Daily edition · No. 001 · The Chicago construction wire
A tripwire service for Chicago construction & business activityKnow about every new permit, license, and violation the morning it files.
LeadFiling watches the city's public records every morning, detects what changed since yesterday, and alerts you to the changes that match your trade and territory — so you call first, not fifth.
Three public feeds. One morning alert.
Every day the pipeline polls three free Chicago open-data feeds, diffs them against yesterday's snapshot, and sends you only the new rows that match your trade and territory filters.
Poll the city feeds
We query ydr8-5enu (building permits), r5kz-chrr (business licenses), and 22u3-xenr (building violations) on data.cityofchicago.org — free, public, no key required.
Diff against yesterday
New rows are detected by each feed's natural key — permit number, license ID, violation ID — and scored against your trade and territory filters. Noise stays out.
Deliver the morning alert
A filtered digest lands in your inbox before the workday starts — plus near-real-time or real-time push on paid tiers. You get a bid list by 7 AM, not a phone book.
Public records, tripwired
Every record below comes straight from the City of Chicago's open-data portal. We don't sell you the data — we sell you being first to know.
Building permits
The lead feed. Permit number, type, status, address, contractor name and license, estimated cost, issue date. A roofer who sees yesterday's roof-replacement permits in his ZIPs has a bid list by 7 AM.
New business licenses
The "new business opened yesterday" feed — filtered to application_type='ISSUE'. Business name, owner name, address, license description, issue date. New businesses need insurance, payroll, merchant services, marketing.
Building violations
The distress feed. Violation code, address, status, date — the paper trail of distressed properties before they show up on any list. Built for investors and wholesalers.
The feed is real — here's one morning's catch.
Chicago — internal test run
| Feed | Rows caught | Note |
|---|---|---|
ydr8-5enu — Building permits |
150 | In a single daily run — including one $14M renovation |
r5kz-chrr — New business licenses |
29 | Filtered to new issues (application_type='ISSUE') |
22u3-xenr — Building violations |
57 | Violation code, address, status, date |
LABELED AS SUCH: these figures are from an internal test run of the LeadFiling pipeline on Chicago open data — real rows, not projections. They are not live data. Sample figures shift day to day; the point is the mechanism works: poll, diff, alert.
Built for people who win by calling first
Four buyers, one shared advantage: seeing the filing before the competition does.
General contractors & subs
Permit chasers. A trade-filtered morning email of new permits in your territory is a standing bid list — contractors already pay $150–300 per lead elsewhere.
Building-material suppliers
New permits mean upcoming material orders; new business licenses mean new accounts to open. Lumber yards, roofing distributors, supply houses.
B2B sales teams
Insurance brokers, payroll, merchant services, marketing agencies targeting new businesses. The license feed is literally "a new business opened yesterday, here's the owner name and address."
Wholesalers & investors
Violations are the paper trail of distress before it hits any list. The enrichment add-on closes the owner-phone gap for this segment.
What the base product does — and doesn't — include
The fine print, up front. No surprises on the invoice.
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Coverage
Chicago only. We watch the City of Chicago's public permit, license, and violation feeds — nothing else, nowhere else.
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Base data
The public feeds give name + address only — no phone numbers, no email addresses. The subscription buys you the fastest, best-filtered version of that public signal.
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Contact info
Verified phones and owner contact details are sold separately via the enrichment add-on. We never charge for a guess: if no verified phone is found for a record, the credit is refunded.
Frequently asked
Straight answers before you sign up. The fine print, up front.
What data do I get?
Three feeds from the City of Chicago's open-data portal. Building permits (ydr8-5enu): permit number, type, status, address, contractor name and license, estimated cost, and issue date. New business licenses (r5kz-chrr), filtered to new issues: business name, owner name, address, license description, and issue date. Building violations (22u3-xenr): violation code, address, status, and date.
How fresh is it?
Paid tiers move at the speed you pick: Hammer sends a daily morning digest; Foreman checks hourly and delivers in under an hour; GC Pro and Enriched Pro push in real time, under 15 minutes. The free Scout tier is deliberately slow — a weekly digest with a 3-day delay, so you see jobs that already closed.
Is it Chicago-only?
Yes. We poll the City of Chicago's public feeds — no free statewide Illinois feed exists, so there is nothing else for us to poll yet. Second cities are planned, hand-built one at a time.
Do I get phone numbers or emails?
No — the public feeds give name and address only. Verified phones come through the +$99/mo enrichment add-on (on Foreman or GC Pro), and we never charge for a guess: if no verified phone is found for a record, the credit is refunded.
How is this different from the city's website?
The city site is a lookup tool — you go find filings. We're a tripwire: we poll the feeds daily, diff against yesterday's snapshot, and deliver only the new matches for your trade and territory. You wake up to a bid list instead of running searches.
What's in the free tier?
Scout is free forever: permits feed only, citywide, up to 10 alerts per week in a weekly email digest with a 3-day delay. Email only, no card required. Free shows you the data exists — the 14-day Foreman trial shows you why speed matters.