autoants data · New Orleans

New Orleans data, cleaned and joined.

We turn the city's public records into signals about where work is happening: permits by trade, new businesses by kind, when each trade gets busy, and the next job after each project. Counted by ZIP and month, with the source on every number.

See the datasets Get the free monthly report
306,165trade permit applications cleaned, since 2012
16trades sorted, each with its own seasonal index
10 yrsof seasonality, 2016–2025, graded by confidence
15kinds of public-record trigger behind the next-job signal

Source: data.nola.gov permits 72f9-bi28 (CC0), applications 2012-01-01 to the pull on 2026-10-08, after dropping void, withdrawn, expired, denied and duplicate permits. Trades, index and triggers are our own analysis.

The catalog

What exists today.

Each card is a dataset we can deliver now, with where it comes from and where it falls short. Anything we're still building is marked In development, below.

PermitsAvailable

Residential permits by trade

Every trade-related city permit, sorted into 16 trades (roofing, HVAC, electrical, generators, solar, pools, renovation and more) and counted one house per trade per month, by ZIP.

Coverage
New Orleans (Orleans Parish). Applications from 2012. The city updates daily; we re-pull at least monthly. Re-roofs only have their own permit type since 2025-05-15: before that we count renovation permits whose description says re-roof, which undercounts (about 195 houses a year against about 1,300 under the new type). HVAC has its own type since 2015-05-01. Jefferson Parish publishes no open permit feed.
Fields
Month (application or issue), ZIP, trade, residential or commercial, houses, days from application to issue.
Source and license
City of New Orleans open data: Permits - BLDS (72f9-bi28) and Permits (rcm3-fn58), both CC0.
Good for
Sizing a trade by neighborhood, territory planning, supplier demand, timing a sales push.

September 2026: 134 houses got a residential re-roof permit, up from 100 in August; 70115 (Uptown) led with 20. rcm3-fn58 + 72f9-bi28, issued in the month, one per house, pulled 2026-10-08.

SeasonalityAvailable

Trade seasonality index, 10 years

For 16 trades, how each month compares with an average month (100 = average), with a confidence grade so you know which seasons are real and which are hints.

Coverage
New Orleans. Permit applications 2016–2025; 2020 (COVID) and 2021 (the freeze, then Ida) left out, and the December 2022 freeze masked, leaving 8 clean years per trade. Re-run each January.
Fields
Trade, month, index by application month and by issue month, busy stretch, slowest month, confidence (high, medium, low), permits per year, median days to issue.
Source and license
Permits - BLDS (72f9-bi28, CC0); NOAA 1991–2020 normals for New Orleans International; NWS alert archive (Iowa Environmental Mesonet). Index and grades are ours.
Good for
When to staff, stock and advertise; when a supplier's reps should call on a trade.

Only 2 of 16 trades have a high-confidence season: standby generators (Jun–Aug) and renovation (Apr–May). seasonality study, clean years 2016–2025, pulled 2026-10-08.

BusinessesAvailable

New business licenses by category

Newly licensed New Orleans businesses each month, grouped by kind: shops, food and drink, home services, beauty, auto, fitness, pets, lodging and the rest, and whether the address is a storefront or a home.

Coverage
New Orleans (Orleans Parish), counted by the license's start date. The city updates daily; we count monthly. Jefferson Parish doesn't publish its licenses as open data.
Fields
Month, category group, the city's business type, ZIP, storefront or home-based.
Source and license
data.nola.gov Active Occupational Licenses (iqay-p646, CC0), plus Occupational Business Licenses (hjcd-grvu) and license applications (abc4-h3u3): public records whose dataset pages state no license.
Good for
Anyone who sells to new businesses: accountants, insurance, sign shops, point-of-sale, suppliers, banks.

September 2026: 231 businesses with a September start date (69 of them dated September 1), up from 129 in August; 29 were restaurants. hjcd-grvu, New Orleans addresses, pulled 2026-10-08.

SignalsAvailable

The next-job signal, by ZIP

Houses where a public record shows a job just happened (a re-roof, a panel upgrade, a new pool, a new home's final inspection) matched to the trade that usually comes next, and when.

Coverage
New Orleans. 15 kinds of trigger read from city permits and licenses. Sold as counts by ZIP and month; addresses are never sold.
Fields
Trigger, follow-on trade, the window when that job tends to come (days after the trigger), ZIP, month, houses.
Source and license
City permits (72f9-bi28, rcm3-fn58, CC0) and license records on data.nola.gov. Which trade comes next is our own map, not a city field.
Good for
Gutter, insulation, solar, fencing, landscaping and cleaning companies; suppliers sizing follow-on demand.

12 months to 2026-10-07: 1,243 residential re-roofs citywide, about 104 a month; the busiest ZIP, 70115, averaged about 12.5. 72f9-bi28 + rcm3-fn58, residential, one per house, pulled 2026-10-07.

WeatherAvailable

Storm and weather triggers

The weather record for Orleans Parish joined to permits: every tropical storm and hurricane warning, the alerts by month, and what each storm did to re-roof, generator and plumbing permits afterward.

Coverage
Orleans Parish. Tropical warnings since 2012 (13 so far); NWS alerts by month 2016–2025; NOAA 1991–2020 normals. Current alerts from the National Weather Service on each pull.
Fields
Storm, first warning date, permits in the next 60 and 120 days against the usual pace, alerts by type and month, normal heat days and freeze nights.
Source and license
National Weather Service (api.weather.gov and the Iowa Environmental Mesonet archive) and NOAA NCEI, U.S. government data; permits as above.
Good for
Storm-season planning, inventory, insurers' and lenders' market research, reporters.

