US Building Permits Scraper: Roofing, Solar, HVAC & Contractor Leads

Get fresh building permits from 12 official US city and county open-data portals, normalized into one clean schema: issue date, address and ZIP, permit type, work description, job valuation, contractor name (and phone where published), owner and applicant, coordinates and a link to the source record. Filter by trade (roofing, solar, HVAC, plumbing, electrical, pool, new construction, demolition, remodel, fence/deck), keyword and minimum job value.

Official government data, no login, no API key, no proxies. Every source is a public Socrata open-data API, so runs are fast, cheap and never blocked.

Covered jurisdictions

City / county	State	Contractor	Contractor phone	Valuation
Chicago	IL	✅	–	✅
New York City (DOB NOW)	NY	✅ + license	–	✅
Los Angeles	CA	–	–	✅
San Francisco	CA	–	–	✅
Seattle	WA	✅	–	✅
Austin	TX	✅	✅	✅
New Orleans	LA	✅	–	✅
Baton Rouge (East Baton Rouge Parish)	LA	✅	–	✅
Cincinnati	OH	✅	–	✅
Orlando	FL	✅	✅	✅
Norfolk	VA	–	–	✅
Montgomery County	MD	–	–	✅

Every source is checked by our daily monitor. If one city portal is temporarily down, the run continues with the others and the gap is reported in the SUMMARY record of the key-value store.

What you can do with it

• 🏠 Roofing, solar, HVAC, plumbing and remodeling leads: homeowners who just pulled a permit are actively spending on their property
• 🧰 Contractor prospecting: see which contractors are busiest by city and trade (supplier, insurance, software and financing sales)
• 🏗️ Construction market intelligence: track new construction, ADUs, demolitions and project values by ZIP
• 🏦 Real estate & lending: spot renovation activity and property improvements
• 🤖 Feeds for CRMs, dashboards and AI agents: one schema across 12 jurisdictions

How to use it

1. Click Try for free. The input is prefilled with roofing, solar and HVAC permits issued in the last 14 days in Austin, Chicago and Seattle, so it works in one click.
2. Pick your cities, trades, a keyword (e.g. ADU, generator) and a minimum job value.
3. Click Start and export to CSV, Excel, JSON, or push to HubSpot, Google Sheets, Slack or webhooks through integrations.
4. Schedule it daily with Issued on or after = 1 day to get every new permit each morning.

Input example

{
    "cities": ["austin", "orlando", "seattle"],
    "issuedFrom": "7 days",
    "trades": ["roofing", "solar"],
    "minValuation": 10000,
    "requireContractor": true,
    "maxItems": 500
}

Field	Description
cities	Any of chicago, new-york-city, los-angeles, san-francisco, seattle, austin, new-orleans, baton-rouge, cincinnati, orlando, norfolk, montgomery-county-md (empty = all)
issuedFrom / issuedTo	Issue-date window, YYYY-MM-DD or relative (7 days)
trades	roofing, solar, hvac, plumbing, electrical, pool, newConstruction, demolition, remodel, fence
keyword	Free text matched against permit type and description
minValuation	Minimum declared job value in USD
requireContractor	Only permits that name a contractor
maxItemsPerCity	Per-city cap (defaults to an even split of maxItems)
maxItems	Maximum results

Output example

{
    "permitNumber": "2026-125000 PP",
    "city": "Austin",
    "state": "TX",
    "issueDate": "2026-09-29",
    "status": "Active",
    "permitType": "Plumbing Permit",
    "workClass": "Repair",
    "description": "generator gas line",
    "trades": ["plumbing", "electrical"],
    "valuation": null,
    "address": "13025 BISMARK DR",
    "zip": "78748",
    "latitude": 30.14165607,
    "longitude": -97.85013338,
    "contractorName": "My Plumber Is A Nerd",
    "contractorPhone": "+15126631145",
    "contractorAddress": "4901 ABERDE AUSTIN",
    "ownerName": null,
    "url": "https://abc.austintexas.gov/web/permit/public-search-other?t_detail=1&t_selected_folderrsn=13777025",
    "source": "https://data.austintexas.gov/d/3syk-w9eu"
}

The Permit leads dataset view shows date, city, address, type, trades, work, value, contractor, phone and owner in one table.

How much does it cost?

Pay-per-event: a small fee per run start plus a fixed price per permit returned, currently about $1.40 per 1,000 permits (see the Pricing tab). There are no compute or proxy charges on top. A daily run returning 200 new roofing permits costs about $0.29. Cap every run with maxItems.

Tips

• Solar installers: trades = ["solar", "roofing"]. New roofs are prime solar prospects.
• HVAC companies: trades = ["hvac"] + minValuation = 5000.
• Find busy contractors: requireContractor = true, then pivot the dataset by contractorName.
• Call contractors: chain with our US Phone Number Validator (time zone and calling hours), or find their emails with our Website Contact Extractor.

FAQ

Where does the data come from? Each city's or county's official open-data portal (Socrata), the same data published by the building department. The source field links to the dataset.

How fresh is it? Most portals update daily, so permits typically appear 1–3 days after issuance.

Why are some fields empty? Each city publishes different columns. For example, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Norfolk and Montgomery County do not publish contractor names. The coverage table above shows what each source provides.

Can you add my city? Yes, if it publishes permits on an open-data API. Open an issue on the Issues tab.

Is this legal? Yes. Building permits are public records published by the cities for reuse. Follow telemarketing and email laws when you contact owners or contractors.

Related actors by WAAGS

• Contractor License Leads (TX, WA, OR, CT, CO): licensed contractors with phone numbers
• Website Contact Extractor · Bulk Email Validator · US Phone Number Validator
• SAM.gov Contract Opportunities: federal construction RFPs