Guides, tutorials, and insights on building with permit data.
Get an email or webhook the moment a named contractor pulls a permit, anywhere in our coverage. Free email digests, real-time webhooks with CRM delivery, and the solar orphan-recovery play.
Read more →API, Contractor Leads, or Bulk Data Export? They solve three different jobs, and picking the right one takes two minutes. A plain-English guide matched to what you're actually trying to do, with a quick decision table.
Read more →Does a building permit include the owner's name? Usually not. What's actually in permit data, why owner contact info is a separate and harder dataset, and how to get each one.
Read more →Every issued building permit is a homeowner spending money on their property right now — with the address, scope, date, and owner of record attached. Here's why permits are such a strong buying signal, the three ways to get them, and how to turn them into booked jobs. Plus PermitStack Leads, exclusive ZIP-based leads from $79/mo.
Read more →A filed roof permit is a homeowner actively investing in their roof — a first-party, public-record lead, not a resold aggregator contact. How to use roof and re-roof permits as a lead source, work storm-season timing, and reach the owner of record. Plus PermitStack Leads for the roofing trade — one roofer per ZIP, from $79/mo.
Read more →A door-to-door playbook: use permit data to find homes that just pulled a solar, roof, or pool permit, cut a territory on a map, and knock the neighbors of every fresh install — with the owner of record and contractor on each record.
Read more →A two-week-old permit is a cold lead. Here's how to get new and changed permits in real time — webhooks vs polling, the /v1/permits/events delta feed, and piping permits into your CRM or Zapier. Plus why Shovels.ai has no webhooks and SignedOff covers only ~18 jurisdictions.
Read more →Most permit data vendors hide pricing behind a "contact sales" form. Here's an honest, dated breakdown of what building permit data actually costs in 2026 — PermitStack's published $29–$149 ladder and free tier versus Shovels.ai's ~$599 sales-gated floor and the quote-only incumbents.
Read more →Roof age is one of the most predictive variables in property underwriting — and permits give a hard, dated roof-replacement signal by address, refreshed daily and years fresher than aerial imagery. How it works, where it wins, and where it has honest gaps.
Read more →If you sell solar installations and you're still buying $80-$150 leads from aggregators, you're paying for prospects who already said yes to seven other contractors. Here's the playbook for using building permit data to find homeowners before your competitors do — including the four-step lead-gen workflow and real CAC math.
Read more →Building permit data has been locked away in thousands of municipal portals. Here's how to access 83M+ permits across 8,000+ U.S. cities in all 50 states through a single API — with Python, JavaScript, and curl examples.
Read more →Solar companies spend thousands on leads. Building permit data shows you exactly which homeowners just installed panels or filed roofing permits — the highest-intent prospects in the market.
Read more →Permit data is the earliest public signal of construction activity — often weeks before work begins. Here's how investors use it to spot emerging neighborhoods and renovation waves.
Read more →Before hiring a contractor, check their track record. PermitStack's contractor search lets you see permit history, project types, and activity across multiple cities programmatically.
Read more →Both provide building permit data via API, but they serve different markets. Here's an honest comparison of coverage, pricing, features, and developer experience.
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