For governments
About our public records request
If your office received a records request from Building Activity, this page explains who we are, what we asked for and the easiest ways to send it.
Who we are
Building Activity is a dataset of US building permits run by Recursive Capital, Inc., a company based in Roseville, California. We collect permits that building departments already make public and put them in one place, with a link back to each office's record.
What we ask for
We ask for copies of the building permit records your office already keeps. A permit record usually holds the permit number, the dates it was filed and issued, the type of work, the address or parcel, the declared value, the applicant or contractor and the current status. Send whatever your records show.
Please send them in the form your office keeps them; we are not asking you to create a new report. A spreadsheet, a CSV export from your permit system, a PDF report or a ZIP of files all work. If there will be a charge, please send an estimate first. We do not pay fees we have not approved in writing.
Why
We gather building permit records that offices make public. For offices that do not publish them online, a records request is how their permits can be included, so the data covers more of the country, including smaller jurisdictions.
How to respond
You can reply to our request email and attach the files, or upload them at records.buildingactivity.com/submit/ using the link in your email. When the upload finishes, the page lists the files we received.
Files of any size are welcome, including very large exports, in CSV, XLSX, XLS, PDF or ZIP format. If the connection drops partway through a large upload, it picks up where it left off.
You may redact personal contact details of private individuals, such as phone numbers, email addresses and home mailing addresses. We do not need them. If the request reached the wrong office, please tell us where to send it, and to stop all further requests to your office, reply with the word "remove".
Optional CSV template
If it is just as easy, you can use our template. Fill in the columns you have and leave the rest blank. Dates as YYYY-MM-DD are preferred, but any date format is fine.
| Column | What goes in it |
|---|---|
permit_number | The permit or record number |
date_applied | Date the application was received |
date_issued | Date the permit was issued |
permit_type | Type or class of permit, for example Residential New or Commercial Alteration |
description | Description of the work |
address | Site address of the work |
parcel | Parcel or tax map number |
valuation | Declared value or cost of the work |
applicant | Applicant or owner name |
contractor | Contractor or builder name |
status | Current status, for example Issued, Finaled or Expired |
How we work with your office
Where your office already publishes permits online, our crawler collects them from your site. It identifies
itself with the User-Agent Research bot, follows your site's robots.txt and
keeps its load low. It never gets around logins, CAPTCHAs or other access controls; where
those are in place, we ask for the records instead.
If our crawler causes a problem for your site, write to [email protected] and we will slow it down or stop.
Contact
If you have a question about a request, reply to the request email or write to [email protected]. You can also call us toll-free at (855) 451-7100.
Public Records Team, Building ActivityRecursive Capital, Inc.
3017 Douglas Blvd, Suite 300
Roseville, CA 95661
(855) 451-7100