Construction permit data

What is Construction Monitor?

Construction Monitor is a building permit data company founded in 1989 in Cedar City, Utah. It collects permit records directly from more than 3,400 U.S. jurisdictions and is the country's largest source of building permit data. Its ConstructionWire products extend that coverage upstream into project planning, tracking commercial and industrial work from early planning through completion along with the firms involved at each stage.

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What academic researchers should know about Construction Monitor permit data

The data on Dewey covers residential, commercial, residential remodel, swimming pool, and solar permits across all 50 states, with each row tied to an individual permit ID. Coverage runs from January 2018 through December 2025, with historical records generally available back to 2011, and includes permit dates, construction types, valuations, addresses, and the contractors, architects, and developers attached to each project. ConstructionWire adds two complementary feeds: a Reports product tracking commercial and industrial projects from early planning through completion, and a Contacts product surfacing the firms involved at each stage. Records come directly from local jurisdictions and are standardized by human data entry professionals working alongside automated processing.

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Why academic researchers choose Construction Monitor on Dewey

Most building permit data lives behind thousands of separate municipal portals with inconsistent formats, gaps, and lag. Construction Monitor pulls directly from more than 3,400 jurisdictions and standardizes the records into a single schema, so a researcher running a nationwide analysis isn't writing 3,400 different scrapers. The dedicated swimming pool and solar permit categories are also unusual, opening up questions about discretionary household spending, water use, and rooftop solar adoption that are difficult to study from Census BPS counts alone. Pairing Construction Monitor with ATTOM property data, ClimateCheck climate risk ratings, RentHub rental listings, or SafeGraph foot traffic gives a clean view of how permitting activity connects to property values, climate exposure, housing markets, and neighborhood change.

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Construction Monitor academic research ideas and use cases

Housing supply and land use regulation. Building permit data is one of the cleanest leading indicators of housing supply, and economists have used it for decades to study how zoning, fees, and approval timelines shape where homes get built. Construction Monitor's individual permit records, with addresses and valuations attached, let researchers trace approvals at the parcel level rather than the aggregated counts published by Census BPS, opening up questions about which projects clear the bar in restrictive jurisdictions and which ones stall.

Solar adoption and the energy transition. Solar permits are a strong proxy for residential PV adoption because they capture installations at the moment they enter the local approval process. With Construction Monitor's dedicated solar permit category and addresses attached to each record, researchers can study peer effects, the role of state and utility incentives, and the income and racial disparities that shape where rooftop solar takes off. Layering on demographic data from InfutorData supports questions about who adopts and who gets left out.

Climate, water, and discretionary household spending. The swimming pool permit category is a rare opportunity to study a specific form of discretionary household spending that responds to weather, drought policy, and household wealth. Construction Monitor data has already surfaced surprising patterns, including California pool construction climbing during the years of severe drought, and pairs naturally with ClimateCheck climate risk ratings, CustomWeather weather feeds, and local water restriction records.

Disaster recovery and rebuilding. Permit activity after hurricanes, wildfires, and floods is a measurable trace of where rebuilding happens, who rebuilds, and how long it takes. Construction Monitor's records at the address level combined with disaster declaration dates and ClimateCheck flood and fire ratings let researchers study the speed and equity of recovery, the role of insurance coverage, and the migration patterns that follow major events.

Construction industry structure and contracting. With contractors, architects, and developers named on each permit, Construction Monitor data is also a window into the construction industry itself. Researchers can study market concentration, the geography of specialized trades, and which firms cluster around large commercial projects. ConstructionWire extends this view earlier in the project lifecycle, so questions about how commercial pipelines develop from planning to completion become tractable.

Local economic activity and forecasting. Permit valuations offer a frequent, geographically detailed signal of local construction investment that often leads broader economic indicators. Researchers studying regional business cycles, the economic effects of major employer arrivals, or the spillover effects of public infrastructure spending can use Construction Monitor's permit volume and valuation data as a building block for forecasting models and natural experiments.

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Dive deeper with Dewey documentation

Detailed information on onboarding with Dewey, data partner details, and technical documentation on data access.

View documentation

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