What has been permitted on the houses, not the shops
ONE FILE PER CITY, sharded by year underneath (invisible in the UI).
The file
397,338 permit rows since 2020 on parcels outside the commercial index — 370,463 distinct permits — from the Minneapolis and Saint Paul desks, one file per city. The exact complement of the commercial permits: nothing is in both.
397,338 rowsCounties in this file: Hennepin, Ramsey · 26 columns available · free, no account, no rate limit.
Joins to an address on lat, lon, so it can be pointed at one property rather than read whole.
What the rows look like
10 real rows from this file, spread evenly across it rather than taken off the top — every file here is written in some order, so its first rows are never a fair sample of it. These are the default columns, which is what the download button hands over.
| address | issued | kind (office's word) | work (office's word) | trade | applicant (Minneapolis) | contractor (Saint Paul) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 27TH AVE S E | 2020-10-14 | Mechanical | ExistRes | systems | MESPO HEATING AND COOLING INC | — |
| 3324 3RD AVE S | 2021-08-30 | Res | Misc | structural | ROOFS-R-US | — |
| 5105 OAKLAND AVE | 2022-12-16 | Res | Misc | structural | Minnesota Rusco Inc | — |
| 814 35TH ST E | 2023-05-08 | Res | Misc | structural | Jay Wahi | — |
| 3412 5TH AVE S | 2024-11-25 | Plumbing | Res | systems | CenterPoint Energy Resource Corp | — |
| 3207 4TH ST N | 2026-08-12 | Mechanical | ExistRes | systems | Metro Heating & Cooling LLC | — |
| 290 MISSISSIPPI RIVER BLVD S | 2021-10-25 | Mechanical Permit | Residential New | systems | — | TWIN CITY FIREPLACE & STO TWIN CITY FIREPLACE & STONE CO |
| 1047 ARMSTRONG AVE | 2022-06-17 | Building Permit | Express Repair | structural | — | DICK PALMGREN / JOHN DALNES (MASONRY) LOOKING GLASS PROPERTIES LLC |
| 574 SUMMIT AVE | 2023-01-17 | Building Permit | Remodel | structural | — | TIM RASCHER RASCHER AND CO LLC |
| 1930 COMO AVE | 2025-01-02 | Warm Air, Ventilation & General Sheet | Commercial Replace | systems | — | Saint Paul Public Schools |
An em dash means the record is blank, and that is the source's gap rather than ours. Across the whole file: contractor (Saint Paul) is blank on 59.1% of rows, applicant (Minneapolis) is blank on 40.9% of rows, address is blank on 3.3% of rows.
The cuts of this file
Every cut is the same columns, filtered. Pick one and the row count changes; the file does not.
Every column in this file
Columns marked default come down unless you pick your own with
&columns=.
| Column | What it is | In the default file |
|---|---|---|
address |
address | default |
issued |
issued | default |
kind |
kind (office's word) | default |
work |
work (office's word) | default |
trade |
trade | default |
occupancy |
occupancy (Minneapolis) | optional |
sub_type |
sub type (Saint Paul) | optional |
status |
status | optional |
completed |
completed | optional |
fees_usd |
fees (Minneapolis) | optional |
value_usd |
declared value (Saint Paul) | optional |
applicant |
applicant (Minneapolis) | default |
applicant_address |
applicant mailing address | optional |
contractor |
contractor (Saint Paul) | default |
contractor_address |
contractor mailing address | optional |
use |
use (assessor class) | optional |
year_built |
year built | optional |
units_added |
units added | optional |
units_removed |
units removed | optional |
rows_per_permit |
rows per permit | optional |
permit_no |
permit number | optional |
parcel_id |
parcel id | optional |
city |
city | optional |
county |
county | optional |
lat |
latitude | optional |
lon |
longitude | optional |
Where it comes from
Minneapolis CCS_Permits and Saint Paul Approved_Building_Permits registers
Records retrieved 2026-09-08 — the oldest capture date among the layers behind this file, because data is no fresher than its stalest input.
What this layer cannot answer is stated in full on the system card — read it before quoting a figure.
What you may do with it
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Share it, change it, build a product on it, sell that product — all fine. The one condition is credit: say it came from Brick & Mortar and link back.
Records published by City of Minneapolis, City of Saint Paul. Government data held by a Minnesota state agency or political subdivision, presumed public under the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act (Minn. Stat. ch. 13) and published by the agency itself.
Read the full licence · how we license every dataset, and the two we do not
Without the page
/api/export?dataset=permits-residential&format=csv returns the
same file. Call /api/export
with no arguments for the whole catalogue.
Point an AI at it
Every file carries its own source, its capture date and the layer's own warnings in the header, so a model reading one gets the caveats with the numbers rather than the numbers alone. Paste this at an assistant that can fetch a URL:
Read https://brickandmortar.dev/api/export?dataset=permits-residential&format=csv
Everything above the header row is provenance and limits. Read it first,
then answer using only what the rows support.llms.txt describes the whole warehouse the same way — what each dataset holds, which counties it really covers, and what it cannot answer.