Find Construction Leads from Building Permits (Live Data 2026)

If you sell to contractors, builders, or home service businesses, the cheapest, freshest, and most under-used lead source in the United States is sitting in the public record: the building permit feed. Every commercial project, every roof replacement, every solar install, every kitchen remodel files a permit weeks before the work starts. The data is public. The contact is on the filing. And almost nobody is using it as a sales channel.

This is a guide for contractors and home-service operators who want to stop overpaying for shared leads on Angi/HomeAdvisor and start working a list of your prospects, refreshed daily, before the competition even knows the project exists.

Why building permits beat Angi, HomeAdvisor, and shared-lead services

Shared-lead platforms charge $30–75 per lead and sell each one to 3–5 competing contractors. Your close rate gets murdered before you even pick up the phone. Worse: the lead is a "I'm thinking about it" homeowner, not a project that's already moving.

A building permit is the opposite. By the time it's filed:

• The project is funded
• The scope is defined
• The address is known
• The contractor of record (or homeowner) is named on the filing — that's your contact
• The work is starting in days or weeks, not months

And nobody else got a copy.

What you can find in a permit feed

• New construction: ground-up residential and commercial builds — every one needs subs (framing, MEP, finishes).
• Renovations and additions: kitchens, baths, ADUs, second stories — homeowners with budgets ready to spend.
• Roof and siding: reroofs and re-sides are itemized permits in most cities.
• Solar and battery storage: every PV system pulls an electrical permit. For solar installers and electricians, this is the cleanest lead source in the country.
• HVAC, plumbing, electrical: trade-specific permits identify exactly which homes are doing system replacements.
• Pool construction: high-ticket discretionary work that's almost never on shared-lead platforms.
• Tenant improvements: new tenants build out commercial space — your shot at the GC, MEP subs, and finish trades on the project.

Three real examples of permit-driven lead generation

1. A solar installer in Phoenix

Phoenix issues thousands of residential PV permits a year. A small solar installer who tracked new permits in their service ZIP codes and contacted every homeowner whose neighbor just installed could grow their referral pipeline 3-5x without spending a dollar on Google Ads. Phoenix's permit feed includes the install address, system size, and contractor of record — the exact data needed for a "we just installed solar at your neighbor's house" door-knock or postcard campaign.

2. An HVAC contractor in NYC

New York City publishes every DOB filing including HVAC permits. An HVAC sub who pulled the daily new-mechanical-permits list for Manhattan + Brooklyn could call the named contractor of record on every commercial AC project the same day it's filed — beating every other sub to the conversation. NYC's permit data also includes contractor business names that match cleanly to NY DOL licensing data, so phone numbers are a lookup away.

3. A restoration company in Tampa

After a hurricane, code violation and roof permit volume in Tampa, Cape Coral, and Fort Lauderdale spikes. A restoration company that monitors code-enforcement violations and roof permit filings in the affected counties has a real-time list of motivated property owners — far more responsive than the door-to-door canvassing that dominates the post-storm scramble.

How permit-driven lead generation actually works

1. Pick your cities. Start with one or two metros where you already do work.
2. Set trade filters. Specify which permit types matter — solar, HVAC, roofing, new construction, etc.
3. Set a project value floor. Permits under $5K are mostly minor repairs; $25K+ is where contractor leads start to make sense; $100K+ filters to commercial-scale work.
4. Get a daily digest. Every morning, you see new filings matching your criteria — usually 5–25 leads per city per day.
5. Make the call. The contact is on the permit. Reach out before the project enters bidding.

The "data quality" problem (and how to solve it)

Most contractors who try DIY permit research get stuck on the data layer. City portals are slow, formats vary by city, and contractor names need to be deduplicated across permits. The win is in the aggregation: one feed across multiple metros, normalized formats, contractor profiles built across permits, and phone enrichment from state licensing databases (FL DBPR, MN DLI, NY DOL, WA L&I, CA CSLB).

That's what PermitGrab does. We collect from 38+ cities daily, build deduplicated contractor profiles, enrich with phone numbers from state license databases, and deliver the leads that match your filters by email every morning.

How to get started

Start a free trial and pick a city. You'll see exactly which permits filed in your trade in the last 7 days, with contractor names, project values, and addresses.

See pricing — $149/mo per city, no per-lead fees, no shared-lead waste.

Or browse a city directly: Chicago, New York, Phoenix, San Antonio, Miami-Dade, or all 38 cities.