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GET/zoneGET/geocodeGET/reverse-geocodeGET/zoningGET/sourcesGET/sources/coverageGET/contractor/statsGET/contractor/coverageGET/contractorGET/propertyGET/address/normalizeGET/opening_soonGET/openingGET/businessGET/business/statsGET/business/coverageGET/contractor/{name_normalized}GET/permitGET/inspectionGET/licenceGET/development_permitGET/planning_applicationGET/assessmentGET/major_projectGET/heritage_statusGET/occupancy_permitGET/permit/statsGET/inspection/statsGET/licence/statsGET/development_permit/statsGET/planning_application/statsGET/assessment/statsGET/major_project/statsGET/heritage_status/statsGET/occupancy_permit/statsGET/permit/coverageGET/inspection/coverageGET/licence/coverageGET/development_permit/coverageGET/planning_application/coverageGET/assessment/coverageGET/major_project/coverageGET/heritage_status/coverageGET/occupancy_permit/coverageGET/permit/{record_id}/historyGET/permit/{record_id}GET/inspection/{record_id}GET/licence/{record_id}GET/development_permit/{record_id}GET/planning_application/{record_id}GET/assessment/{record_id}GET/major_project/{record_id}GET/heritage_status/{record_id}GET/occupancy_permit/{record_id}Search occupancy permits
Parameters
| Parameter | Type | Description | |
|---|---|---|---|
municipality | string | optional | Filter to one city by its slug, e.g. 'new_westminster', 'toronto', 'north_vancouver_city'.Exact match. This is the city filter for BuildData datasets (permits, development permits, planning applications, inspections); call /{entity_type}/coverage for the list of valid slugs. The 'city' param is accepted as an alias here. (For the US liquor/healthcare/tank datasets, 'city' is instead a distinct filter and 'municipality' does not apply.) |
q | string | optional | Full-text search across the indexed fields of the record, including names (business, establishment, vendor, contractor) wherever the dataset carries them, e.g. q=brewery or q="Iron Hill".This is the name search: there is no separate name= parameter, and it works on every plan including free. It matches the BUSINESS or trade name, the address, city, county and licence/permit number. It does NOT match an owner, licensee or applicant's personal name: these datasets carry public business records only and never store an individual's name, so searching for a person returns nothing. Space-separated words require all terms (e.g. "wood panel"). Use OR to match any term ("wood OR panel OR acoustic"), quotes for exact phrases ("supply arrangement"), and a leading minus to exclude ("software -hardware"). |
permit_type | string | optional | Filter by normalized permit type (exact match): new_construction, renovation, addition, demolition, change_of_use, other.Matches the permit_type_canonical field, not the raw per-city permit_type string. |
trade | string | optional | Filter trade sub-permits by trade (exact match): electrical, plumbing, mechanical, gas, sprinkler, sign, trade_other.A trade permit is pulled for work on one system rather than the building, so this is the field for replacement-cycle work: a furnace swap is trade=mechanical, a rewire is trade=electrical. Only cities that publish trade permits separately carry it; combine with permit_type, which every permit has. |
contractor | string | optional | Filter permits by the firm that pulled them.A whole name is matched exactly against the normalized contractor name and is indexed; a fragment falls back to a substring across the contractor, company and builder fields. Cities file the same firm under several spellings, so the normalized form is the one that groups them. |
units_min | integer | optional | Permits with at least this many dwelling units.Reads whichever of units, dwelling_units, total_units or units_created the city publishes. |
floor_area_min | number | optional | Permits with at least this much floor area, in square metres.Reads floor_area or area_m2, whichever the city publishes. Cities that publish square feet are not converted and are not matched. |
storeys_min | integer | optional | Permits on a building of at least this many storeys. |
structure_type | string | optional | Filter by structure or building type as the city publishes it (exact, case-insensitive), e.g. 'Single Family Dwelling', 'Hotel'.Call /permit/stats for the values in use. |
neighbourhood | string | optional | Filter by neighbourhood (partial match).Matches whichever of neighborhood, neighbourhood or community the city publishes; Calgary calls it community. |
