Building permits are public record, and the earliest signal that a project is about to start. Here is where Lee County publishes them, how to read one, and how to turn the list into leads nobody else is working.
See this week's Lee County permits, freeThe weekly owner report: every permit in your area with the owner's name and mailing address and the general contractor, every Monday. $349 a month per area, first four weeks free, no card, one business per area and per trade. See a sample · four weeks free.
Lee County Community Development posts a "Building Permits Issued" report every week at leegov.com/dcd/rpts, one for residential and one for commercial, covering the unincorporated county. Each row has the permit number, issue date, permit type, description, site address, parcel number, declared value and the contractor. The owner of any parcel is on the Lee County Property Appraiser site, leepa.org, with the mailing address and homestead status. Cape Coral, the City of Fort Myers, Bonita Springs, Estero, Fort Myers Beach and Sanibel issue their own permits.
Every new home, addition, pool enclosure, screen room, shed and remodel files a permit before work starts, and pays a fee to do it. That makes a fresh permit the earliest public evidence of a real project, with the address and the contractor attached. Because the record is public, nobody owns the lead: whoever reads the report first and acts on it wins the work.
Download the week's PDF from leegov.com/dcd/rpts. The residential report runs to roughly 250 permits a week (247 in the week of August 30 to September 5, 2026: 139 new single-family homes, 24 pool enclosures, 11 carports, 9 screen rooms, remodels and additions). It is a printed report, not a spreadsheet, and it has no owner information: for that you look each parcel up on leepa.org, one at a time. Fine for a handful of addresses; slow as a weekly pipeline.
The Lee County Property Appraiser publishes the full parcel file for free download at leepa.org/Roll/TaxRoll.aspx: owner of record, mailing address, homestead exemption, last sale, year built, for every parcel in the county. Join it to the permit report on the parcel number (the STRAP) and you have the owner for every permit. You need to parse a PDF, load a large file and keep it running every week; a fair amount of work, and exactly what PermitRadar does.
PermitRadar does options 1 and 2 for you. Free, rebuilt every Monday: every permit issued in unincorporated Lee County this week, with pages for Lehigh Acres, North Fort Myers, Fort Myers and Estero, a pool enclosure and screen room page, and a monthly report with the builder leaderboard. Paid: the same permits for your area joined to the owner's name and mailing address, with an absentee-owner flag, emailed every Monday. $349 a month per area (up to six ZIP codes or one named community), first four weeks free, one business per area and per trade. Names and mailing addresses only, never phone numbers.
Get your area, four weeks free
Most large cities publish permits as open data through Socrata APIs: Seattle (data.seattle.gov), Chicago (data.cityofchicago.org), San Francisco (data.sfgov.org), Austin (data.austintexas.gov). PermitRadar keeps free weekly pages for Seattle, Chicago, San Francisco and Austin; the owner report is sold for Lee County, Florida only.
Angi and HomeAdvisor sell the same homeowner request to several contractors, so you start in a price war. A permit is a government record of a real project, and the PermitRadar list for an area goes to one business per trade. Full comparison, with prices: permit leads vs Angi and HomeAdvisor.
Yes. In Florida, permits are public records under Chapter 119, open to any person for any purpose. Lee County publishes every building permit it issues in a weekly report, and the Property Appraiser publishes the parcel file with the owner of record. Other cities publish permits through open-data portals.
Lee County Community Development posts weekly Building Permits Issued reports (residential and commercial) at leegov.com/dcd/rpts for the unincorporated county. Cape Coral, the City of Fort Myers and the other municipalities issue their own permits. The owner of any parcel is on the Lee County Property Appraiser site, leepa.org.
A new permit means a project is about to start. Contractors and suppliers use the address, the scope, the declared value and the contractor named on the permit to reach the owner or the general contractor early. The data is public, so nobody owns the lead; PermitRadar sells each area's owner-joined list to one business per trade so the list itself stays exclusive.
Every permit, every contractor, rebuilt Mondays. No signup to read.
Open the Lee County list