BuildData Chat: Natural-Language Building Permit Search

BuildData Chat is a natural-language interface to the BuildData permit database. Type a question; the tool runs the appropriate query and returns matched records or city-level aggregates. There is no general-knowledge component: every answer comes from a live database query at the time you ask.

Supported queries

The tool has three database functions, each suited to a different type of question:

Function	Use for
search_permits	Finding individual permit records. Supports full-text search across address and work description, plus filters for city, permit type, status, and minimum construction value.
get_top_projects	Highest-value permits in a city or across all cities. Optionally scoped to a permit type or keyword.
get_city_stats	Aggregate permit counts and total construction value by municipality. Useful for comparing cities or profiling a single market.

Example questions that work well:

• What are the largest new construction permits in Toronto issued this year?
• Compare total construction value in Calgary, Edmonton, and Vancouver in 2024.
• Demolition permits in Montreal in the last 12 months.
• Vancouver residential projects over $5 million.
• How active is Ottawa's commercial construction market?

Coverage

• 57 cities across 9 provinces
• 3.2M permits; 81% geocoded with lat/lng
• Updated nightly from each city's open data portal
• Permit types (normalized): new_construction, renovation, addition, demolition, change_of_use, other
• Construction value available where published by the source city — not all cities include this field

Strongest coverage: Ontario (28 cities including Toronto, Ottawa, Hamilton, Mississauga), BC (13 cities including Vancouver, Surrey, Burnaby, Victoria), Alberta (Calgary, Edmonton), Quebec (Montreal, Laval, Quebec City, Longueuil).

Limitations

• No proximity search (lat/lng radius queries) — use the REST API for that
• No multi-year trend analysis in a single query
• Address-level search depends on how the source city formatted the original record
• Construction value is absent for cities that do not publish it (e.g. some Quebec municipalities)
• Results are limited to what the three tools can express — complex joins or arbitrary aggregations require the API

API access

For programmatic access, data pipelines, or queries outside the chat's scope, use the REST API via RapidAPI. The full OpenAPI 3.0.3 spec is at builddata.ca/openapi.json.

Free tier: 25 requests/day. Pro: 1,000 requests/day at $49/month.