BuildData
Businesses
Opening Soon
A building permit for fit-out work at an address where no business holds a licence. Somebody is spending money building a commercial space that nobody is yet licensed to trade from. That is a business opening there, and it has not opened.
How the signal is built
BuildData holds building permits and municipal business licence rolls for the same cities, joined on a normalized address. That makes one query possible that neither dataset answers alone: which addresses have construction happening on them and no business licensed at them.
The permit has to be fit-out-type work, the kind a tenant pulls when it is building out a commercial unit, not a re-roof or a furnace swap. The address has to hold no active business licence. When both are true the address goes on the list, and it comes off when a licence is issued there.
There is no business name on these rows, and there cannot be. The name becomes public the day the city issues the licence, and that is the same day the address stops being an opening-soon address and becomes an opening. If you want a name, you are asking for a business that has already opened and already picked its suppliers. The trade here is that you get the address weeks or months earlier, and you approach a site rather than a company.
What is on each row
Timing, and why it is the whole point
A tenant fit-out runs months. In Vancouver, of the openings that had a permit at the same address beforehand, 41% opened within three months of that permit, 59% within six, and 80% within twelve. That spread is the window this list sells: the operator has signed a lease and started spending, and has not yet chosen a point of sale system, an insurer, a cleaner, a signage shop or a supplier.
By the time the business licence is issued and the name is public, most of those decisions are made. Both lists have buyers. They are just different conversations.
Who buys pre-opening leads
Signage and fit-out trades
Signage, millwork, flooring, refrigeration and commercial kitchen installers are quoting during the build, not after it. The permit date tells you roughly where in the build the site is.
Point of sale and payments
The terminal gets picked before the doors open. Reaching a site during construction is the only way to be in that conversation rather than replacing an incumbent later.
Insurance and business services
Commercial insurance, bookkeeping, payroll and legal all get bought once, early, and then renewed for years. Being early is worth more here than being cheap.
Commercial real estate
A live count of units under fit-out in a corridor, which is absorption you can see before it shows up in a leasing report.
Coverage, honestly
Nine cities. This is not national. The signal needs a permit feed and a business licence roll from the same city, published with enough address detail to join them, and most Canadian municipalities publish one or the other but not both. The list below is every city where it currently works, with the number of addresses live today.
| City | Province | Addresses |
|---|---|---|
| Calgary | AB | 617 |
| Toronto | ON | 456 |
| Red Deer | AB | 124 |
| Strathcona County | AB | 117 |
| Lethbridge | AB | 81 |
| Edmonton | AB | 64 |
| Vancouver | BC | 32 |
| Halifax | NS | 3 |
| Grande Prairie | AB | 2 |
Counts move week to week as addresses are added and as licences are issued and take them off the list. Alberta is over-represented because Alberta cities publish both halves cleanly.
All nine cities ship in one feed, so there is nothing to pick per city or per province. Build the feed →
Questions
Can a row be wrong?
Yes. An owner renovating a space they already trade from under a licence recorded at a slightly different address will look like a new tenant. So will a fit-out for a business that then never opens. The list is an inference from two public records, not a confirmed opening, and it is priced and described as one.
How do I know when one of these actually opens?
Take the new business openings feed alongside it. The address leaves this list and appears there with a name, a category and an opening date, usually within a few months.
What format does it arrive in?
An Excel workbook by email each week, one row per address, ready to paste into a CRM. Same delivery as every other BuildData feed.
Is there an API?
Yes, the same records are available at GET /opening_soon. See the endpoint reference.
Why is the volume so low?
Because it is a narrow condition in nine cities, and because a business only opens once. About 30 new addresses a week nationally is what the signal actually produces. Anyone selling you thousands of pre-opening leads a week in Canada is selling you licence renewals.
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Part of the BuildData Canadian construction data platform. Also available: new business openings, business licences, building permits, see all coverage.