The 20-row sample: twenty Austin buildings, no call, no card. (It is built from the permit record directly, not the full register.)
Get the free 20-row sampleCommercial roofing · Austin first
We read the City of Austin's permit history, match it to appraisal-district parcels, and work out which commercial roofs are reaching the end of their life. Use it two ways: the whole list at once, or the best fifteen each weekday morning.
Austin today. Other counties: pre-order a report or join the waiting list. To start a trial, email hello@thebidwindow.com — we set trials up by hand.
Source: the production Austin register, 10 Oct 2026. 987 = current, unsuppressed signals scoring 40 or more.
Why this works
Most permit-lead services send roofing contractors roofing permits. By the time that permit exists the contract is signed — the roofer's name is on the filing because they already won the work. We checked: in a hand-read sample of eight Dallas commercial roofing permits, five were pulled by a roofing contractor. A fresh permit tells you someone else won. (Eight is a small sample. It is why we built this the other way round, not a statistic about the market.) Both of our products sell the opposite moment: the building whose roof is about to need replacing, before anyone has been hired.
A 2009 replacement permit is proof a full roof went on that year. The roofer's own name on it makes the record more reliable, not less.
Modified bitumen plans at twelve years, TPO at fifteen, built-up at eighteen. A 2009 roof is seventeen years old today. Somebody is going to replace it.
Not a bid invitation that forty contractors received. A building, and a reason to pick up the phone this month.
Two products, one register
Both are built from one asset register: a row per building, with the date its roof was last replaced taken from the city's own permit record. The Roof Age Report is every row at once. Daily Signals is the same rows, ranked, sent fifteen at a time and — once enough feedback has come in — tuned by it. Buy both and you will see the same buildings. We would rather say so now.
For a contractor who wants to work a territory systematically, on their own terms.
The 20-row sample: twenty Austin buildings, no call, no card. (It is built from the permit record directly, not the full register.)
Get the free 20-row sampleOr email hello@thebidwindow.com. We email a payment link.
Pending The register-built report is not generated yet; nothing is sold until it is.
For a contractor who wants the triage done for them.
The territory is finite. The current Austin register is about three months of daily calls at 15 a day. We rebuild it as new permits are processed; that is not yet automatic.
The 7-day trial: seven days of the daily list. We set trials up by hand.
Start the free trialEmail hello@thebidwindow.com with your company name and the county you cover.
Or email hello@thebidwindow.com. We email a payment link.
Report or Daily Signals? The report is the raw territory, to work yourself. Daily Signals is the ranking, the daily delivery and the app.
How it works
We read the City of Austin's issued-permit history, back to 1921, from a licensed permit feed, and match each permit to its Travis Central Appraisal District parcel.
A tagger reads each permit's free-text description and tells a re-roof from a rooftop HVAC unit. It is regression-tested against a frozen set of 5,000 real descriptions, and every change to it is diffed against that set.
Contractor names are resolved to organisations, so “who did this roof last time” means one company, not six spellings.
A roof's age is compared with the rated life of its system. Permits pulled by a roofer are set aside as already won. Void and withdrawn permits never count as an install. Where the permit does not name the system, the row says so and shows the value as a range.
Coverage today: City of Austin permits, matched to Travis CAD parcels.
For the sceptical reader
Permit data is available to anyone who pays for it, and we pay for it. What we build on top is the part that is hard to copy:
Regression-tested against a frozen 5,000-description corpus. It has been rewritten four times, and every rewrite is now checked against that corpus.
Of 6,324 contractor-name occurrences, 98.3% were resolved automatically (linked to an existing organisation, or confidently a new one); 1.7% went to a person. A wrong merge is treated as worse than a duplicate, and every merge can be undone.
An asset is built from a building's full permit history, and only from permits that actually completed. Void and withdrawn permits are excluded.
Every email carries a one-click relevant / not relevant link and we record the answer. Pending No outcomes are recorded yet; re-ranking from them is not built.
Pending We have set a release gate for how often the top ten are worth a call, against a hand-labelled set, and we have not measured it yet. We will publish the number when we have it.
Two approaches
| Permit as lead | Asset age (ours) | |
|---|---|---|
| What fires | A new roofing permit | A roof reaching the end of its life |
| When | After the contract is signed | Years before replacement |
| Who else sees it | Everyone watching permits | Few watch for age |
| What you do | React or bid | Call first |
| What it needs | A live permit feed | Full permit history per building |
| Where it fails | You are the fortieth call | Age is not condition; unpermitted work is invisible |
What a row looks like
Example rows from the first Austin build. The free sample has real ones.
| Address | Parcel | Installed | Age | System | Area | Est. value | Last contractor | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 48 •• Burnet Rd | 0•••••0412 | 2008-06 | 18.3 | BUR | 31,400 | $204k–377k | Lone Star Roofing | Overdue |
| 19 •• E Oltorf St | 0•••••7781 | 2009-10 | 16.9 | — | 14,220 | $92k–171k | Beldon Roofing Company | Overdue |
| 72 •• Metropolis Dr | 0•••••2036 | 2011-04 | 15.4 | TPO | 58,900 | $383k–707k | — | Planning |
| 3 ••• W Slaughter Ln | 0•••••5529 | 2013-08 | 13.1 | Mod-bit | 9,640 | $63k–116k | Capitol City Roofing | Planning |
| 11 •• Research Blvd | 0•••••9143 | 2014-11 | 11.9 | — | 22,780 | $148k–273k | — | Monitor |
Contractor names shown are real Austin firms that appear in the permit record. Addresses and parcel IDs are masked in this sample. Estimated value is building area × current per-square-foot replacement ranges — an anchor for your conversation, not a quote.
Questions
Austin is available now, with both products. For another county we can build you a Roof Age Report to order, and we keep a waiting list for Daily Signals outside Austin. See other markets.
City of Austin issued permits, from a licensed permit feed, and Travis Central Appraisal District parcel records. Both underlying sources are public records.
Seven days of the daily list. We set trials up by hand: email us your company name and the county you cover.
We email a payment link. Daily Signals is cancel anytime.
Yes: owner of record is a column in the Roof Age Report. Daily Signals does not show owner names.
We rebuild the register as new permits are processed. That is done by hand today, not automatically.
No. Age is a strong reason to call; only a survey tells you the condition.
You will see the same buildings. The report is all of them at once; Daily Signals picks fifteen a day, ranked.
Yes. See “We buy the data. That is not the moat.” above.
Before you buy
Four things you should know before paying for it, because you will find them out anyway.
Beyond Austin
Three tiers, so you know exactly what you are getting. A report needs a county's appraisal-district data: that is where property type, building area, year built and owner of record come from. So the unit we expand by is a county, not a state.
Both products: the Roof Age Report and Daily Signals. The register covers City of Austin permits matched to Travis CAD parcels.
See the two productsWe build the county's appraisal-district integration first, then your report. Build time: range pending; it depends on the county's data. Pre-orders are how we choose the next county: the one somebody has paid for goes first.
Pending Pre-order terms: when payment is taken, and what happens if we cannot build your county.
Pre-order a reportEmail hello@thebidwindow.com with the county.
Not built. Tell us your city and trade and we will write when it is.
Join the waiting listEmail hello@thebidwindow.com with your city and trade.
Fort Worth's permits are loaded, but we have no Tarrant appraisal-district source, so there is no register and no report for it yet. We make no coverage claim for any other place and give no dates.