Methodology
How HomeQuotr knows the real price of home repairs
Every price on this site comes from a real building permit filed with a city or county government. No surveys, no estimates, no self-reported contractor data. This page explains exactly how we turn raw permit records into city-level pricing.
The data source: municipal building permits
When a contractor pulls a permit to do HVAC, roofing, electrical, plumbing, foundation, or solar work, they declare the project value to the local government. That declared value becomes part of the public record. HomeQuotr aggregates those records to show what homeowners in your city actually paid, not what an estimator website thinks a project should cost.
This is the core difference. National cost estimator sites typically rely on contractor surveys, editorial estimates, or self-reported pricing data. HomeQuotr pulls directly from government permit databases, the same records used by insurance adjusters, real estate attorneys, and municipal planners.
The source types HomeQuotr ingests include Socrata open data portals, ArcGIS FeatureServers, CKAN repositories, and direct municipal REST APIs. Every pricing page on the site carries a direct link back to the originating municipal database so readers can verify the source themselves.
How a permit becomes a published price
Raw permit records go through five sequential steps before a price appears on any HomeQuotr page.
- 01
Ingestion
Daily and weekly pipelines pull new permit records from municipal data portals across 100 U.S. metros. Raw records are stored exactly as the government publishes them, including permit number, description, declared project value, issue date, property type, and any metadata the municipality provides.
- 02
Trade classification
A rule-based engine reads the permit description, contractor name, and fee structure to classify each record as HVAC, roofing, electrical, plumbing, foundation, solar, or unrelated. Ambiguous records are escalated to an AI classifier for a second opinion. Records that cannot be confidently classified are excluded from all aggregates.
- 03
Residential filter
Commercial permits, new construction, and demolition work are removed so the pricing reflects what a homeowner would actually budget for. The filter applies across property class, permit type, and keyword exclusions on the permit description.
- 04
Valuation capping
Every trade has a realistic ceiling: HVAC $30,000, roofing $40,000, electrical $25,000, plumbing $20,000, foundation $50,000, solar $80,000. Permits above the cap are treated as commercial contamination or data entry errors and excluded from the median calculation.
- 05
Statistical aggregation
For each city-trade combination with at least 30 qualifying permits, the pipeline computes median, 25th percentile, 75th percentile, min, max, and a 10-bucket distribution histogram. Cities below the 30-permit threshold fall back to a state-level aggregate with a clearly labeled geographic scope.
What we do to keep the data honest
Permit data is messy. Cities format records inconsistently, contractors sometimes mis-declare values, and the same geographic area can span multiple overlapping datasets. These controls exist to catch and remove noise before it reaches the published median.
- Residential filter excludes commercial and multi-family projects
- Per-trade valuation caps exclude data entry errors and mislabeled commercial work
- Minimum 30-permit threshold before publishing city-level pricing
- Numeric overflow filter excludes records with clearly malformed valuations (for example, a missing decimal place that inflates a $5,000 job to $500,000)
- Cross-source reconciliation when a metro publishes permits across multiple overlapping datasets
- Sub-category classification (furnace vs. heat pump, reroof vs. roof repair, panel upgrade vs. rewire, etc.) so prices are comparable within like-for-like project types
How often the data refreshes
Tier A metros, the 17 largest U.S. markets by population, refresh weekly. This group includes New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Miami, Washington DC, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, San Diego, Denver, Austin, Portland, Nashville, Boston, and Minneapolis.
Tier B and Tier C metros, covering the remaining cities in the top 100, refresh monthly. The total footprint spans 100 U.S. metros and approximately 75 percent of the U.S. population.
The Last updated timestamp on every pricing page reflects the last successful pipeline run for that city and trade, so readers can always see exactly when the underlying data was last recomputed.
What this data cannot tell you
Transparency about limitations is part of what makes HomeQuotr trustworthy.
- Permit valuations reflect the contractor's declared project value at the time of permitting, which may differ from the final invoiced price
- Some cities aggregate trade work into a single building permit, which can dilute trade-specific medians
- A handful of metros only publish state-level or metro-wide aggregates because city-level data is not available; this is labeled clearly on the affected pages
- Brand new construction is excluded, so whole-building pricing does not appear anywhere in the product
- Permits filed under trade-neutral contractor licenses may be misclassified in rare cases, which is why sub-threshold city-trade combinations are suppressed rather than published
Every page links back to the source
Every pricing page carries a direct link to the municipal data portal it was derived from, plus a visible last-updated timestamp. This is intentional. Homeowners deserve to verify where the numbers came from, and linking to the source makes the data auditable by anyone.
For example, HVAC pricing in Dallas links to the Dallas Building Inspection permit dataset. Seattle roofing pricing links to the Seattle SDCI (Department of Construction and Inspections) permit records. Philadelphia electrical pricing links to the Philadelphia Licenses and Inspections open data portal.
Example source portals
- Dallas Building Inspection
- Seattle SDCI (Department of Construction and Inspections)
- Philadelphia Licenses and Inspections
- NYC Department of Buildings
- Austin Development Services Department
Who built this
HomeQuotr is built by Kevin Monangai, a technology executive at JPMorgan Chase and former NFL running back based in New Jersey. Before working in payments technology, Kevin played professionally for the Philadelphia Eagles and Minnesota Vikings and later coached with the New York Giants.
The product exists because every homeowner deserves to know what a repair actually costs before a contractor shows up in their driveway. That information has always been in government permit databases. Nobody had made it easy to find.
HomeQuotr does not sell leads, does not route contractor introductions, and does not take contractor money to influence pricing data. The data is the product. Read the full story on the About page.
Ready to see real prices?
Browse permit-sourced pricing for your city and trade, down to the specific project type.