Territory
Territory Intelligence County-by-county market data for exterior contractors · Official public records

County markets, measured.

TerritoryX publishes data-verified reads on the markets exterior contractors actually work, county by county. Every figure is computed from official records: the county assessor's file, roof permits, FEMA and First Street flood layers, and NOAA's storm archive. Everything is aggregate, never a claim about a specific property. Coverage expands as we onboard new markets; Cook County, Illinois is the first one.

who is pulling roof, solar and gutter permits, county and City of Chicago, twelve months

The briefs

Standing reads on the public record.

Each brief takes a county's own files apart and reports what the market looks like. Free, and refreshed as the underlying records update.

Brief No. 01 · Cook County, IL

The Cook County exterior market, measured.

1.11 million residential parcels on the official county record, read for the things an exterior trade bids against: how old the stock is, what the roofs are made of, where the re-roof permit waves landed, how far water risk runs past the mapped floodplain, and which walls and owners are actually in the market.

Read Brief No. 01 →

Brief No. 02 · The Storm Ledger, Edition 1: Cook County, IL

The Storm Ledger: 71 years of Cook County hail, and the permits it left behind.

653 Cook County hail reports on NOAA's record, 36 straight years of one-inch-plus hail, and the township roof-permit waves that answered them: including four townships that got the storms and never got the wave. First edition of a county-by-county series that expands with TerritoryX coverage.

Read Brief No. 02 →

Instant preview · free

Pick your township and trade. See a preview read now.

First market: Cook County, Illinois.

Get the full X-Ray

Preview ranking: a simplified read on aggregate county data, shown at neighborhood level only. The paid Territory X-Ray runs the full model (roof size & age, storm cohort, permit suppression, ownership) and delivers the ranked map plus the campaign list. Raw data.

Articles

Deep reads on the same public record.

Each article takes one layer of the Cook County, Illinois file apart. Every figure is computed from the source data and carries its method.

01

The 82,591 Cook County homes you should never mail

Cook County's roof-permit index puts 82,591 residential parcels, 7.41% of the stock, on a do-not-mail list, and 63.3% of them were permitted in 2022 or later.

02

1954: the median Cook County home is older than the interstate system

The median Cook County home was built in 1954, two years before the Interstate Highway System was authorized.

03

Water risk lives outside the floodplain

Cook County's FEMA floodplain holds 11,100 homes.

04

Cook County roofs are a one-product market

89.4% of Cook County's 1.11 million residential roofs are asphalt shingle, and 23 of 38 townships are at least 90% asphalt.

05

490,445 homes that will never buy siding

Cook County's assessor publishes the exterior wall material of all 1.11 million residential parcels.

06

The basement map: Cook County's 915,331 below-grade homes

915,331 Cook County homes sit over a full or partial basement, 82.2% of the stock with the field populated.

07

Owner-occupied vs absentee: two different sales on one map

15.1% of Cook County's 1,114,309 classified residential parcels get their tax mail somewhere other than the property.

08

One inch: the hail size that decides a season

12,000 Illinois hail reports on NOAA's archive since 1955, read honestly: the one-inch threshold and where it comes from, the size distribution, Cook…

09

How to read your county assessor's file like a marketer

A field guide to the columns of a county assessor's property file, worked on Cook County's 1,114,335 residential parcels: what year_built, roof_material,…

10

Direct mail math for exterior trades: the honest version

A 1,500-home mail cell modeled at conservative, base, and optimistic rates, with every rate labeled as an assumption.

11

Storm chasing vs. storm history: the compliance line in Illinois

What an Illinois roofing mailer may say about a storm, read against 225 ILCS 335, 815 ILCS 505 and 815 ILCS 513/18, with 653 Cook County NOAA hail reports…

12

What public LiDAR taught us about modeling 1.1 million roofs

The method behind TerritoryX roof sizes: what a DSM is, why footprint-times-pitch models fail, what plane fitting rejects, where the 1.54x calibration came…

Territory Intelligence · by email

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County briefs, township reads, and storm-window notes for exterior contractors. Aggregate market data only. No spam, no shared lists.

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Questions

Straight answers.

Where do these numbers come from?

Official public records: the county assessor's property-characteristics file, county roof permits, FEMA and First Street flood layers as published in the county's open-data universe file, and NOAA's severe-weather archive. Everything on this page is aggregate. No individual home is identified, and nothing here is a claim about any specific property's condition.

Is this a lead list?

No. The free briefs are market intelligence. The paid Territory X-Ray is a diagnostic: ranked neighborhoods with reason codes and a first campaign map for the towns you work. We do not sell raw homeowner lists, claim property damage, or guarantee jobs.

How current is the data?

Each brief is computed from the county files at build time and refreshed as those files update. Hail history runs through the most recent NOAA archive year shown on its chart.

Which areas are covered?

All 38 Cook County townships have free briefs today, linked above. For other counties, the coverage matrix shows data depth tier by tier, and we will tell you straight what an X-Ray can and cannot see in your county.

These are the county-level reads. Your territory has its own.

The Territory X-Ray runs these same layers on the specific towns you work: ranked neighborhoods, reason codes, and the first campaign worth your money.

Request a Territory X-Ray