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🏗️ US Building Permit Scraper — 248 Cities, Keyword Search

The only building permit actor with nationwide keyword search. Find every solar panel, HVAC, roofing, or demolition permit across NYC, Chicago, LA, SF, Dallas, Phoenix, Seattle, Miami, and 240+ more US cities — in a single run. Or pull by city + date range. At $0.002/result, half the price of alternatives.

Overview

Search for "solar", "HVAC", "demolition", or any phrase and get every matching permit back from all 248 supported cities in a single run. Or target a specific city and date range for a full permit pull.

Covers 63%+ of the US population across Accela, Socrata, ArcGIS, EnerGov, and 70+ city-specific scrapers — no configuration needed. Drop in a city name and go.

Supported platforms:

Total: 248 cities, 88M+ people covered

Input

Single city

{
"city":"Chicago",
"state":"IL",
"startDate":"2025-01-01",
"endDate":"2025-01-31"
}

Batch mode — multiple cities

{
"cities":[
{"city":"New York","state":"NY"},
{"city":"Los Angeles","state":"CA"},
{"city":"Dallas","state":"TX"}
],
"startDate":"2025-01-01",
"endDate":"2025-01-31"
}

Keyword search across all cities

{
"keyword":"solar",
"searchAllCities":true,
"startDate":"2025-01-20",
"endDate":"2025-01-27"
}

All input fields

Output

Each record follows a normalized schema:

{
"permit_number":"B25-001234",
"city":"Chicago",
"state":"Illinois",
"address":"5139 S LECLAIRE AVE",
"permit_type":"PERMIT – EXPRESS PERMIT PROGRAM",
"description":"INSTALL SOLAR PANELS ON ROOF OF PRINCIPAL BUILDING",
"status":"COMPLETE",
"apply_date":"2025-01-02",
"issue_date":"2025-01-02",
"value":"18500",
"contractor":"SUNRUN INSTALLATION SERVICES INC",
"owner":"PROPERTY OWNER LLC",
"source_platform":"socrata",
"source_url":"https://data.cityofchicago.org/resource/ydr8-5enu.json",
"scraped_at":"2025-01-31T18:00:00+00:00"
}

Data is pulled live from city portals on each run — always current as of the moment the actor executes. Fields may be empty strings if not provided by the source portal.

Use Cases

• Solar / roofing contractors — find recently permitted jobs in your market
• Real estate & construction intel — track building activity by city, type, or contractor
• Lead generation — new construction permits = new potential customers
• Market research — permit volume trends by city or permit type
• Compliance monitoring — track specific addresses or contractors

Supported Cities

248 cities across 40 states + DC. Sorted by population within each state. Don't see yours? Email daniel@paxiq.com to request it.

Running Locally

# Install dependencies
pip install-r requirements.txt
playwright install chromium
# Single city
python src/main.py --city Chicago --state IL --start2025-01-01 --end2025-01-31
# Keyword search across all API cities
python src/main.py --keyword solar --all--start2025-01-20 --end2025-01-27
# With concurrency tuning
python src/main.py --keyword solar --all--start2025-01-01 --end2025-01-31 \
 --concurrency-api 10 --concurrency-browser 3 --max-cities 50
# Via INPUT.json
echo'{"city":"Dallas","state":"TX","startDate":"2025-01-01","endDate":"2025-01-31"}'> INPUT.json
python src/main.py

Output is saved to output/<city>_permits.json.

Architecture

src/
├── main.py Apify entry point — reads input, routes, pushes results
├── router.py City → platform routing + scraper adapters
├── normalize.py Standardizes raw output to common 14-field schema
├── accela_scraper.py Playwright — 163cities(keyword: form Description field)
├── energov_scraper.py Playwright + httpx — 37 cities
├── socrata_scraper.py httpx REST — NYC,LA, Chicago, Seattle,NOLA,more(keyword: $q)
├── arcgis_scraper.py httpx REST — DC, Nashville, Minneapolis, Baltimore,more(keyword:WHERELIKE)
├── phoenix_scraper.py httpx CSVexport — Phoenix,AZ
├── portland_scraper.py httpx ArcGIS MapServer — Portland,OR
├── dc_scraper.py httpx DCGIS multi-layer — Washington,DC
└── <city>_scraper.py 70+ city-specific scrapers
data/
└── cities_discovered.json 248 supported US cities with platform + portal URL

Concurrency model:

• API scrapers (Socrata, ArcGIS, httpx): up to 8 parallel by default
• Browser scrapers (Accela, EnerGov): up to 3 parallel (RAM-limited, ~300MB each)
• Results stream to the dataset as each city completes — no waiting for all cities

Support & City Requests

Need a city that isn't listed? Email daniel@paxiq.com with the city name and state — new cities are added regularly and most can be turned around quickly.

Notes

• Data is live — pulled directly from city permit portals on each run, not from a cached database. Results are always current as of the run time.
• Playwright scrapers (Accela, EnerGov) run headless Chromium — slower but handle JS-heavy portals. Keyword search on Accela uses the portal's own Description field for server-side filtering.
• API scrapers (Socrata, ArcGIS) push keyword filters to the server — only matching records are transferred.
• maxPermits=0 means no limit — use with caution on large date ranges for major cities.
• Some fields (contractor, owner, value) are not available from all city portals.