Why doesn't PermitGrab have Houston building permits?

Houston runs its permit system through the City's Accela tenant with no public REST API. The city has not exposed a permit feed via open data despite running an open-data portal for other datasets. We monitor for any change in this status; for now, owner data is the available pillar.

How many Houston property owners are in the data?

After filtering Harris County Central Appraisal District (HCAD) data to records with Appraised_value_COH (Houston-city taxed parcels), about 500,000 properties remain. The full HCAD county-wide file is 1.73 million parcels including unincorporated Harris County and other municipalities.

Are Houston violations fresh?

The Houston violation archive runs through 2018-08-22 (the public dataset stopped updating then). We re-probe quarterly; if Houston resumes publishing or moves to ArcGIS we'll wire the fresh feed. For current-day re-rate work, the HCAD owner data + transaction-date filtering is the more useful signal.

Can I match my book of business against Houston HCAD data?

Yes. Export your book's Houston-area policies as a CSV with property addresses, then join against the HCAD feed by address. Most agents do this monthly using their AMS export and a simple spreadsheet match.

Does Houston HCAD data include phone numbers for property owners?

No. HCAD provides parcel + owner-name + mailing-address only. Phone enrichment requires a separate skip-trace tool (BatchSkipTracing, REISkip, etc). Most direct-mail and door-knock workflows use the mailing address as the primary contact channel.

Houston Insurance Agent Leads from Public Property Records

Published 2026-05-02 · 6 min read · Audience: Insurance agents in Houston

If you write Texas homeowner's, wind, flood, or umbrella policies in Houston, you face a structural problem: the City of Houston doesn't publish a public permit feed. That makes the standard "permit-as-rerate-trigger" playbook (which works in Miami-Dade or Phoenix) harder to run in Houston. But Houston has two other public-data assets that flip the math: a 500,000+ HCAD property owner file via the City's ArcGIS server, and an 83,000-plus archive of Houston code violations going back to 2018.

Together, these enable a different prospecting motion: book-of-business cross-referencing for retention, and high-value-home prospecting for new business.

What's in the Houston data feed

~500,000 Houston-city HCAD property owner records filtered to the Appraised_value_COH (City of Houston taxed) subset — full owner names, mailing addresses, parcel IDs, last sale dates, total appraised values, year built
83,000+ Houston code violation records — historical archive (most recent fresh data was through 2018-08; we monitor for refresh)
Building permits are not currently available — HCAD permit data lives behind the City's Accela tenant with no public API

How Houston insurance agents use this without permit data

1. Book-of-business value validation

HCAD's appraisal data includes Total_Appraised_Value and Year_Built for every Houston-city parcel. Match your book of business by address, compare your dwelling-coverage limits to the HCAD-reported total appraised value, and identify policies under-rated by 10%+. Texas wind premiums on coastal homes (especially in flood-zone-V or flood-zone-AE properties) are heavily dependent on accurate replacement cost — under-rated policies are unprofitable claim outcomes for the insurer and dissatisfied policyholders for you.

The HCAD feed also includes year_built — which drives wind-mitigation eligibility for newer construction (post-2002 IRC code) vs older stock. Match your book against year_built to identify which insureds qualify for wind credits they may not have applied.

2. High-value-home prospecting

Filter the property_owners feed by Total_Appraised_Value > $750K and landuse_dscr containing "Single Family Residence" — that surfaces ~25,000-50,000 high-value Houston homes. Cross-reference against your existing high-value-home book to find the prospects you DON'T currently insure. Direct mail with a discovery offer ("we'll re-rate your current policy at no cost — most Houston policies we review save 10-25% or surface coverage gaps").

3. Recent transactions = new policy opportunities

The HCAD feed includes New_Owner_Date — the date the property changed hands. Filter to New_Owner_Date within the last 90 days to find homes that recently changed hands. Recent buyers are 5-10x more likely to shop their homeowner's policy than long-term owners, especially in the first 6 months after closing. Direct contact via the mailing address (which is often the new property address for owner-occupied homes) within 90 days of close has high conversion to quote.

4. Code violation cross-reference

Houston code violations are a different conversation — they signal property issues that affect insurability and claim outcomes. For commercial lines and high-value home policies, properties with active code violations may need re-underwriting. Filter the violations feed by your book's ZIP codes and address-match for retention triggers.

The Houston-specific insurance dynamics that matter

Houston's wind, flood, and hail exposure is among the highest in the US. Hurricane Harvey (2017), Imelda (2019), and the freeze events (2021, 2024) have made TX a profitable but volatile market for carriers. Agents who proactively re-rate policies, surface coverage gaps, and prospect high-value homes outperform on retention and new-business — both factors compound in Houston's environment.

The HCAD data quality is exceptional. Texas Property Tax Code requires county appraisal districts to publish accurate property data, and HCAD is one of the largest in the country (Harris County is the third-most-populous county in the US). The 500K Houston-city subset alone is larger than most cities' total parcel base.

Other resources

Browse the live Houston data page for current owner counts and aggregate stats. For broader insurance agent playbook context, see our insurance agent lead guide. For Texas comparisons with full permit data, Austin and San Antonio are Tier 5 cities with daily permit feeds.

Pricing

$149/month for unlimited access to Houston data and every other city in our coverage. See pricing or try a free week.