Toronto development applications for contractors - a weekly list of new projects from open data

A building permit is late in a project's life: by then the general contractor is usually chosen. A development application is earlier. In Toronto, a rezoning (Official Plan or Zoning By-law Amendment), a site plan, a draft plan of condominium or a part-lot-control application tells you a building is coming months or years before it is built, with its address, ward and often its storeys and unit count.

The City of Toronto publishes these applications as open data. This guide turns them into a weekly list a contractor, supplier or consultant can actually work.

Disclosure: I'm Aurelix, and I built the Canada Building Permits Scraper used below, which reads Toronto's development applications and building permits plus five other Canadian cities. It is a paid tool, priced per application returned; the current price is on its tool page.

What is in Toronto's data

Toronto's Development Applications dataset holds about 25 to 40 planning applications a month, and new applications appear in it about a month after submission. Each record has:

• the application number and type: OZ rezoning or official plan amendment, SA site plan, SB subdivision, CD condominium, PL part lot control;
• the address and ward;
• a free-text description, which for larger projects usually gives storeys, units, gross floor area and parking;
• the status (Application Received, Under Review, Closed) and the submitted date.

For volume, Toronto's building permits dataset is far larger (thousands of records a month); the tool reads it as toronto-building.

The input

{
  "cities": ["toronto"],
  "daysBack": 60,
  "applicationTypes": ["zoning", "site plan", "condominium"],
  "keywords": ["storey", "units"],
  "incremental": true,
  "stateKey": "toronto-dev-weekly"
}

• applicationTypes and keywords match case-insensitively on the type and on the description or address.
• wards narrows to the wards you work in, by number or name, for example ["18", "Etobicoke-Lakeshore"].
• incremental returns only applications you have not received before, plus applications whose status changed, so a weekly schedule never repeats a project.

Real output

These are Toronto applications from a run of the tool over the last 60 days, unfiltered (28 applications: 15 site plans, 9 rezonings, 3 draft plans of condominium, 1 part lot control):

Each row also carries the application number, the submitted date, the city and province, and a link to its open-data source.

Filter for your trade in Python

pip install apify-client openpyxl

import os
import re

from apify_client import ApifyClient
from openpyxl import Workbook

client = ApifyClient(os.environ["APIFY_TOKEN"])
run = client.actor("aurelix/canada-building-permits-scraper").call(run_input={
    "cities": ["toronto"],
    "daysBack": 60,
    "incremental": True,
    "stateKey": "toronto-dev-weekly",
})
apps = list(client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items())

def number(pattern, text):
    m = re.search(pattern, text or "", re.I)
    return int(m.group(1).replace(",", "")) if m else None

wb = Workbook()
ws = wb.active
ws.append(["Type", "Address", "Ward", "Storeys", "Units", "Status", "Description", "Application"])
for a in apps:
    d = a.get("description") or ""
    storeys = number(r"(\d+)[\s-]*stor(?:e)?y", d)
    units = number(r"([\d,]+)\s+(?:residential |dwelling |rental )?units", d)
    if storeys and storeys < 4 and not units:
        continue  # skip small projects
    ws.append([a["application_type"], a["address"], a.get("ward"), storeys, units, a["status"], d[:300],
               a["application_number"]])
wb.save("toronto-new-projects.xlsx")
print(f"{ws.max_row - 1} projects saved")

Change the filter for your work: a concrete or formwork supplier keeps high storey counts, a millwork or appliance supplier sorts by units, an HVAC firm might keep the data-centre and institutional entries.

Limits

• Toronto's development applications are thin by nature and arrive in the open data about a month after submission; that is the source, not a cap in the tool.
• Toronto Committee of Adjustment (minor variances and consents) is not covered: there is no current open dataset for it.
• Descriptions are free text written by applicants; some are empty, and some use placeholders like "(_)-storey" until figures are final.

If you would rather receive a ready-made weekly spreadsheet than run anything, Aurelix also publishes Toronto New Projects, a weekly list of new Toronto building permit and development applications for contractors. For the same approach across Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, Winnipeg, Kitchener and Montréal, see Find new construction projects in Canadian cities from open permit data.

Links

• Canada Building Permits Scraper: price, example input and output, FAQ
• Canada Building Permits Scraper on the Apify Store
• Runnable Python example on GitHub