Igni for Real Estate Investors — Permit Data
Permit data for investors: spot off-market construction and ADU activity early from official open-data feeds, filterable by market and valuation.
For real estate investors, permit activity is a window into what owners are actually doing with their properties before it shows up in listings or comps. A new ADU permit, a major addition, or a SB-9 lot split signals a property in motion — and a market where value is being added. Reading that activity early helps you spot off-market opportunities and understand where capital is flowing in your target areas.
The trouble is that permit records are scattered across hundreds of city systems in inconsistent formats and go stale fast, so the signal is hard to track at scale. Igni normalizes those public records into one current, filterable feed so you can watch construction and ADU activity by market without scraping portals by hand. Start with our building-permit data guide.
The problem
- Off-market and value-add signals appear at the permit stage, well before they reach listings or comps — but the data is fragmented and slow.
- Tracking activity across multiple target markets by hand means juggling dozens of city portals with different formats and limits.
- Generic data sources don't isolate ADU or SB-9 activity, which are some of the clearest value-add and infill signals.
- By the time activity surfaces through slow channels, the window to act on an early signal has often passed.
See properties in motion before the market does
A permit filing is a documented step toward putting capital into a property. For an investor, a cluster of new residential permits, ADU filings, or lot splits in an area is an early read on where value is being added and where activity is concentrating — often before listings or comps reflect it.
Igni surfaces that activity with sub-24-hour freshness across 60 cities in 37 US states, so you can watch your target markets as they move rather than reacting after the fact. The signal is a public record, which makes it a transparent input to your own analysis. Learn how the underlying data works in our building-permit data guide.
Track multiple markets from one feed
Watching several markets by hand means repeating the same portal-by-portal slog daily, with each city's own format, limits, and field names. Igni ingests directly from official municipal open-data portals and normalizes everything into one consistent schema, so activity across markets is directly comparable.
That lets you monitor a portfolio of target areas from a single feed — consistent dates, standardized statuses, recovered ZIP codes — instead of reconciling exports. Explore the markets covered on the state coverage hub and drill into a specific city like Portland permit data.
Isolate ADU, SB-9 and value-add activity
Some of the clearest value-add and infill signals are ADU construction and, in California, SB-9 lot splits and by-right duplexes. Igni applies typed ADU classification and carries SB-9 eligibility and SB-10 corridor flags for California, so you can isolate exactly that activity rather than wading through every permit a city issues.
Combined with filters for valuation, ZIP, and permit type, that lets you focus on the segment your strategy targets. For the laws behind the California infill signal, read our overview of SB-9 and SB-10. This is general market information, not legal or investment advice.
Public-record sourcing, contact-driven access
Every record traces back to a city's official open-data portal, so the activity you act on rests on public records you can verify rather than an opaque list. Igni's value is the normalization, typing, and freshness on top of that source — the source itself stays transparent.
Igni is contact-driven during its pilot: there's no public self-serve checkout yet. To discuss coverage in your target markets and how the feed fits your strategy, request access and tell us which areas and signals you care about.
The filters that matter for you
Frequently asked questions
How do investors use permit data?
Can I track several markets at once?
Does Igni flag ADU and SB-9 activity?
How do I get access?
See coverage in your markets
Igni is contact-driven during its pilot. Tell us which cities and project types you focus on, and we'll show you the coverage and fit.
Related reading
Informational only, not legal, financial or investment advice. Housing and permitting rules change and vary by jurisdiction — verify current requirements with the relevant authority before relying on anything here.