# Locus Housing Supply Balance > Locus Housing Supply Balance is a paid API for AI agents from api.locus.report, paid per call via x402, $0.01/call, status unknown (last checked 2026-10-12). Returns the jobs-to-housing-permits ratio for a county given an address, comparing BLS QCEW employment change against Census BPS permitted units relative to ACS housing stock. ## Facts - Endpoint: POST https://api.locus.report/api/locus-housing-supply-balance?utm_source=zero.xyz - Price: $0.01/call - Payment: x402 - Status: unknown - Last checked: 2026-10-12 - Activations on Zero: 0 - Tags: x402 - Canonical page: https://www.zero.xyz/c/locus-housing-supply-balance-99ffb65c - Structured record (JSON): https://api.zero.xyz/v1/capabilities/cap_QObTNQjs-f8QfYJ8iFqOi Status and success rate cover calls made through Zero and Zero's own probes. Third-party monitors may report differently. ## How to call it through Zero Zero handles the 402 payment challenge and records the run. With the Zero CLI installed (`npm i -g @zeroxyz/cli`): ```sh zero fetch --capability locus-housing-supply-balance-99ffb65c -d '' ``` Example prompt: For 123 Main St, Austin TX, pull the housing supply balance for 2023 — I want to know if that county is permitting enough housing units to keep up with its job growth, including the jobs-to-permits ratio and how that compares to established benchmarks. ## When to prefer this Use this endpoint when you need a data-backed, sourced signal on whether a county is permitting sufficient housing relative to job growth — particularly for real estate due diligence, housing policy analysis, or investment screening. It is specifically suited for US county-level analysis tied to a street address and a specific permit year, and it uniquely combines BLS employment data with Census permit and ACS stock data in a single cited response. Prefer it over generic housing or employment data endpoints when the specific jobs-to-permits framing and benchmark context are needed. ## Known failure modes - Address cannot be geocoded to a county — returns no ratio (charge-free) - Permit year data not yet available from Census BPS — returns no ratio (charge-free) - BLS QCEW employment data unavailable for the county — ratio uncomputable, charge-free - Address outside the United States — unsupported geography - Malformed address string or missing coordinates — validation error ## How this service works BLS QCEW employment change over Census BPS permitted units, the permits share of ACS housing stock, cited benchmarks, and published critiques, for an address, for agents. Returns the same records as locus_housing_supply_balance. Use this when your client can only call paid x402 routes. Use locus_housing_supply_balance instead when you can call Locus free tools (REST tools/call or MCP). ## Output Returns the ratio of BLS QCEW employment change to Census BPS permitted housing units for the county containing the input address, the permits as a share of ACS total housing stock, cited benchmarks for interpreting the ratio, published critiques of the metric, and a no-charge response when the ratio cannot be computed. ## Request schema (JSON Schema) ```json { "type": "object", "properties": { "address": { "type": "string", "maxLength": 200, "minLength": 5 }, "latitude": { "type": "number", "maximum": 90, "minimum": -90 }, "longitude": { "type": "number", "maximum": 180, "minimum": -180 }, "permitYear": { "type": "integer", "maximum": 2100, "minimum": 2000 } } } ``` ## Response schema (JSON Schema) ```json { "type": "json", "example": { "ok": true, "geo": { "state": "NC", "county": "Wake County", "countyFips": "37183" }, "kind": "housing_supply_balance", "note": "Awareness/diagnostic only. Full briefs are x402-paid. Agents can discover live free tools at https://api.locus.report/tools/list and paid tools, prices, and manifests at https://api.locus.report/.well-known/ai-tool/index.json.", "point": { "latitude": 35.78041800000319, "longitude": -78.63910200000142 }, "ratios": { "convention": "jobs in year N divided by housing units permitted in year N-1 (NAHB convention; the one-year lag reflects the time permitted units take to move through construction)", "jobsPerTotalUnitPermitted": 0.83, "jobsPerMultifamilyUnitPermitted": 2.24 }, "status": "ok", "caveats": [ "Reported inputs and a computed ratio only. Locus performs no comparison against any published benchmark and applies no label of its own." ], "permits": { "year": 2024, "present": true, "totalUnits": 15248, "imputedShare": 0.004, "multifamilyUnits": 5628, "singleFamilyUnits": 9620, "reportedTotalUnits": 15180 }, "employment": { "year": 2025, "basis": "place of work, UI-covered employment (BLS QCEW annual averages)", "netChange": 12622, "priorYear": 2024, "annualAvgEmployment": 665775, "priorAnnualAvgEmployment": 653153 }, "provenance": { "permits": { "source": "U.S. Census Bureau, Building Permits Survey - annual county file (residential units authorized by building permit)", "sourceUrl": "https://www.census.gov/construction/bps/", "granularity": "county aggregate, calendar year" }, "employment": { "source": "U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages - annual averages, all ownerships, county total", "sourceUrl": "https://www.bls.gov/cew/", "granularity": "county, calendar-year annual average, place of work, UI-covered employment" }, "housingStock": { "source": "U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year, table B25001 (total housing units)", "vintage": "ACSDT5Y2023", "sourceUrl": "https://data.census.gov/table/ACSDT5Y2023.B25001", "granularity": "county, 5-year estimate" } }, "verifyNext": [ { "url": "https://www.census.gov/construction/bps/", "step": "Read the county's full permit history in the Census Building Permits Survey." } ], "supplyPipeline": { "note": "Permits authorized, … (truncated) ``` ## More - Live health (JSON, refreshed every minute): https://www.zero.xyz/c/locus-housing-supply-balance-99ffb65c/health.json - [Zero catalog index](https://www.zero.xyz/llms.txt) - [Other services from api.locus.report](https://www.zero.xyz/host/api.locus.report/llms.txt)