Building Permit Intelligence
The official record of property change — structured into decision-ready data and property risk scores. Built for insurance first.
1024 Elm St, Sacramento, CA 95814Live
Status
FNLD 08/04/23
Value
$11,000
Description
INSTL 6.9KW ROOF MT PV SOLAR SYS W/ 225A MPU PNL UPGRD & COMP SHNGL REROOF T/O 22SQ
Status
Final · 08/04/23
Value
$11,000
Roof
Comp shingle · tear-off · 22 sq
Solar
Roof-mount PV · 6.9 kW
Electrical
225A main panel upgrade
Property Type
Residential
Condition
82
Cat. Resilience
61
Fire Protection
22
250M+
Permit records structured
70%+
Of the U.S. population covered
10+
Proprietary risk scores
Backed by
The Problem
Every building has a paper trail. Almost no one can read it.
Permits are the most complete public record of what's actually been built — every roof, addition, and system upgrade, dated and official. But they sit in thousands of municipal systems as raw, unstandardized text. Tax records, AVMs, and applicant disclosures all miss it. So insurers price and pay on property they can't actually see.
Insurers feel it first — but everyone who prices, lends, or builds runs on the same blind spot.
Transformation
From raw text to a structured signal
Raw record in, the same structured fields out — for any permit, from any jurisdiction.
Raw permit record — as published
Builty structured output
"T/O R/R RESHEET 20 SQ W/ 30 YR LAM DIM COMP"Roof · Sacramento, CA
Project: Structure.Roofing · Scope: Tear-off + re-sheath · Material: 30-yr dimensional comp shingle · Area: 20 sq (2,000 ft²)
"E/C/O 3 TON A/C 16 SEER, 10 KW HEAT PER PLAN PER CODE"HVAC · Pinellas Park, FL
Project: Mechanical.HVAC · Action: Change-out · Capacity: 3 ton · Efficiency: 16 SEER · Aux heat: 10 kW electric
"NEW SFD CVRD PORCH PATIO INCL A/C UNF BSMT LWN SPRK"New build · Greeley, CO
Work: New Construction · Property: Single-family · Features: covered porch, patio, A/C, unfinished basement, lawn sprinklers
"TI - INSTALL NEW WET FIRE SPRINKLER SYSTEM (25 HEADS) INTO (E) STRUCTURE. RE-ROOF: COMP SHNGL 18 SQ. SOLAR 14.26 KWDC (31) MODULES"Commercial TI · fire + roof + solar
Fire: Suppression.Sprinkler — wet system, 25 heads · Roof: Comp shingle, 1,800 ft² · Solar: 14.3 kW, 31 modules
Why Builty
The hard part isn't the permits. It's everything after.
Permits are public — anyone can download them. Turning them into something a model or an adjuster can trust takes four steps, each years of engineering. Together, they're the moat.
Collected direct — including data no one else has
Builty collects permits straight from the source, not as a reseller of another vendor's feed — and builds specialty datasets, like fire-protection systems, that generic permit data doesn't carry.
Resolved to the right property
Permits rarely arrive with a clean address. Builty matches every record to a canonical property — deduped and geocoded — so a property's full history lines up in one place.
One schema, not a thousand dialects
Every jurisdiction writes permits its own way. Builty maps them all to one consistent structure — analysis-ready the moment it lands.
Structured variables, not text blobs
A line like "RES HVAC CHANGEOUT — LIKE FOR LIKE" tells a model nothing. Builty parses it into unit count, capacity, efficiency, and project type.
Risk Scores
Permit-derived scores. Three levels of intelligence.
The market standard is a single "roof age" number. Builty distills a property's entire permit history into scores that span condition and change, catastrophe resilience across perils, and reconstruction value.
Score family ↓
Scale →
Scale →
Property
Single address
Neighborhood
Area patterns
Portfolio
Whole book
Condition & Change
How a building and its systems have aged, been maintained, and modified
Where building stock is aging, modernizing, or being reworked
Distribution of building age, condition & change across your book
Catastrophe Resilience
Permitted mitigation against flood, wildfire, wind, hail & freeze
Area-wide adoption of hazard mitigation, by peril
Aggregate preparedness & geographic concentration of cat exposure
Value & Reconstruction
Reconstruction value implied by permitted improvements
Neighborhood reconstruction cost & improvement patterns
Total reconstruction exposure & concentration across a book
Exact score definitions shared under NDA.
Risk Level
Low
Moderate
Elevated
123 Main St, Anytown USA
Condition & Change84/100
Cat. Resilience88/100
Reconstruction62/100
Well-kept home; consistent upkeep and storm mitigation on record.
500 Oak Ave, Anytown USA
Condition & Change66/100
Cat. Resilience29/100
Reconstruction78/100
Sound condition, but little catastrophe mitigation on record — elevated exposure.
