Intro
Imagine you’re going for a leisurely walk in your neighborhood. You stumble upon a gorgeous home and wonder, “How did they do this and how much did it cost?”
For those who have ever asked this question, we can now provide you with the answer.
BuildZoom’s permit map is the first application of its kind that provides homeowners with details on every improvement made to homes in their neighborhood – including details of the work that was done, cost valuation information and information on which contractor did the work. If you see something you like, you are a few clicks away from engaging with the contractor who performed the work.
How it works
1. Navigate to the BuildZoom Building Permit Map
2. Type in your address and we’ll zoom into your neighborhood and highlight the property you are interested in learning more about. You’ll also be able to see other properties in your neighborhood that have had recent work done.
Drill down to see any property’s full report, which includes a top-line summary of the property’s remodeling history as well as details on every documented project that has been completed in addition to the contractor responsible for the work. Clicking on their name will take you to their full contractor report on BuildZoom.
If you’re on a mobile device, simply click the blue button in the lower-right corner of your screen to be immediately taken to your exact location.
You may notice that while you zoom in or out, the positioning of pins will change. This is due to a limitation on the number of pins we can show at any given time so if you are interested in exploring a specific neighborhood, we recommend zooming in as much as possible.
Other ways to use it
See who has gone solar in your neighborhood – The drop-down menu on the far left allows you to filter by project type so you can do things like see every house in your neighborhood that has installed solar panels.
Browse million-dollar projects in your area – Use the second drop-down menu to filter by project value. For example, set the price filter to “More than $1 million” if you just want to browse the most expensive projects in your neighborhood.
See what Apple is building on their campus – Interested in learning what the biggest companies in the world are building? See what companies like Apple, Google and Dropbox are doing.
In a short amount of time, we’ve learned about many other ways people are using the BuildZoom Permit Map:
- Realtors love the map because it provides them with information on properties they can’t get anywhere else.
- Insurance assessors love the map because the remodeling information helps them develop more accurate plans.
- Real estate investors love the map because it allows them to better estimate the true value and carrying cost of properties they are researching.
Most importantly, homeowners love the map because it makes it a little easier to find and hire contractors their neighbors have hired.
If you’ve found something interesting in our Permit Map, want to share a new way of using it or want to request new features, let us know!
Why we built the Map
People want more information so they can make better decisions. Insufficient information is the number one problem facing the remodeling industry. We are solving this problem by collecting the world’s information on remodeling and making it easily accessible to the public.
Remodeling is also a very local industry. People want to know what’s happening on their block and which contractors their neighbors are hiring, so letting them access our data through a map is a no-brainer.
Some useful stats about the permit map
- It provides access to information on over 80 million permitted improvements in the US.
- The information is collected from over 600 local permit departments.
- Permits are matched to our database of over 3.5 million licensed contractors.
- Currently, over 800,000 unique visitors come to BuildZoom each month to get information that will help them make a better hiring decision.
Ready to start?
Just click this big blue button to start playing with the map.
[button link=”http://www.buildzoom.com/map/nation-wide” bg_color=”#428bca”]Permit map [/button]
Robert Mayo says
This is a fantastic databse, but there appears to be no way to query it by company name (regardless of location). Is that planned?