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Solar, Roofing and HVAC Leads from Building Permits: A How-To with 30 Days of Real Data

#opendata #construction #javascript #datascience

If you sell solar, roofing or HVAC, or sell to the companies that do, building permits are the most honest public signal of where work is happening. I classified 77,044 permits issued from Sep 20 to Oct 19, 2026, across 47 US cities and counties. Here is what the three most-requested trades look like.

How the work categories are assigned

Cities don't share a permit taxonomy. Austin uses "Electrical Permit - Residential" and Columbus uses "1,2,3 Family MEP"; others only have free text. I map each permit to one category using keyword rules over the type, work class and description, in priority order:

const RULES = [
  ['Solar', /solar|photovoltaic|\bpv\b/i],
  ['Roofing', /re-?roof|roofing|\broof\b/i],
  ['Mechanical / HVAC', /hvac|mechanical|furnace|heat pump|air condition|boiler|duct/i],
  // ...electrical, plumbing, new construction, demolition, etc.
];
const category = (p) =>
  (RULES.find(([, re]) => re.test(`${p.type} ${p.workClass} ${p.description}`)) || ['Other'])[0];
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Order matters: a "re-roof and add solar" permit is counted as solar. Expect some noise, so spot-check the descriptions.

Solar: 1,439 permits

City/county Permits Median value With contractor name
New York City 357 $39,864 51%
Chicago 237 $21,827 100%
San Diego County (unincorporated) 224 n/a 25%
San Jose (last 30 days feed) 188 n/a 46%
Boulder 95 $6,640 67%
Washington, DC (last 30 days feed) 79 n/a 0%
Baltimore 37 $16,000 0%
Norfolk 34 $29,698 0%

Most active by permit count: SUNRUN INSTALLATION SERVICES INC (150), NYSS LLC (50), SUNRUN INC (35), CERTIFIED ELECTRIC LLC (30).

Roofing: 4,130 permits

City/county Permits Median value With contractor name
Columbus 1061 $13,702 52%
Miami-Dade County (unincorporated) 729 $23,000 91%
San Jose (last 30 days feed) 326 $16,646 51%
Chicago 231 $27,300 97%
Philadelphia 193 n/a 5%
Boston 191 $20,400 0%
Cleveland 186 $11,980 91%
Baton Rouge (East Baton Rouge Parish) 142 $22,998 89%

Most active by permit count: NEWMAN ROOFING LLC (58), ABLE ROOFING LLC (44), Premier South LLC (43), WINDOW NATION LLC (39).

Mechanical / HVAC: 6,624 permits

City/county Permits Median value With contractor name
New York City 1738 $59,350 72%
Columbus 900 n/a 45%
Austin 743 n/a 43%
Virginia Beach 360 n/a 0%
Washington, DC (last 30 days feed) 329 n/a 0%
Norfolk 247 $8,554 0%
Cincinnati 234 $11,758 52%
Bellevue 226 n/a 57%

Most active by permit count: JT MAGEN & COMPANY INC (56), AIRTRON INC (53), Texas Multifamily Solution, LLC (41), COLONIAL HEATING AND COOLING CO INC (38).

Reading the numbers

  • Solar is concentrated among a few installers. Sunrun entities alone pulled about 185 permits in 30 days. For an installer, this is a picture of competitor share. For suppliers and financiers, it's a target list.
  • Roofing is the most "lead-like" trade. It's high-volume and residential, and about half of the permits name the roofer. Columbus and Miami-Dade dominate this month.
  • HVAC values are unreliable. Many HVAC permits are equipment swaps with no value or a token one, so filter on type and description rather than value.

A practical workflow

  1. Pick your trade and metros, then pull the last 30 days.
  2. Selling to homeowners? A permit usually means that job is already sold. Use it for neighborhood marketing or for the follow-on trade (new roof, then solar, gutters or insulation).
  3. Selling to contractors? Group by contractor name and rank by permit count to get a list of active installers.
  4. Re-run weekly and keep only new permit numbers.

Get the data

Everything above came from the Building Permits Scraper. It has a workCategories filter (e.g. ["Solar","Roofing"]) plus states/regions filters, and costs $2 per 1,000 permits. Every source is an official open-data portal, linked in the README if you'd rather query it directly.

Related: Turning contractor registrations and building permits into a sales pipeline · Texas building permit leads: 10,910 permits from Austin, San Antonio, Collin County and more

Free sample data

See the fields before you run anything:

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