The New York City Department of Buildings (DOB) publishes building permit data through NYC Open Data. It's a public dataset, refreshed daily, covering permits issued across all five boroughs — Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island. The data is free and open. Most NYC contractors have never looked at it, and the ones who have rarely understand what the fields actually tell you.
This is a plain-language breakdown of the key fields in the DOB NOW permit feed, what they tell you, and where the data runs out.
Address & borough. The house number, street name, and borough where the permitted work will happen, plus the ZIP code. Useful for exactly what you'd think: knowing where the job is, what the building looks like, and roughly what kind of property you're dealing with.
Work type. NYC DOB classifies permits by work type — General Construction, Plumbing, Mechanical Systems, Boiler Equipment, Sprinklers, Standpipe, Structural, Foundation, Earth Work, and Full Demolition, among others. This is the single most useful field for matching a permit to your trade. A "Mechanical Systems" permit is HVAC work. A "Sprinklers" permit is fire suppression. "General Construction" is the big one — it usually means a GC is running a project that will need subtrades.
Job description. A free-text field filled in by the applicant. Quality varies, but NYC descriptions are often detailed — "Installation of new HVAC units and ductwork on the 2nd floor, no change to use or occupancy" tells you a lot. You can usually qualify the lead from the description alone.
Issued date. The date the DOB issued the permit. This is the most important field for lead timing. A permit issued this week is a live opportunity. A permit issued three months ago is likely a job already in progress or finished.
Estimated job cost. Unlike many cities, NYC permits frequently include a declared construction cost. That's a real number you can use to size the job and prioritize — a $600K General Construction permit is a different opportunity than a $15K plumbing repair.
This is where NYC data is richer than almost any other city's, and where the real edge lives.
Owner name. NYC permits list the property owner — the actual decision-maker. This is published in roughly 98% of records. It tells you who's paying for the project, which is exactly who a subcontractor or supplier wants to reach.
Applicant business. The contractor or business that pulled the permit. This is populated on essentially every record, because NYC requires a licensed professional to file for most work.
Permittee license type. This is the field that changes everything. It tells you what kind of license the permit-puller holds:
GC (General Contractor) — A general contractor pulled this permit. They're running the overall project and will almost certainly need subtrades: HVAC, electrical, plumbing, sprinklers. If you're a subcontractor, a GC-led permit is your single best lead type — the project is funded, approved, and the GC is actively assembling their trades.
P (Plumber), F (Fire Suppression), and other trade licenses — A specific trade already pulled this permit for their scope. That trade is taken, but the same project may still need other trades.
O (Owner) — The permit was filed under the owner's authorization. A contractor business is usually still listed as the applicant, so this isn't an "open" job — it just means the owner is the legal permittee, common for boiler, fuel, and heating work.
Filing reason. "Initial Permit" means a fresh job. "Renewal" means an existing permit being extended — the underlying project may be older. Worth knowing so you're chasing new work, not jobs that have been running for a year.
NYC is five distinct markets. A Staten Island single-family renovation is a different opportunity than a Manhattan commercial fit-out or a Brooklyn brownstone gut. The borough field lets you focus where you actually work — there's no point a Queens HVAC contractor sifting through Bronx permits. Filtering by borough first is the fastest way to make the data manageable.
The permit data doesn't include the owner's phone number or email — just the name. Reaching them is a separate step, and how you do it matters legally (more on that below).
A permit being issued doesn't tell you whether every subtrade has been hired. It tells you the project is approved and the named permittee is on it. Whether the GC has already locked in their HVAC sub is something you find out by making contact — which is the whole point of getting in early.
Building permit records are public documents. Referencing them is entirely legal. But how you contact a property owner is governed by US law — the CAN-SPAM Act for commercial email and the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) for calls and texts. Public-record availability does not by itself create the right to call or text someone on an autodialer. Know the rules for your outreach channel before you start.
The NYC DOB dataset contains tens of thousands of records — active permits, renewals, commercial jobs, work types you'd never touch, all five boroughs mixed together. Filtering it down to your trade, your boroughs, recent issue dates, deduplicated and scored by opportunity — that's the work most contractors don't have time for.
That's what Nova Essentials does: pull the DOB feed daily, filter it to the work types and boroughs relevant to you, surface the owner and the contractor already on record, and flag which jobs are GC-led and still need subs.
Nova Essentials processes NYC DOB building permit data every day and surfaces the jobs worth acting on across all five boroughs — by work type, borough, and job stage, with the property owner and contractor on record. Seven days free, $29/month after.
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