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

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];

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

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

Roofing: 4,130 permits

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

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