Palm Beach County Permit Search

Keyword search

Map of matching permits

Pins are geocoded from each permit's address using OpenStreetMap Nominatim (free, no key). Geocoded coordinates are cached in your browser. First-time geocoding can take a few seconds per permit; subsequent loads are instant.

Trends & stats for current filter

Charts update when you change keywords, dates, or other filters on the Search tab. Most live data is West Palm Beach (last ~90 days of applications).

Top contractors

Permits by status

Permits by type

Permits by city

Permits by data source

Plumbing Watch

Tracks every plumbing-related permit across all loaded sources (Plumbing Sub-Permit, Water Heater Changeout, Backflow, Water Filter, Sewer, Repipe, etc.). The hotspot prediction ranks ZIP codes by the ratio of plumbing permits in the last 30 days vs. the prior 30 days — a sustained ratio > 1 suggests aging infrastructure or a developing trend. Not machine learning: it's a transparent recency-weighted growth ranking on the data you've loaded. Ignores active Search-tab filters; this view is always full-population.

Predicted next-hotspot ZIPs (top 3 by 30/30 growth ratio, min 5 prior permits)

All ZIPs — full ranking

Plumbing permit types in window

Manual data upload

If the cached scrape is stale or you have permit data from another source (CSV export from a city portal, manually pasted records, etc.), drop it here. Data is merged into your in-memory dataset for this session only (does not modify any file in data/permits/). To make uploads persistent, save the JSON into the appropriate per-source file (e.g. data/permits/west-palm-beach.json).

Paste JSON

Accepts the same shape as the per-source files in data/permits/ (object with permitsByParcel OR permits array) OR a flat array of permit objects matching the schema in data/permits/index.json. Pasted permits are tagged with source manual.

Or drop a CSV file

CSV must include header row. Recognized columns (any subset): permitNumber, parcelId, address, type, subtype, description, status, applicantName, contractor, valuation, appliedDate, issuedDate, finalDate, expirationDate, url.

How to refresh permit data

This page is a multi-source aggregator. It reads data/permits/sources.json at boot, then loads every dataFile listed there in parallel. Each loaded permit is tagged with its origin so the Source filter can scope results to one or more portals.

Currently registered sources

See the boot banner at the top of the page for the live status of each source. Status legend:

• live — scraper works, data is current
• sample — demo data only (scraper hasn't been run yet, or the cache is stale)
• scaffold — parser stub exists in scraper/parsers_permits.py but needs reverse-engineering before it can pull live data. Sample data shown.
• unsupported_paywall — the upstream portal now requires registration / paywalls / reCAPTCHA, so anonymous bulk scraping is not feasible. Use the portal manually.

Refreshing live sources

cd scraper
pip install -r requirements.txt
python scrape_permits.py -v                 # all sources
python scrape_permits.py --only "West Palm Beach" -v  # just one

Default lookback is 90 days (configurable per-parser in parsers_permits.py). After it finishes, hard-refresh this page (Ctrl+Shift+R) so the browser pulls the new JSON.

Reality check on Florida municipal permit portals

• None of the public portals support keyword search of work descriptions natively. This page filters keywords locally after the scraper pulls underlying records.
• Each city runs its own portal (Tyler EnerGov, CentralSquare Click2Gov, SagesGov, Accela, custom). Each needs its own parser.
• Palm Beach County's legacy eDSWeb portal was retired in 2024. The replacement ePZB Admin SPA requires registration + reCAPTCHA, and "Open Permit Searches" cost $63 each. Anonymous bulk scraping is no longer possible — use the portal manually for unincorporated PBC permits.
• Some city portals (Click2Gov, SagesGov) only allow single-record lookups by permit number / address / contractor — no bulk listing. For those, build a seed list (contractors of interest, parcel addresses) and let the scraper iterate.
• For older permits past the lookback window, file a public records request with the relevant jurisdiction.

Adding a new city portal

1. Add a parser function to scraper/parsers_permits.py and register it in PERMIT_PARSERS.
2. Add an entry to scraper/sources_permits.json (jurisdiction config for the scraper).
3. Add a matching entry to data/permits/sources.json (manifest the frontend reads).
4. Run the scraper; it'll write to the dataFile path. Refresh this page.