Can you filter New Jersey permit data by trade?

Yes, though not the way you would in most states. New Jersey's permit type field carries only two values, building and demolition, so a conventional trade filter returns almost nothing useful. The trade information lives in the permit description instead, where the subcode set appears in parentheses: Alteration (building, electrical, plumbing, fire). Searching that field for a discipline works. Electrical appears on 366,898 of our 640,741 New Jersey records, plumbing on 192,143 and fire protection on 119,660. The data is there. It is just filed under a different field than most people check first.

Why does one New Jersey permit list several trades?

Because the New Jersey Uniform Construction Code, N.J.A.C. 5:23, builds a permit from one application and a set of subcode technical sections. An applicant files form F100 as the construction permit application, then attaches whichever technical sections the work actually touches: F110 for building, F120 for electrical, F130 for plumbing, F140 for fire protection. Each attached section is reviewed and inspected by its own DCA-licensed subcode official. So a single New Jersey permit number can represent four separate reviews running in parallel, and the parenthetical on the record is the list of which ones were filed.

How many New Jersey permits do you actually have?

640,741 records across 496 municipalities in all 21 counties, running from January 1, 2025 through August 7, 2026. That makes New Jersey the largest file we hold. Unlike our smaller state files it is genuinely uniform: the date range is the same in every county, because it comes from a single statewide feed rather than one municipal portal at a time. The tradeoff is freshness. The New Jersey feed runs roughly 10 days behind, so treat it as a monthly and quarterly prospecting file, not a same-week alert.

Does the New Jersey data include contractor or owner names?

No, and we would rather say so plainly. Our New Jersey file carries zero contractor names and zero owner names. What it carries instead is municipality, county, work class, the subcode set, a work description on every single record, a project cost on 640,736 of 640,741, and a street address on 566,517 of them, which is 88.4%. So you can identify the scope and the budget on essentially everything, and pin it to a specific address about seven times in eight. You cannot look up who is already on the job or who owns the building, and any vendor claiming otherwise for New Jersey is worth a second look.

What is a realistic project size for a New Jersey permit?

Smaller than most people assume, with a long tail that matters more than the middle. The statewide median project cost is $5,260. The 90th percentile is $45,000. Only 38,042 permits sit at or above $100,000 and 3,381 sit at or above $1,000,000. That shape is the argument for scoring rather than volume: chasing the median record means chasing a five thousand dollar job, while the top 6% of the file holds nearly every project worth a proposal.

New Jersey Building Permit Leads: All 21 Counties

By the permits.llc team · Last reviewed August 17, 2026 · Optimal window: Weeks 1–6

TL;DR

New Jersey permits name their subcodes in the record. Count them to size the job.
One subcode carries a $4,000 median project cost. Four carry $124,000.
Trade filtering does work in New Jersey, in the description field, not the type field.
We index 640,741 permits across 496 municipalities in all 21 counties.

New Jersey publishes something no other state we index publishes: the number of separate trade reviews attached to each permit, printed on the record itself. Count the disciplines in the parentheses and you have a job-size estimate before you open the file. Permits naming one subcode run a median project cost of $4,000. Permits naming four run $124,000.

That is a 31x spread on a field sitting in plain sight, and almost nobody uses it, because the field people check first in New Jersey looks broken. The permit type column holds two values, building and demolition, and nothing else. Filter on it the way you would filter permit data anywhere else and New Jersey looks like a state with no electrical work, no plumbing work and no fire protection work at all.

New Jersey has plenty of all three. Electrical shows up on 366,898 of our 640,741 records. The information is simply stored where the state's own permit process puts it rather than where a generic lead tool expects to find it.

One reframe holds here as it does everywhere. A permit is a signal about the homeowner, not the contractor. Somebody else already pulled that Paramus alteration permit. The household or the building behind it is mid-project, already committed, and still deciding who does the next piece.

What does a New Jersey construction permit actually signal?

It signals that money is committed and a clock has started. New Jersey does not let a permit application sit indefinitely: under N.J.A.C. 5:23-2.16 the construction official, or the relevant subcode official where only one trade is involved, has 20 business days to grant or deny the application. Miss that window and the failure is deemed a denial for the purposes of an appeal to the Construction Board of Appeals.

Twenty business days is roughly a month. That is your window, and it is a firmer one than most states give you.

The permit also tells you the shape of the job with unusual precision. In New Jersey it names the disciplines involved, so you learn not only that work is happening but how many trades are on it. An alteration naming building, electrical, plumbing and fire protection is a gut renovation regardless of what the description calls it. An alteration naming electrical alone is a service upgrade or a panel swap.

Both are leads. They are not remotely the same lead, and the record tells you which is which.

Why does one New Jersey permit cover four trades?

Because of how N.J.A.C. 5:23 assembles a permit. New Jersey runs a genuinely uniform statewide construction code, enforced by municipal construction officials rather than by county or state inspectors. An applicant files a single construction permit application, form F100, and attaches technical sections for whichever disciplines the work touches.

Those sections are numbered. F110 covers the building subcode, F120 electrical, F130 plumbing, F140 fire protection, with F145 for mechanical inspection and F150 for elevators. The DCA's own guidance puts it simply: the nature of the project dictates which technical sections apply.

Each attached section then goes to its own subcode official, separately licensed by the Division of Codes and Standards under N.J.A.C. 5:23-5. A building subcode official cannot sign off electrical work, and an electrical subcode official cannot sign off plumbing.

So a New Jersey permit number is not one review. It is a jacket holding up to four parallel reviews, and the parenthetical printed on the record is the list of which ones were filed. That is why the count means something. It is not a labelling convention. It is a direct readout of how much of the building the job touches.

