Where the permits come from.
Every permit we send or publish traces back to a municipal record. Here is the source for each city, the licence it’s published under and how we handle it.
Last updated Monday, Sep 21, 2026
Sources by city
| City | Source | Licence | Refresh |
|---|---|---|---|
| Surrey | City of Surrey open data | Open Government Licence – Surrey | Daily |
| Vancouver | City of Vancouver open data | Open Government Licence – Vancouver | Daily |
| New Westminster | City of New Westminster open data | Open Government Licence – New Westminster | Daily |
| Victoria | City of Victoria open data | Open Government Licence – Victoria | Daily |
| Maple Ridge | City of Maple Ridge open data | Open Government Licence – Maple Ridge | Daily |
Surrey and New Westminster publish permits without map coordinates. We place those using each city’s own address-point data and, for brand-new addresses, the BC Address Geocoder (contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – British Columbia).
Cities marked “coming soon” on the city directory are in progress: we have a source identified but have not yet completed licence review or a stable weekly read.
What we count
- Issue date, not application date. A permit enters our data the week it is issued.
- Declared value is the construction value stated on the permit. It is not an estimate of landscaping spend.
- New homes = single-detached, laneway, duplex, triplex, fourplex and townhouse permits.
- Trade filters are our own classification of permit types (for example, landscaping = new homes plus additions over $350k). They are heuristics, not guarantees of work.
What we remove
Under BC’s Personal Information Protection Act, individual homeowners’ names and contact details are personal information. We drop them before storage. Where the applicant on a permit is an individual rather than a company, the builder field is shown as “Owner-builder”. We only ever surface company names.
What we don’t do
- We do not scrape Google Maps, social networks or any site whose terms prohibit it.
- We do not include permits from municipalities that mark their data “not for solicitation”. Langford is one example.
- We do not sell or resell raw data feeds. Subscribers get a filtered weekly list for their own business use.
Corrections
If a permit is wrong or a builder is misattributed, tell us with the permit number. We correct within one business day and note it in the next Wednesday email.