Updated November 2026
Do AI buyers pay for building permit data?
AI buyers are unlikely to pay much for public building permit records, in our view, because cities publish them and data firms already sell them in bulk. The plan sets and reviewer comments in your own files might be worth more, since they show how a design changed to pass review, though no buyer publishes a rate for them.1,2,3,4
Public records
Why public permit records have little license value
Public permit records are already easy to get, which leaves little to license, in our view. Chicago publishes its building permits from 2006 to the present with the permit type, address, work description, fees and contacts, and the Census Bureau publishes monthly permit statistics down to the county and place level.1,5
Data firms have also gathered those records at a scale no one business could match. Gryd by BuildZoom Data lists 400M+ permits over 25+ years, and Shovels lists 196M+ from 2,820+ jurisdictions. A few years of permits pulled for your own jobs adds little to that.2,3
What might pay
What in a permit file might be worth something
The plan set and the reviewer's comments might be worth something, because together they show a design being checked against code and changed to pass. This is our reading, and the evidence is thin: 1 of the 31 listings in Ventra's catalog mentions permit review comments, kept with the designs, and none is a set of permit records on its own.4
Comments may be sitting in your city's portal and nowhere else. Buncombe County, NC, for one, lets customers view staff comments and revision requests on its Development Portal, so check whether your jurisdiction lets you download yours before old jobs drop out of view.6
Permit files work best as part of a larger archive, tied to the designs and jobs they belong to, because Polyshares says the value is in reasoning captured while the work happened. Ventra's statement about small datasets names CAD, video game and video data, so permit paperwork alone isn't covered by it.7,8
FAQ
Questions, answered with sources
Few do, going by what they publish. Of the 31 listings in Ventra's catalog, 1 mentions permit review comments, kept with the designs, and we haven't seen a buyer ask for permit records on their own.4
Plan review comments usually sit in your building department's portal, your email or the marked-up PDF set. Buncombe County, NC, for one, shows staff comments on its portal, but what your city keeps online varies, so check soon.6
Keep the plan set for each round, the reviewer's comments and your responses, filed with the job. Polyshares says to export whole project folders, and buyers can look at the files in context that way.9
Every business is different, so this one is best talked through with the buyer you're working with. Their team goes over it with you before anything is signed.
Every business is different, so this one is best talked through with the buyer you're working with. Their team goes over it with you before anything is signed.
Before you sign
Questions to talk through with your buyer
Every business is different, so these are best talked through with the buyer you're working with. Their team goes over them with you before anything is signed.
Questions for this kind of business
- Who holds the rights to plan sets we filed on a client's behalf?
- How are property addresses and owner names removed from permit files?
- Who owns this data: the company, an estate, or someone else?
- Do customer, supplier or platform contracts, NDAs or API terms restrict this?
Questions for any buyer
- Is the license exclusive, and for how long?
- Can you sublicense the data, and to whom?
- Which AI labs will receive it, and will you tell us?
- How long do you keep it, and how is it deleted?
- What is your liability cap, and who indemnifies whom?
- Will the contract ban re-identification of people in the data?
- Who removes personal data, by what method, and do we approve it first?