Investment research

Building permit datafor investment research

Residential and commercial permits, job values and contractor activity by county and month: 4.9M permits from 591 building departments, refreshed monthly.

Browse coverage See pricing

Aerial view of townhouses under construction beside finished units in a new development — The Townes development, Rockingham, VA · Photo: USDA

Building permits: 4.9M
Building departments: 591
Permit history: Since 1963
Update cadence: Monthly

Read construction before it is reported

Permits are filed months before the work shows up in shipments, revenue or official statistics.

Starts by region

Residential and commercial permit counts by county and month.

Category trends

Solar, batteries, heat pumps, service upgrades and pools, permit by permit.

Builder and contractor share

Who is pulling permits, where, and how many.

Permits behind the numbers

New residential

Single-family and multifamily starts.

Commercial

New buildings and tenant improvements.

Service upgrades

Electrification demand: panels and services, month by month.

Solar and storage

Installations by county and installer.

Remodeling spend

Job values across renovation permits.

Builder activity

Permit counts by builder and contractor.

What every file holds

4.9M permits from 591 building departments, in one schema.

Data dictionary Pricing

The same columns for every department: Permit number, type, work description, status, application, issue and completion dates, job value, contractor, site address and parcel ID.
Full history, or the past 12 months monthly: A county’s full history is $250–$500 once; a fresh 12-month file every month is $45–$75/mo. Statewide files and nationwide licensing too.
Joins to parcels: 99% of permits carry the county’s parcel ID, for joins to assessor rolls and parcel boundaries.
CSV, Excel or Parquet: Chosen per order, one file per county or state.

Common questions

Can we license all of it?

Yes. Nationwide is licensed through sales: every covered department in one feed, with monthly updates.

Is coverage consistent over time?

Each county page charts permits by year. Departments’ histories start in different years, so trend work should compare counties with full coverage of the period.

What formats do files come in?

CSV, Excel or Parquet, chosen per order.

How is it priced?

Counties are $250–$500 for the full history or $45–$75/mo for monthly updates, by county size. Statewide files are priced on permit count and never cost more than their counties combined. Every county and state page shows its exact price.

A permit panel for your models

License nationwide, or start with a state.

Browse coverage Contact sales