US Building Permits Scraper — 12 Cities & Counties, Construction Leads

Get freshly issued building permits from 12 US cities and counties in one run, in one clean schema — New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Austin, Mesa AZ, New Orleans, Montgomery County MD, Henderson NV, Collin County TX (Plano/Frisco/McKinney), and Baton Rouge. Solar installers, roofers, HVAC companies, pool builders, suppliers, and lead-gen teams use new permit filings to reach property owners and track contractor activity the week work is approved — weeks before traditional permit-lead brokers deliver their lists.

This Actor pulls directly from each city's official open-data API (no fragile HTML scraping, no proxies, no CAPTCHAs), normalizes every record into the same analysis-ready JSON, and returns permits issued as recently as yesterday for most sources.

Why this instead of a permit lead service?

• Freshness: lead brokers typically add a 2–4 week delay between permit issuance and list delivery. This Actor queries the live government dataset the moment you run it.
• Price: you pay per permit record (see pricing tab), not a monthly subscription per county.
• Raw + complete: full work descriptions, valuations, parcel IDs, and geocodes — not a trimmed CSV.
• Pipeline-ready: one stable JSON schema across all 12 jurisdictions; export to CSV, Excel, or JSON, or pull via API/Zapier/Make.

Coverage (v1)

Jurisdiction	Contractor info	Geocodes	Typical freshness
New York City (DOB NOW)	✅ name + license	✅	1–3 days
Chicago	✅ name	✅	1–2 days
Los Angeles (LADBS)	—	✅	days–weeks (city batches)
San Francisco	—	✅	1–2 days
Seattle	partial	✅	1–2 days
Austin	✅ name (most)	partial	1–2 days
Mesa, AZ	—	✅	1–2 days
New Orleans	✅ name	✅	1–2 days
Montgomery County, MD (residential)	—	✅	days
Henderson, NV	✅ name + phone + license	partial	days
Collin County, TX (Plano/Frisco/McKinney)	✅ builder name	—	days
Baton Rouge / EBR Parish, LA	✅ name	—	1–2 days

Need another city or county? Open an issue with the jurisdiction — if it publishes machine-readable permit data, it can usually be added within days.

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
cities	array	all 12	Any of nyc, chicago, la, sf, seattle, austin, mesa, nola, montgomery_md, henderson, collin_tx, baton_rouge
issuedSince	string	last 7 days	YYYY-MM-DD; only permits issued/filed on or after this date
maxRecordsPerCity	integer	500	Hard cap per city, 1–5000
permitClass	string	all	residential / commercial; unclassified permits are always included

Output

One JSON object per permit, identical schema across all jurisdictions:

{
  "permit_id": "B200473293",
  "city": "Chicago",
  "state": "IL",
  "permit_type": "PERMIT - EXPRESS PERMIT PROGRAM",
  "permit_class": "unknown",
  "work_description": "TUCKPOINTING AND UNIT MASONRY REPAIR / REPLACEMENT: 800 SQ. FT.",
  "status": "ACTIVE",
  "filed_date": "2026-06-04",
  "issued_date": "2026-06-08",
  "address": "4700 W MONTROSE AVE",
  "zip_code": "60641",
  "latitude": 41.961,
  "longitude": -87.741,
  "valuation": 12000.0,
  "contractor_name": "ACME MASONRY LLC",
  "contractor_license": null,
  "contractor_phone": null,
  "owner_name": "LLC 4510 CLARK",
  "source_dataset": "https://data.cityofchicago.org/resource/ydr8-5enu",
  "source_record_url": null,
  "fetched_at": "2026-06-11T05:00:00+00:00"
}

Fields a city doesn't publish are null (see coverage table) — your pipeline gets a stable schema either way.

FAQ

How fresh is the data? Most jurisdictions publish within 1–2 days of issuance; the Actor reads the live dataset on every run. LA refreshes in batches on the city's schedule.

Can I get only residential (or only commercial) permits? Yes — set permitClass. Where a city doesn't classify permits, those records are kept (never silently dropped), and the permit_class field says unknown.

Does it include contractor contact details? Where the city publishes them: NYC includes license numbers, Henderson NV includes phone numbers and state licenses, and 7 of 12 jurisdictions include contractor/builder names.

Is this legal? Yes. Every source is an official government open-data portal explicitly published for public reuse. No scraping of private websites, no ToS conflicts, no personal data beyond what governments publish.

Can you add my city/county? Usually, yes — open an issue. Jurisdictions with Socrata/ArcGIS/CKAN open-data portals can typically be added within days.

How do I export to Excel/CSV or automate weekly pulls? Every run's dataset exports to CSV/Excel/JSON from the Output tab, and the Actor works with Apify schedules, Zapier, Make, and webhooks for recurring delivery.

Known limitations

• permit_class is unknown where a city doesn't classify permits; the filter never drops unclassified records.
• SF, LA, Mesa, and Montgomery County don't publish contractor names in their permit datasets.
• Valuation is missing on permit types some cities don't cost (e.g., many trade permits).
• Data quality is the city's: occasional missing geocodes (Austin ~40%, Henderson ~50%), date quirks (a handful of Collin County records carry future-dated entries), and typos pass through as-is. We normalize structure, not truth.
• Montgomery County's open dataset covers residential permits only.

Changelog

• 0.2 (2026-06-11) — doubled coverage to 12 jurisdictions: added Mesa AZ, New Orleans, Montgomery County MD, Henderson NV, Collin County TX, Baton Rouge. New contractor_phone field (populated where cities publish it). FAQ added.
• 0.1 (2026-06-09) — initial release: NYC, Chicago, LA, SF, Seattle, Austin; unified schema; residential/commercial filter; per-city caps with graceful partial-failure handling.