Which subcodes actually show up in the New Jersey record?

Electrical, by a wide margin, and that surprises people who expect building permits to dominate.

Subcode named	NJ records	Share of file
Electrical	366,898	57.3%
Building	215,084	33.6%
Plumbing	192,143	30.0%
Fire protection	119,660	18.7%
No subcode named	92,605	14.5%

The shares add to well over 100% because most permits name more than one. That is the point.

The last row deserves care. Those 92,605 records carry a bare work class, usually just "Alteration", with no parenthetical at all. They are not trade-free jobs. They are jobs the source did not label, and treating an unlabelled record as an empty one is the New Jersey version of the mistake this whole article is about. Read their work descriptions instead, which are populated on all 640,741 records without exception.

By work class the file is overwhelmingly renovation: 585,082 alterations against 26,998 new construction, 14,511 additions and 14,150 demolitions. New Jersey is a state where the housing stock already exists and keeps being reworked.

How does subcode count predict job size?

Better than any other single field in the New Jersey file, and this is the cut worth keeping.

Subcodes named	Permits	Median project cost
1	341,007	$4,000
2	110,169	$8,900
3	55,400	$20,500
4	41,560	$124,000

The curve is not linear. Going from one subcode to two roughly doubles the median. Two to three doubles it again. Three to four multiplies it by six.

That jump at four is the useful part. A permit touching building, electrical, plumbing and fire protection means the work broke through walls, moved services and triggered life safety review. There is no cheap way to do that. Those 41,560 permits are 7.6% of the labelled file and they are where the substantial projects live.

Context for the medians: statewide, half of all New Jersey permits sit under $5,260 and the 90th percentile is $45,000. Only 38,042 records reach $100,000 and 3,381 reach $1,000,000. Sorting the file by volume puts you in front of five thousand dollar jobs. Sorting it by subcode count and cost together puts you in front of the other end.

This is the same logic behind scoring permits instead of chasing all of them, applied to a field only New Jersey publishes.

Where is the work, county by county?

Spread widely, which is unusual. All 21 counties carry data over the same date range, because New Jersey feeds a single statewide record rather than 496 separate municipal portals.

County	Permits	Municipalities	Median cost	Electrical share
Monmouth	66,895	48	$5,600	57.3%
Bergen	66,767	69	$5,000	53.3%
Middlesex	61,975	23	$4,850	59.8%
Ocean	60,359	27	$6,001	59.7%
Morris	47,720	37	$5,000	56.8%
Mercer	38,645	12	$5,050	54.6%
Burlington	35,719	33	$5,800	60.9%
Essex	34,620	20	$5,000	54.3%

Density differs more than volume does. Bergen spreads 66,767 records across 69 municipalities, so a Bergen territory means learning dozens of separate construction offices. Middlesex packs 61,975 into 23. Mercer packs 38,645 into 12. If you sell somewhere that rewards knowing the local official by name, the concentrated counties are worth more than their record counts suggest.

The Shore counties run richer per job. Cape May's median project cost is $8,143 and Atlantic's is $7,000, against $3,500 in Sussex and $4,500 in Passaic. Fewer permits, bigger tickets, and a seasonal rhythm the northern counties do not have.

Salem is the smallest at 3,723 records, with a $7,000 median. Small county, serious jobs.

When should you reach out, and what is missing?

Inside six weeks of the application date. The 20 business day decision window means the follow-on trades are being chosen while the review is still running, and waiting for a decision date to confirm the job means arriving after those calls are made. The same speed-to-lead arithmetic that governs permit outreach generally is tighter here, because New Jersey's clock is written into the code.

One caveat on timing. Our New Jersey feed runs roughly 10 days behind, current through August 7 as of this writing. That is a monthly and quarterly prospecting file, not a same-week alert, and pretending otherwise would set you up to miss.

Now the honest part. Our New Jersey records carry no contractor names and no owner names. Zero of either, across all 640,741. That is a real limitation and it is a bigger one than the subcode quirk. You can identify the municipality, the work class, the disciplines involved, the full description and the project cost on 640,736 records.

The address field needs its own caveat. It is populated on 566,517 records, 88.4%, and the gap is not spread evenly. Union County runs 96.3% and Hudson 96.0%, but Warren drops to 69.3%, Salem to 71.2%, Atlantic to 72.9% and Cape May to 74.7%. The Shore counties, which are otherwise attractive on project cost, are among the weakest on address. There is also no latitude or longitude anywhere in the New Jersey file, so radius and drive-time filtering are not available here. Territory work in New Jersey runs on county and municipality, which is what the coverage pages are built around. You cannot look up who is already on the job or who holds the deed.

For address-led outreach that is workable, and it is how most permit prospecting runs anyway. For anything that depends on calling a named owner, New Jersey is not yet the file for it. We would rather you know that before you buy than after. If you are weighing this against a purchased contact list, the tradeoffs between permit records and lead lists cut differently when the contact fields are empty.

How permits.llc fits in

We index 640,741 New Jersey construction permits across 496 municipalities and all 21 counties, from January 2025 forward, with the subcode set and project cost on essentially every record. The subcode-count cut in this article is not a feature we built. It is a property of how New Jersey writes permits, and it is available to anyone willing to read the parenthetical.

What we do is make it queryable at 640,000 records instead of one municipal portal at a time.

Start with the free New Jersey permit data download to see the record shape and check the field coverage against your own use case, including the gaps. Then work through New Jersey permit coverage by county to pick territory on median project cost and municipal density rather than on raw volume, which is the trap the county table above exists to help you avoid.