Josh Steinman

Founder, PermitPipeline

Josh Steinman is the founder of PermitPipeline, a construction data company that turns public permit filings into early project intelligence. Before building it, he spent 20 years in construction as a carpenter, estimator, project manager, and owner's representative.

He came up through the field. He started framing custom homes, moved inside to estimating, and spent the better part of two decades running high-end residential projects, first as a project manager and later as an owner's representative for the people paying for the work. He holds an economics degree from Princeton and an MBA with honors from Berkeley's Haas School of Business, with a focus on real estate. By the end of that run he had priced the work, built the work, and overseen the work from the owner's side of the table.

PermitPipeline is that career turned into software. It cleans public building permit records from four cities and turns them into project leads and a free directory of the firms doing the work.

Education

• A.B. Economics, Princeton University, 1996.
• MBA with Honors, Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley, 2012. Focus in real estate.
• Construction Management Certificate, UC Berkeley Extension.

Articles written by Josh

Every article on PermitPipeline is written by Josh, grounded in real municipal permit data and his contractor background:

• How long does an NYC building permit take to issue?
• How long does an SF building permit take to issue?
• How long does a Miami-Dade building permit take to issue?
• How long does a Chicago building permit take to issue?
• Building permit timeline by city: NYC vs SF vs Chicago vs Miami
• NYC Department of Buildings Online Filings: A Contractor's Guide
• SF Planning vs. SF Building approval
• SF Soft Story Retrofit Program
• Miami-Dade permit guide: county vs. municipal
• HVHZ explained
• Chicago permit review tracks
• What is a master permit?
• Full library

Questions people ask

Where does the data come from?
Public building permit records from New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, and Miami-Dade. Every project, filing, and firm relationship on the site traces back to a government record. PermitPipeline cleans the records, connects them, and keeps them current.

Why is the firm directory free?
Because the people who need it most, small shops deciding who to call next, would never see it behind a paywall. The paid product is the lead feed. The directory is PermitPipeline's cleaned and connected view of the public record, and it stays free.

What has been the biggest challenge so far?
Losing most of the site's Google visibility in a single week in August 2026, with no penalty and no explanation, while the pages stayed indexed and kept ranking when served. The full account, including the mistakes that were Josh's own and what the repair effort has shown so far, is in the article he wrote about it.

I run a firm and my page has an error. Can I fix it?
Yes. Every firm page has a claim link, and claiming is free. You can also just email Josh; the record gets corrected either way. Facts from the public record stay, and nobody can pay to hide them.

What is next?
Every permit in New York, more cities, and eventually every major construction market in the country. The same cleaned data is also becoming original research: in aggregate, it shows where the preconstruction pipeline is expanding, slowing, or changing, city by city. The first edition is live: the PermitPipeline Preconstruction Activity Index.

Contact

For media inquiries, partnership discussions, or product feedback, the best path is email. For active customers, sign in to the dashboard for support links.