A builder calls on a Tuesday. The slab pours a week Thursday and his plumber just took a job two counties over. Can you get a crew in the ground by Monday. You can't, because you're three days into a repipe, and by Friday he's found somebody who could.
That call is the whole problem with plumbing leads, and it isn't that there's no work. It's that plumbing sits at the front of the build sequence, which means every decision about you gets made earlier and faster than it does for any other trade.
Plumbing is first in, and that changes the math
On a slab-on-grade residential build, the order is roughly: permit, site work, under-slab plumbing, slab pour, framing, then electrical and mechanical rough-in, then finishes. You're in the ground before there's a building to stand in.
Three consequences follow, and every one of them works against you.
- You're selected first. A GC can defer choosing a painter for three months. He cannot defer choosing a plumber, because the trench blocks the slab and the slab blocks everything else. Your name goes on the schedule before most trades have been called.
- Your runway is the shortest. Look at the graphic above. An electrician has six to ten weeks between the building permit appearing and rough-in starting. Drywall has eight to fourteen. You have two to four, and part of that is site work you can't see from the street.
- You have two rough-ins, not one. Under-slab groundwork and then top-out after framing. Two mobilizations, two inspections, and a schedule dependency at both ends. That makes you harder to slot in late, which is exactly why builders lock in a plumber early and keep using the same one.
The upside of all that is real, though it's slower than anyone wants: plumbing relationships are the stickiest in the trades. A builder who has a plumber that shows up when the trench needs digging will not go shopping. Getting onto that list is hard. Getting removed from it is harder. That makes the free relationship-driven sources unusually valuable in this trade.
Four kinds of plumbing work, four different buyers
Plumbing leads aren't one product, and most plumber leads sold as a single category are really just the cheapest of the four to produce. The four kinds differ more in this trade than in most, because the same company can be doing a $180 clog on Monday and a $60,000 groundwork package on Tuesday.
| Kind | Ticket | Urgency | Won by | Permit? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Emergency and drain | Low | Same day | Whoever answers first | No |
| Service and replacement | Low to mid | Days | Local search, past customers | Often — water heaters typically do |
| Repipe and remodel | Mid to high | Weeks | Quotes, trust, referrals | Usually |
| New construction | Highest | Months, decided early | Builder relationships | Yes — pulled by you, after you've won |
Ticket ranges vary widely by market and scope, so they're described in relative terms rather than dollars. Any plumbing lead generation source should tell you which row it sells.
The bottom row is the one this article is about, and note the last column. Like electrical, a plumbing permit is filed by the plumber who already won the job. Searching for plumbing permits shows you a scoreboard of work that's gone. The filing that matters is the building permit the general contractor pulled — the applicant on that record is the person who still has a plumber to choose. Which filing a dataset is built on decides whether it is a signal or a scoreboard.
The middle two rows are worth more attention than most shops give them. Water heater replacements and repipes generally do pull permits, they're planned rather than urgent, and the homeowner is the buyer. That makes them a different animal from new construction entirely — closer to how HVAC changeout work behaves, and worth costing separately when you evaluate a source.
What a shorter runway actually costs
Here's what the two-to-four week window does when you put numbers on it. Twenty builder contacts, same effort either way.
| Contacted at building permit | Contacted at slab schedule | |
|---|---|---|
| Builders contacted | 20 | 20 |
| Plumber already committed | 45% | 90% |
| Still open | 11 | 2 |
| Reach the person who decides | 50% | 50% |
| Conversations | 5.5 | 1 |
| Quote requested | 55% | 55% |
| Quotes given | 3.0 | 0.55 |
| Win rate on quotes | 35% | 35% |
| Jobs won per 20 contacts | 1.1 | 0.2 |
Illustrative. Substitute your own reach and win rates — the only row that moves is the second one, and it moves entirely on timing.
Note the 45% in the left column. Even calling at the earliest visible point, nearly half of those builders already have a plumber, because plumbing gets locked in sooner than any other trade. That's not pessimism, it's the thing that makes the trade what it is.
