US building permits by county and city, as one tidy table (Census Building Permits Survey)
If you sell building products, build homes or lend on construction, monthly building permit counts are one of the earliest demand signals you can get. The US Census Bureau publishes them for every state, county and permit-issuing place through the Building Permits Survey (BPS), free. The catch is the format. Why the raw files are hard to use BPS is published as dozens of fixed-layout text files…
Building permits data from the US Census Bureau is available for every state, county, and place through their Building Permits Survey (BPS). This data is published in multiple fixed-layout text files, each covering different geography levels and regions. Columns are organized by structure type (1 unit, 2 units, 3-4 units, and 5+ units) and include information about buildings, units, and valuation. The data is presented in different formats for state and place files.
The BPS data is updated monthly, but there's a delay in accessing the newest figures. To use this data effectively, you need to first identify the latest published month and then select the desired geography level (state, county, place, or metro area) and period (monthly, year-to-date, or annual). Parsing the fixed-width columns requires following the layout notes specific to each file type.
For state files, the valuation is reported in thousands of dollars, so conversion to actual dollar amounts is necessary when comparing with county or place figures. Assigning FIPS codes to the table allows for further joining with other datasets.
To simplify the process of working with this data, an Apify Actor called "US Building Permits by City, County & State" has been created. This tool automatically identifies the most recent published month, downloads the relevant files for chosen periods and geography levels, and provides one row per place per period. The exported data includes named columns such as units1, units5plus, and totalValueUsd, all already in dollars.
You can filter the data by state, place name, and minimum number of units, and export it in CSV or Excel formats. It's essential to remember that building permits are authorizations, not starts or completions, and some places may not issue any permits at all. Single-family and 5+ unit counts often have different drivers for change, so it's crucial to analyze these categories separately along with the total.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