ward | string | optional | Filter by electoral ward as the city publishes it (exact, case-insensitive). |
zoning | string | optional | Filter by the zoning code on the record (partial match), e.g. 'R-1'.Present on permits, development permits and assessments. |
category | string | optional | Procurement category: CNST, GD, SRV, SRVTGD.For recalls: product category (e.g. 'Baby products', 'Toys and games'). For healthcare: facility category (acute, long_term, home, behavioral, outpatient, specialty). For storage tanks: record type (tank or release). |
status | string | optional | Filter by status. Contracts/tenders: Active, Expired, Cancelled, Open (exact).Permits: use a status_canonical value instead (issued, in_review, completed, expired, cancelled, unknown). |
sector | string | optional | Canonical sector (major_project): transit, roads_bridges, education, healthcare, residential, energy, industrial, infrastructure, municipal, recreation_culture, commercial, institutional.Spans both official languages and every source inventory. |
status_canonical | string | optional | Normalized permit status: issued, in_review, completed, expired, cancelled, unknown |
is_active | boolean | optional | Business licences: true returns only currently active licences, false only inactive ones.Most licence records are historical, so this is usually what you want. |
is_opening | boolean | optional | Business licences: true returns only business openings, meaning the first licence this business ever held in this city.Renewals reuse the name and are excluded. Pair with opened_from to get the businesses that opened in a period. |
preceded_by_permit | boolean | optional | Business licences: true returns only openings that had a building permit at the same address in the two years before they opened, meaning the fit-out is on record. false returns openings that took space needing no work. |
opened_from | string | optional | Business licences: earliest opening date, YYYY-MM-DD.Filters on when the business was first licensed here, not on when this particular licence was issued. |
opened_to | string | optional | Business licences: latest opening date, YYYY-MM-DD. |
city | string | optional | Filter by city. For the US liquor/healthcare/storage-tank datasets this is a distinct filter (exact, case-insensitive).For all other datasets it is an alias for municipality. |
value_min | number | optional | Minimum value, applied to the entity's value field (construction_value for permits, contract_value for contracts, agreement_value for grants, monetary_amount for contributions, total_co2e for emissions, assessed_value for assessments).Ignored for entity types with no monetary field. |
value_max | number | optional | Maximum value; same per-entity field mapping as value_min.Ignored for entity types with no monetary field. |
issued_after | string | optional | Filter by date >= YYYY-MM-DD (issued_date).Aliases: date_from, date_after |
issued_before | string | optional | Filter by date <= YYYY-MM-DD.Aliases: date_to, date_before |
lat | number | optional | Latitude for proximity search.Send with lng. |
lng | number | optional | Longitude for proximity search.Send with lat. |
radius_km | number | optional | Radius in km, 0.1 to 25.Optional: lat and lng with no radius search 1 km around the point. The radius actually applied is returned as radius_km in the response, so a default is never silent. For every record at one street address rather than everything near it, use /property. |
sort_by | string | optional | Sort field: published (publication_date, tenders only), date (event date; this is award_date for contracts/awards), value (the entity's value field), closing (closing_date for tenders) |
sort_order | string | optional | Sort order: asc or desc |
limit | integer | optional | Records per page, 1 to 500.Free-tier keys are capped lower; the cap applied is the `count` in the response. |
offset | integer | optional | Records to skip. Fine for jumping to a known page;use `cursor` to walk a whole result set, because offset re-reads everything it skips and shifts when new records arrive. |
cursor | string | optional | Pagination cursor from next_cursor in a previous response.Use instead of offset for deep pagination. |
Request
curl --request GET \
--url 'https://api.builddata.ca/occupancy_permit' \
--header 'X-API-Key: YOUR_API_KEY'import requests
url = "https://api.builddata.ca/occupancy_permit"
headers = {"X-API-Key": "YOUR_API_KEY"}
