30,875 permits in the last 90 days.
Counted live from each city’s own open-data feed when this page was last rebuilt, roughly 343 new filings a day across 4 metros. Pick a city to see what it is building and which trades those filings feed.
What a permit record is
Before almost any work on a building, someone has to tell the city. That filing carries the address, the scope of work in the applicant’s own words, a job value, and a status that moves as the application is reviewed. It becomes public the day it is filed, which makes it the earliest reliable evidence that a property owner has decided to spend money.
What it is not
It is not a lead list. A permit record has no phone number, no owner name in most cities, and no indication of whether the work is already contracted. Turning one into something worth calling means resolving it to a property, reading the description against a trade, and scoring what is left. That is the part this product does.
Why earlier than the permit
A permit for the exact work you sell usually means the homeowner has already signed with a competitor. The useful record is the one just upstream: a roof replaced with no array on it, a service upgrade with no mechanical work, a rezoning hearing on next month’s agenda. Those pools are consistently larger than the contested one and nobody is selling them.
Why some city data is worthless
City datasets are abandoned without ever being taken down. Of seven candidate feeds evaluated for this product, 2 of 7 abandoned had silently stopped updating years earlier while still serving hundreds of thousands of rows. Every metro here is checked against its source on load, and a feed with nothing newer than 21 days is pulled rather than served.
Every metro we can query.
Los Angeles
15,060 permits · 167.3 a dayLA Dept of Building & Safety, dataset pi9x-tg5x. Mostly bldg-alter/repair, bldg-addition, bldg-new. 24 ZIPs with activity in the window.
Austin
7,980 permits · 88.7 a dayAustin DSD, dataset 3syk-w9eu. Mostly electrical permit, mechanical permit, plumbing permit. 24 ZIPs with activity in the window.
Chicago
6,358 permits · 70.6 a dayChicago Department of Buildings, dataset ydr8-5enu. Mostly permit – express permit program, permit - renovation/alteration, permit - elevator equipment. This city publishes no ZIP column, so territories are city-wide.
Seattle
1,477 permits · 16.4 a daySeattle SDCI, dataset 76t5-zqzr. Mostly addition/alteration, new, demolition. 23 ZIPs with activity in the window.
Narrow it to one ZIP.
City totals tell you the shape of a market. A ZIP tells you whether it is worth your Tuesday.