But look at the right column. Wait until the slab is scheduled and it's 90% — a fifth of the result for exactly the same effort. Same twenty calls, same pitch, same crew. The difference is entirely that you called while there was still a decision to make. Seeing what filed this week costs nothing.
The strategic read: because your window is short and your hit rate at the window is only moderate, volume of builder contacts matters more in plumbing than in any other trade. You cannot wait for the right job to appear. You have to be talking to enough builders that one of them is between plumbers when you call — and the same cost-per-booked-job arithmetic applies as with any paid source.
What to check before paying for plumbing leads
Plumbing lead generation gets sold on emergency volume, because that's the easiest kind to produce. If new construction is what you want, the questions are different.
Question three is the one that's specific to you. Every trade wants fresh data. You're the only one whose entire window fits inside most providers' refresh lag.
Where TigerLeads fits
We're built on building permit activity — the filing at the front of the sequence, not the trade permit at the end. Records are gathered automatically and reviewed by a person before release, across 39 states and more than 300 jurisdictions, updated daily.
For a plumbing contractor that means seeing builds filed in your county as they appear, with the applicant named — on a single-family or new build, that applicant is the general contractor. Given a two-to-four week window, daily is the part that matters. A weekly digest would consume a quarter of your runway before you opened it.
The specifics, all checkable before you spend anything. Every record carries 20 data points, five visible free — permit type, job cost, project description, county/city and state — so a subdivision and a fixture swap are distinguishable without unlocking. Unlock cost is shown before you confirm and is scored on record quality rather than charged flat. A maximum of five contractors of the same trade can access any given lead, with remaining availability visible up front. And it's free to start with no credit card.
What it won't do is bring you drain calls. Nobody with a backed-up line appears in a permit record, and if emergency work is most of your revenue your Google Business Profile and past customers will do more for you than this will.
And it won't shorten your window — nothing can. What it does is make sure the window isn't already half gone before you know the job exists. You can read how the records are sourced and verified before deciding whether that's worth anything to your shop.
See which builders filed in your county this week. Free to start, no credit card. Filter to your area, see who's attached to each build, and check the unlock cost before you spend anything. Get started free · See pricing · (888) 888-1214
Frequently asked questions
Where do plumbing leads come from?
Four places, matching the four kinds of work. Emergency and drain work comes from local search. Service and replacement comes from past customers and search. Repipes and remodels come from referrals and quotes. New construction comes from builders and general contractors, who select a plumber earlier than they select any other trade — see the free sources for the relationship side of that.
Can I find plumbing work from permit records?
Yes, but not from plumbing permits. A plumbing permit is filed by the contractor who already won the job. The building permit pulled by the general contractor appears earlier, and the applicant named on it is the person still choosing a plumber. For water heater and repipe work the permit is closer to the job itself, but the homeowner has usually chosen someone by the time it's filed.
How early does a builder choose a plumber?
Earlier than any other trade. On a slab-on-grade build the under-slab plumbing goes in before the slab pours and before framing, typically two to four weeks after the building permit. That means the plumber is usually committed while most other trades have not been contacted at all.
Why is it so hard to break into new construction plumbing?
Because the selection happens early, the schedule dependency is severe, and builders who have a reliable plumber have no reason to shop. Two rough-ins and two inspections make a plumber harder to swap in late than a finish trade. The route in is volume of builder contact at the point a permit is filed, not waiting for a job to be advertised. Arriving before the shortlist is the whole play.
Are paid plumbing leads worth it?
It depends which kind you want. Emergency leads are widely available and won on response speed, and local search usually beats paid sources per dollar. New construction leads are harder to find and worth more, because those jobs are never advertised. Measure cost per booked job by category rather than cost per lead, then compare against what access actually costs.
What's the difference between a building permit and a plumbing permit?
A building permit covers the overall project and is pulled by the general contractor or owner at the start. A plumbing permit covers the plumbing scope and is pulled by the licensed plumbing contractor doing the work, after that contractor has been selected. One marks the beginning of a job; the other marks the end of a hiring decision.