Re-roof permits ran 2.2 times the usual pace in the 60 days after Ida's first warning; across all 13 warnings the median was 1.2 times. 72f9-bi28 (description-matched re-roofs before 2025-05-15) + NWS warnings, 2012-01-01 to 2026-10-07.

In development

InspectionsIn development

Food-service inspection records

Orleans and Jefferson. The state publishes these through a one-at-a-time lookup, not a download. A dataset waits on a bulk records file from the Louisiana Department of Health.

ContractorsIn development

Contractor license records

License classes and renewal dates from the state contractors board. Its website terms require the board's written consent for commercial use, so this waits on the board's own roster export or a records request.

PropertyIn development

Property-joined permits

Permits joined to the parish assessor's roll (year built, last sale, lot) for questions like "re-roofs on houses built before 1950". It needs the assessor's data file, which we haven't licensed yet.

Also public: counts from our licensed-business guide (tree and landscaping companies by town) on the guide data page →

What the data says

Ten years of permits, one picture.

Each row is a trade; each square is how busy that month is against an average month. Red is busier, blue is quieter. The grade after each trade says how much to trust its season.

April

Re-roofs peak in April, 49% above an average month.

December is the slowest, 29% below. The new re-roof permit agrees: April 2026 had 180 houses, the most of any month since the type began.

Index 149 (Apr) and 71 (Dec), description-matched re-roofs, a low-confidence series; 72f9-bi28 applications, clean years 2016–2025, pulled 2026-10-08.

Apr–May, Oct

HVAC permits peak in spring and October, not summer.

July runs below average. Summer is repair season, and repairs mostly don't pull a permit; replacements come before and after the heat.

Mechanical HVAC applications: Apr 108, May 110, Oct 113, Jul 92; medium confidence; 72f9-bi28, clean years 2016–2025, pulled 2026-10-08.

8×

Generator permits ran 8 times higher after Ida.

714 houses applied for a standby generator in 2022, against about 86 a year in 2016–2019. It hasn't come back down: about 400 a year in 2023–2025.

Permanent Generator applications by year: 86, 83, 91, 82 (2016–19); 714 (2022); 418, 433, 345 (2023–25); 72f9-bi28, pulled 2026-10-08.

Heatmap of the New Orleans seasonal permit index for 14 trades by month, 100 = an average month. Re-roofs peak in April at 149. Standby generators run 132 to 149 from June to August and fall to 52 in December. HVAC peaks at 108 to 110 in April and May and 112 in October, with July at 92. November and December are below average for almost every trade.
The seasonal index: permit applications by month, 100 = an average month, clean years 2016–2025. Trees and shutters are left off (too thin). Swipe the chart sideways to see every month.Source: data.nola.gov 72f9-bi28 (CC0), application month, pulled 2026-10-08; autoants analysis.
Bar charts of monthly permit applications from 2019 to 2023 for standby generators, roofing, plumbing and HVAC, with COVID, the February 2021 freeze, Hurricane Ida and the December 2022 freeze marked. Generator applications climb after Ida to over 100 a month in mid-2022; roofing jumps to about 43 a month right after Ida.
What the shocks did, 2019–2023: these months are left out of the seasonal baseline and kept as evidence of what storms and freezes do. Swipe the chart sideways.Source: data.nola.gov 72f9-bi28 (CC0), application month, pulled 2026-10-08; autoants analysis.

Limits: permits only count work that needs a permit. Repairs (most AC repairs, burst pipes, tree work, most gutter work) mostly don't, so their seasons show up in phone calls, not here.

Three ways to get it

Start free. Pay when it earns its place.

01

Permits Pulled

The free monthly read: re-roofs by ZIP, where houses are getting work, what kinds of businesses just opened, and the trade about to get busy. Two minutes.

FreeMonthly, by email. Unsubscribe anytime.
Sign up for the report
02

Feeds

A weekly file for your trade or for new businesses, counted by ZIP and category.

  • A trade feed: permits and next-job signals for one trade
  • A new-business feed: new licenses by kind and ZIP
From $49/moFounding pricing.
Ask about a feed
03

Custom datasets and reports

Cut to your question. For example: every HVAC replacement in Orleans by ZIP by month since 2015, or new restaurants by neighborhood this year, with the method written down.

Quoted per projectYou see the scope and price before we start.
Ask for a quote

Who buys it: distributors and suppliers, roll-ups and investors, insurers and lenders doing market research, proptech and software teams, researchers and reporters. For anything outside Orleans Parish, ask; Jefferson Parish has no open permit or license feed yet, so we'll tell you what's possible before quoting.

Ask about data

Tell us what you'd want counted.

A trade, a set of ZIPs, a date range, a question. We'll reply with what the records can and can't answer, and a price. A person replies, usually the same day.

autoants · hello@autoants.com

We'll reply by phone or email about this request. Nothing you send is shared or sold. Privacy

Data practices

Plain rules.

Public records and our own analysis

Everything here is built from public records (the city's permit data on data.nola.gov is published CC0) and our own analysis. Each number carries its source and the date we pulled it.

Counts, not people

We sell aggregates by ZIP, month, trade and category. We don't sell homeowner names.

Not a consumer reporting agency

Our data may not be used to decide anyone's credit, insurance, housing or employment (the Fair Credit Reporting Act), and we won't sell it for that.

Client data stays private

We don't sell client data that identifies anyone, our clients or their customers.