Building permits are one of the earliest indicators of economic activity. For decades, building permit data has been available online in a very unusable, clunky format. The Census Bureau’s new visualization and extraction tool empowers users to engage this rich, sub county-level source of information about the critical first step in construction – the building permit. This webinar demonstrates how anyone – academic researchers, builders, contractors, mainstream media - can engage this tool to understand building permit trends across one or multiple markets.