resp = requests.get(url, headers=headers)
print(resp.json())const res = await fetch("https://api.builddata.ca/occupancy_permit", {
headers: {
"X-API-Key": "YOUR_API_KEY",
},
});
const data = await res.json();
console.log(data);<?php
$ch = curl_init("https://api.builddata.ca/occupancy_permit");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, [
"X-API-Key: YOUR_API_KEY",
]);
echo curl_exec($ch);require "net/http"
require "uri"
uri = URI("https://api.builddata.ca/occupancy_permit")
req = Net::HTTP::Get.new(uri)
req["X-API-Key"] = "YOUR_API_KEY"
res = Net::HTTP.start(uri.hostname, uri.port, use_ssl: true) { |h| h.request(req) }
puts res.bodypackage main
import (
"fmt"
"io"
"net/http"
)
func main() {
req, _ := http.NewRequest("GET", "https://api.builddata.ca/occupancy_permit", nil)
req.Header.Add("X-API-Key", "YOUR_API_KEY")
res, _ := http.DefaultClient.Do(req)
defer res.Body.Close()
body, _ := io.ReadAll(res.Body)
fmt.Println(string(body))
}import java.net.URI;
import java.net.http.*;
HttpRequest req = HttpRequest.newBuilder()
.uri(URI.create("https://api.builddata.ca/occupancy_permit"))
.header("X-API-Key", "YOUR_API_KEY")
.build();
HttpResponse<String> res = HttpClient.newHttpClient()
.send(req, HttpResponse.BodyHandlers.ofString());
System.out.println(res.body());Example response
{
"entity_type": "permit",
"count": 1,
"offset": 0,
"results": [
{
"record_id": "24 223023 PLB:00",
"municipality": "toronto",
"lat": 43.65401,
"lng": -79.42376,
"work": "Building Permit Related(PS)",
"status": "Permit Issued",
"address": "865 COLLEGE ST",
"description": "Plumbing - INTERIOR ALTERNATION OF 3RD FLOOR SUITE",
"issued_date": "2025-01-29",
"permit_type": "Plumbing(PS)",
"application_date": "2024-10-07",
"construction_value": null
}
]
}Response fields
One occupancy_permit record. Measured over 200 live records sampled across municipalities. Percentages say how often each field is populated: sources publish different columns, so a field missing from a given record is normal rather than an error.
| Field | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
address | string | Always present. |
application_date | string | Always present. |
business_name | string | Always present. |
fetched_at | string | When Nimbus last ingested this record. Bookkeeping, not source data. Always present. |
issued_date | string | Always present. |
lat | number | Always present. |
lng | number | Always present. |
municipality | string | City slug. Call /{entity_type}/coverage for every slug in this dataset. Always present. |
neighbourhood | string | Always present. |
normalized_address | string | Address normalized for joining the same property across datasets. Always present. |
permit_type | string | Always present. |
pipeline_stage | string | Always present. |
proposed_use | string | Populated in 99% of sampled records. |
province | string | Always present. |
quadrant | string | Always present. |
record_id | string | Stable identifier for this record. Pass it to the /{entity_type}/{record_id} endpoint. Always present. |
record_number | string | Always present. |
status | string | Always present. |
status_canonical | string | Status mapped onto a shared vocabulary. This is what the status_canonical filter matches. Always present. |
ward | string | Always present. |
5 more fields published by only one or two cities
Present on under 10% of records. Useful when you are working with a specific city, not something to rely on across the dataset.
| Field | Type | Populated |
|---|---|---|
building_address | string | 0.5% |
completion_date | string | 0.5% |
inspection_date | string | 0.5% |
normalized_business_name | string | 0.0% |
sticker_number | string | 0.5% |
Errors
Every error returns {"detail": "…"}, a sentence naming what was wrong and, where there is one, the fix.
| Status | When |
|---|---|
400 | The request is understood but cannot be served as asked, e.g. offset above 9500, or cursor combined with sort_by=value. The message names the fix. |
403 | Missing or invalid API key. |
404 | No such endpoint, or no record with that id. |
422 | A parameter is invalid: an unknown city slug, an impossible date, a limit above 500, an unrecognised sort field, or a misspelled parameter name. The message names the parameter and, where there is one, the nearest valid value. |
429 | Rate limit or plan quota exceeded. |
500 | Unexpected server error. |
504 | The query took too long. Narrow it with a municipality or a date range. |
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