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Guide · Competitor tracking

Who is pulling permits in my area: how to find out

Updated · Rotomal

To see who is pulling permits near you, take your city's open permit data, filter it to your ZIP codes and count permits by contractor name. That works where the city publishes the contractor: for permits issued 1–28 October 2026, Austin named the contractor company on 92% of permits, Columbus on 93% and Miami-Dade County on 100%, while Dallas named it on 0.2% and Los Angeles has no contractor column. In Austin's ZIP 78704 those four weeks, 274 of 295 permits named one of 181 different contractor companies, and the busiest pulled 11.

Where the contractor is in the data

Our counts for permits issued 1–28 October 2026, from each city's open data on 29 October 2026:

CityFieldPermits naming the contractor
Miami-Dade CountyContractorName (and ContractorPhone)5,021 of 5,021
New York Cityapplicant_business_name13,410 of 13,410
East Baton Rouge Parishcontractorname652 of 652
Cincinnaticompanyname823 of 832 (99%)
Chicagocontact roles naming a contractor (general, electrical, plumbing and others)2,465 of 2,536 (97%)
ColumbusAPPLICANT_BUS_NAME3,303 of 3,564 (93%)
Austincontractor_company_name4,061 of 4,425 (92%)
Philadelphiacontractorname3,177 of 3,657 (87%)
New Orleanscontractors982 of 1,155 (85%)
Seattlecontractorcompanyname33 of 475 (7%)
Dallascontractor12 of 5,250 (0.2%)
Los Angeles, Fort Worth, Kansas CityNoneNo contractor column

Count permits by contractor in your ZIP codes

On a Socrata portal, one request groups a ZIP code's permits by contractor. On Austin's open data portal (data.austintexas.gov) that returns the contractor companies with the most permits in ZIP 78704 since 1 October 2026.

The Miami-Dade County ArcGIS permit layer (services.arcgis.com) does the same for permits that mention a roof, counted by contractor name. Any ZIP code, date or keyword works the same way.

Look up the permits one contractor pulled

Filter the contractor field by name instead of grouping. Names are typed differently from permit to permit, so search for a distinctive part of the name. On Austin's open data portal, a search for ROOFING in the contractor company name returns the permits issued since 1 October 2026 to companies with that word in their name.

In New York City, the field to search is applicant_business_name; in Miami-Dade County, ContractorName.

What four weeks of data show

  • Austin, ZIP 78704, 1–28 October 2026: 295 permits, 274 of them naming one of 181 different contractor companies, the busiest with 11. A busy ZIP is spread thin, so watch trends over 90 days rather than one month.
  • Austin, whole city: 180 permits issued 1–28 October 2026 mentioned a roof in the description, from 103 different contractor companies, and the list included plumbing, electrical and solar firms. Keyword counts need a check by permit type.
  • Miami-Dade County, 1–28 October 2026: 763 permits mentioned a roof, from 347 different contractors; 738 of them listed a contractor phone.

What a 47-jurisdiction study found

A DEV Community post by Loomwise (posted 23 October 2026) classified 77,044 permits from 47 US cities and counties issued 20 September to 19 October 2026. It counted 4,130 roofing, 6,624 HVAC and 1,439 solar permits. It found that about half of roofing permits name the roofer, ranging from 0% in Boston to 97% in Chicago among the eight busiest roofing jurisdictions it lists, and called HVAC valuations unreliable. Sunrun entities pulled about 185 of the solar permits, roughly 13% by our arithmetic.

Where the data has no contractor

In Dallas, Los Angeles, Fort Worth and Kansas City you can still count permits by ZIP code and type, but not by contractor. For a handful of permits, open each record in the city's permit portal. In Chicago, the first listed contact was the owner on 1,738 of 2,536 October permits, so check every contact field, not just the first.

Getting the competitor view every week

Permit Weekly's Pro plan counts permits by contractor across your ZIP codes over 30, 90 and 365 days, alongside the weekly lead list, so you can see who is winning your kind of work without running the queries yourself.

Questions

How can I see who is pulling permits in my area?

Filter your city's open permit data to your ZIP codes and count permits by the contractor field. Where the city does not publish open data, look up permits one at a time in its permit portal.

Can I look up all permits pulled by a contractor?

Yes, in cities that publish the contractor in their open data, such as Austin, Columbus, Philadelphia, New York City and Miami-Dade County: filter the contractor field by name.

Why do some permits show no contractor?

Some cities do not publish the field (Los Angeles, Fort Worth, Kansas City) or have stopped filling it (Dallas), and owner-builder permits may list only the owner.

Is it legal to look up a contractor's permits?

Building permits are generally public records in the US, and open-data portals publish them for anyone to use. How you then contact homeowners is regulated by Do-Not-Call and TCPA rules. This is not legal advice.

Sources

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