Where BuildVue's data comes from

Permit portals go quiet sometimes. A city source can stop returning anything new for days without any error appearing anywhere on our end. Most sites that say their data is updated nightly do not tell you when that stops being true. BuildVue does. Every status on this page comes from the same check the map and each project page use, a real timestamp on the data itself, not a note that last night's sync job finished without crashing.

One address, one project. Every night the import reads each jurisdiction's permit portal. Permits at the same address are grouped into one project, so a demolition, a shoring permit and the building permit read as one story instead of three separate permits.

Eras. In Seattle a quiet gap of two years followed by a new permit starts a new era on the same page. Other cities need a longer gap, and a few keep every permit at an address in one era. The older permits stay with the era they belong to.

What shows and what does not. Only development work is published. Repairs, tenant improvements, mechanical and electrical permits and anything without a site address stay out of the map and the project pages, because they are noise to a reader looking for what is being built.

Layers on top of the permit. Parcels and owners come from the county assessor. Sales come from the county recorder. Contractors are matched to the state license register. News is gathered from local outlets. Each layer is dated on this page so you can see how fresh it is.

Something wrong. Every project page has a report link at the bottom. Reports go to a person and the fix lands in the nightly import.

These are the same four states shown on the map and on every project page. None of them are alarms. A stale or not yet available note is common and does not mean a project's other data is wrong. It means one specific layer has not been reconfirmed recently, and now you know that too.