Where Builtie's Data Comes From: Permits, Builder Websites, Social Accounts, Associations and the Field Team

The applicant on the permit is a numbered company. The phone number rings a guy who sold the business two years ago. Every contractor has chased one of those, and every one of them wanted to ask: how do you know? Builtie's answer is in its sources: public permits and planning records, company websites and builders' own posts, each dated and kept with the record it supports.

A lead you cannot trace is a rumor. Every project and every contact in Builtie carries its source. Here are those sources: what they are, how fresh they run, and the rules that stop a wrong record from turning into a confident one.

1. Permits and planning records: the footing

Municipalities publish building permits and planning applications as public records. Builtie pulls them in as they appear, normalizes them into one schema, and dates each one. The record now runs past 225,000 permits. A permit gives you the address, the declared value, the permit type and the applicant. Everything else on a lead is built on that footing.

Permits are public, but they are written for inspectors. "Alteration to existing 2-story dwelling, new second-floor addition" only becomes "a framing opportunity now, with roofing, HVAC and finishing awarded in turn as the build moves through its stages" after enrichment, and that translation is where the value is.

2. Builder, developer and designer websites: who is really behind it

The applicant is often an expediter or a numbered company. The builder's own site says who they really are and what they build. Builtie reads company websites for that context, for a main line or a general mailbox, and for named staff where the company publishes them.

Websites are also where the guardrails earn their keep. A "built with" footer badge carries the site builder's social links on every site it hosts. One aggregator page once offered up 45 email addresses for a single company, none of them its own. Builtie refuses all of that as evidence, because pinning a site builder's Instagram on unrelated landscapers is worse than pinning nothing.

The flip side: a site that "has no email" usually does. About a third of them give one up on a second, more patient pass. A locked door is not an empty room.

3. Public social accounts: timing, not proof

Instagram, LinkedIn and Houzz activity from watched companies and people is read for new project signals. X is watched for new-build announcements. Public accounts only; a private profile is never read. Social is context and timing, never the sole basis for a lead. A photo of a finished kitchen is a receipt for a job awarded months ago.

4. Association directories: the first phone number

Industry associations publish member lists, boards and events. Builtie links members to companies already in the database and treats membership as a fit signal. A directory row also usually carries a phone number before anything else does. In one run across 2,079 association members, directory rows and public websites took contact coverage from 6% to 98%, and for 1,272 of those companies the main line was the first way in. A switchboard is not glamorous. It rings.

5. Contact discovery and verification: rules written in scar tissue

For named people, Builtie uses professional network profiles and email discovery and verification services to get email, phone and LinkedIn where they can be verified. Each rule below exists because someone got it wrong first:

• An email attaches to a person only when the name on the page backs it up.
• A surname alone never matches a LinkedIn profile. The company name has to appear in the person's current position, and there has to be positive evidence they are in the right country.
• A lookup that fails for technical reasons (a timeout, a service limit) leaves the record open for retry. It is never written down as "no email exists".

That last one sounds like plumbing. It is the difference between a database and a graveyard of false negatives.

6. The field team: paper lags the ground

A permit tells you what was approved, not whether anyone showed up. Builtie's field team drives routes across the GTA and checks the projects that matter in person: activity or none, the real stage of the structure, whose sign is on the fence. That observation is written onto the project as ground truth and overrides the inferred stage.

What is not a source

Builtie does not buy consumer lists, does not scrape homeowners or private data, does not carry financials or valuations, and does not guess a contact from a pattern and call it verified. Where a value is uncertain, the record says so. An honest blank beats a confident wrong.

How Builtie fits

Six sources, one lead. The permit anchors it, the website and social accounts explain who is behind it, the association record and the verification services make the person reachable, and the field team confirms it is real. Every field on a Builtie lead can answer "how do you know?", and the rep who can answer that on a call closes more work than the one reading off a list.

Know the projects. Reach the decision makers. Ask us how we know at builtie.com.