asks for
source_dataset	The portal and dataset the row was read from
source_url	Link to that exact record on the city's public API
fetched_at	UTC time the row was read, as an ISO timestamp

A field the city does not publish arrives as null. It is never guessed and never filled in from somewhere else.

Tutorial

1. Set Days back, from 1 to 90. The window runs from that day through today, and both ends are included.
2. Optionally pick a Permit type from the dropdown. Leave it on "Every permit type" to keep them all.
3. Optionally type a 5-digit ZIP code, such as 90066. Leave it empty for the whole city.
4. Optionally set a Minimum valuation in dollars, to skip small jobs.
5. Set Maximum rows. This is a hard ceiling on rows returned, so it is also a hard ceiling on what the run can cost. It starts at 100.
6. Start the run.
7. Open Permits to browse rows, or Download permits as CSV to take them away. Run status holds the row count, the oldest and newest issue date actually returned, the source, the credit line, and any warnings.

To sweep a long period without one enormous run, run week by week and raise Maximum rows only as far as needed.

Pricing

$0.003 per row, charged from the very first row. There is no start fee.

Billing is per result. One row pushed is one charged result. A run returning 40 rows is charged for 40 rows, which is $0.12. A run returning 100 rows is charged $0.30. A run that returns no rows costs nothing, because nothing was charged for.

Every row counts. There is no allowance of uncharged rows at the start of a run, so budget on the full count, not on a discount.

A run that is refused for bad input, and a run that cannot reach the Los Angeles portal, both push zero rows and so cost nothing.

Maximum rows is the spend control. At the default of 100 rows, a run cannot cost more than $0.30 no matter how many permits the city issued.

Input and output examples

Input:

{
  "daysBack": 7,
  "permitType": "Bldg-New",
  "zip": "",
  "minValuation": 50000,
  "maxItems": 100
}

One output row, exactly as pushed:

{
  "permit_number": "26010-20000-03188",
  "permit_type": "Bldg-New",
  "permit_subtype": "1 or 2 Family Dwelling",
  "use_description": "Accessory Dwelling Unit",
  "status": "Issued",
  "issue_date": "2026-09-12",
  "submitted_date": "2026-07-13",
  "address": "13460 W BURBANK BLVD",
  "zip": "91352",
  "council_district": "6",
  "valuation_usd": 220000.0,
  "square_feet": 1200.0,
  "construction_type": "Type V-B Construction",
  "height_feet": 14.5,
  "dwelling_units_changed": null,
  "adu_changed": 1,
  "junior_adu_changed": null,
  "ev_charging": false,
  "solar": false,
  "issuing_office": "Express Permit",
  "work_description": "NEW DETACHED ADU",
  "latitude": 34.2265,
  "longitude": -118.3891,
  "attribution": "Published by the City of Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety on data.lacity.org, dataset pi9x-tg5x. Use is subject to the data.lacity.org Terms of Use, https://data.lacity.org/terms-of-use.",
  "source_dataset": "data.lacity.org/resource/pi9x-tg5x",
  "source_url": "https://data.lacity.org/resource/pi9x-tg5x.json?permit_nbr=26010-20000-03188",
  "fetched_at": "2026-09-15T02:53:28Z"
}

sample-output.json in the package holds three more rows taken from a real run.

The run also writes a short status record:

{
  "status": "OK",
  "rows": 3,
  "days_back": 14,
  "permit_type": "Bldg-New",
  "zip": null,
  "min_valuation": 50000,
  "oldest_issue_date": "2026-09-12",
  "newest_issue_date": "2026-09-12",
  "source": "data.lacity.org/resource/pi9x-tg5x",
  "terms": "https://data.lacity.org/terms-of-use",
  "warnings": []
}

status is OK when the portal answered, INVALID_INPUT when the request could not be honoured, and UNKNOWN when the portal did not answer. The last two push zero rows.

Recommendations

Finding new construction leads. Set Permit type to Bldg-New and a Minimum valuation that matches the job size worth chasing. Run it daily with Days back at 3, so a day the city publishes late is still picked up.

Finding accessory dwelling unit work. Run with no permit type filter and sort the rows on adu_changed and junior_adu_changed. A positive number means the permit adds that many units. use_description of Accessory Dwelling Unit is the other strong signal.

Watching one neighbourhood. Set ZIP code and leave the other filters empty. One ZIP over 30 days is usually a few hundred rows.

Keeping the cost flat. Leave Maximum rows low and run more often. A daily run at 100 rows costs at most $0.30 a day.

Checking a figure. Open the source_url on any row. It returns that one permit from the city's own API, so no number here has to be taken on trust.

FAQ

Is the contractor's name included? No. The public dataset behind this Actor publishes no contractor, applicant, owner or architect name. There is no such column in it. The older Los Angeles permit dataset that did carry a contractor's business name, yv23-pmwf, now requires a portal login and answers HTTP 403 to the public, so it is not used here. Nothing in the output is a guessed name.

How fresh is the data? The city usually publishes a day's permits one to three days later. On 2026-09-14 the newest issue date in the dataset was 2026-09-12. A Days back of 1 or 2 can therefore come back empty. Use 3 or more for a daily run.

How far back can it go? Ninety days is the limit on Days back. The dataset itself starts at 2020-01-01, but this Actor is built for the recent window, not for bulk history.

Why is a run empty? Either the filters matched nothing, or the window is newer than the city's publishing lag. An empty run reports OK with a note saying so, and costs nothing.

Does it cover Los Angeles County? No. City of Los Angeles permits only.

What happens if the city portal is down? The run reports UNKNOWN with the exact error text and pushes zero rows. No cached or invented row is ever put in its place.

Can the same permit appear twice in one run? No. Rows are de-duplicated on permit number and issue date before anything is pushed.

Limitations

Read this part before buying.

• No contractor, applicant or owner names. The public feed does not publish them, so they are not here. If a name on the permit is the thing needed, this Actor will not supply it.
• City of Los Angeles only. Not the county, and not the surrounding independent cities.
• A publishing lag of one to three days. A permit issued this morning is usually not readable today.
• The city's own gaps carry through. square_feet, height_feet, dwelling_units_changed and the coordinates are blank on many permits because the city published them blank. They are left as null rather than estimated.
• valuation_usd is the value declared on the application. It is not an appraisal and not a contract price.
• Setting a minimum valuation drops permits with no declared value, because a blank cannot be shown to clear a floor. The run says so in its warnings.
• Ninety days back is the hard limit, and 50,000 rows is the hard row cap.
• No person is on call for this Actor. There is no staffed support desk behind it.

Source and credit

Data comes from the City of Los Angeles open-data portal, dataset pi9x-tg5x, published by the Department of Building and Safety. Use of that portal is subject to its Terms of Use at https://data.lacity.org/terms-of-use, which apply to "application developers who obtain data through this web portal". That credit line is copied onto every row in the attribution field so it travels with the data.

Refunds and support

Refunds: if a run returns zero rows for a valid input, email operations@ustechautomations.com within 7 days and we refund that run. Support: same address, replies within 2 business days.