42 Cedar Ln, Anytown USA
Condition & Change58/100
Cat. Resilience61/100
Reconstruction55/100
Moderate across the board; some hazard mitigation on record.
All scores derived from permit history alone — no third-party data, no satellite imagery, no self-reported surveys.
InsuranceExplore Underwriting →Explore Claims →
Insurance runs on what's actually been built
From automated personal-lines triage to large-commercial portfolio risk — Builty's insurance-native schema and scores slot into underwriting and claims.
Underwriting
Price on verified permit facts, not applicant disclosures.
Roof age, additions & system upgrades at quote and renewal
Structural-modification and red-flag detection
Catastrophe-resilience scores for cat modeling
Claims
Establish a pre-loss condition baseline before the first call.
Pre-loss roof, HVAC & electrical condition
Permit-gap signals for coverage & fraud review
Rebuild-cost validation from permitted improvements
Delivery
Your workflow. Your format.
A REST API for address lookups, bulk files, a subscription feed scoped to your book, or a no-code portal — no forced migration. Here's what a single lookup returns:
GET /v1/property?address=1024+Elm+St,+Sacramento,+CA
{
"address": "1024 Elm St, Sacramento, CA 95814",
"apn": "006-0123-004",
"property_type": "residential",
"permits": [
{
"issued": "2023-08-04",
"status": "final",
"value_usd": 11000,
"roof": { "material": "comp shingle", "scope": "tear-off", "area_sq": 22 },
"solar": { "type": "roof-mount PV", "capacity_kw": 6.9 },
"electrical": { "scope": "main panel upgrade", "amperage": 225 }
}
],
"scores": { "condition": 82, "cat_resilience": 61, "fire_protection": 22 }
}Insights Lab
Permit data reveals what loss data can't
Original research from the Builty team — how permit-based intelligence translates into competitive advantage.
Data & Methodology
How Many Building Permit Jurisdictions Are There in the US? (Way More Than You Think)
The US has roughly 20,000 building permit jurisdictions, each writing its own rules and keeping its own records. Here's who they are, where they are, and how to find the one that governs any address.
Fundamentals
What Is a Building Permit, and What Can It Reveal About Risk?
A building permit is more than paperwork — it's a structured record of what changed on a property, and when. Here's what's inside one and why it matters for risk.
Claims
Property Claims Blind Spot: Building Permits
Permit history is one of the most overlooked signals in property claims — for triage, reserving, settlement, and spotting fraud.
FAQ
Building permit data, answered
The questions carriers, lenders, and analysts ask most — written to be quotable by search and answer engines.
What is building permit data?
Building permits are the public records a city or county issues whenever a property is built, altered, or repaired — roofs, additions, electrical and plumbing work, solar, pools, and more. Each one is a dated, government-issued record of a physical change. Aggregated nationally, permits are the most complete public record of what has actually been built across the U.S. property stock.
What does Builty do?
Builty collects raw municipal building-permit records from thousands of U.S. jurisdictions and structures them into clean, analysis-ready property intelligence — an insurance-native schema plus property risk scores. Instead of unreadable text like "REROOF W/ TEAR OFF 18 SQ," you get structured fields: project type, material, scope, status, and derived risk.
Where does Builty's permit data come from?
Directly from the source — public building-permit records collected from thousands of individual U.S. municipal jurisdictions. Builty is the source of record, not a reseller of another vendor's feed, which is what lets carriers rely on it inside their own systems.
How does permit data help claims teams?
It gives adjusters a pre-loss condition baseline: the permitted history of a property before the loss. That establishes roof age and prior repairs, supports scope and pre-existing-damage discussions, and helps resolve claims faster and more consistently.
How does permit data help underwriting?
At quote, bind, and renewal, permit history supplies verified property variables — roof age, fire protection, electrical and plumbing condition, occupancy change, and structural modification — so pricing reflects what has actually been built rather than what an applicant disclosed.
What property risk scores does Builty provide?
A library of 10+ proprietary risk scores, derived entirely from permit history and delivered at the property, neighborhood, and portfolio level. Rather than a single roof-age number, they span a property's condition and change, catastrophe resilience across perils, and reconstruction value — the dimensions that move property risk. Exact score definitions are shared under NDA.
How much of the U.S. does Builty cover?
Builty's records span thousands of U.S. jurisdictions, covering roughly 70% of the U.S. population, with 250M+ permit records structured to date.
How is Builty data delivered?
However fits your stack — a REST API for address-level lookups, bulk files for a geography or property set, an ongoing subscription feed scoped to your book, and a no-code web portal for analysts. No forced migration.
See it on your own book
Send us a set of addresses or an active book — we'll return structured permit data and scores.
Request Data Access