What Is Getting Built in 78746, Austin?

What is getting built in 78746? Read the shape before the total. This West Austin ZIP logged 22 residential permits across the May 11 – June 9, 2026 window, and its single largest work type — additions and combined addition-remodel jobs — accounted for just 5 of them. When the leading category claims so few of the total, no one project type is carrying the ZIP. The work is scattered across many kinds of jobs at once.

That spread is the whole story here. Where a market is dominated by a single category, you are usually looking at one builder repeating one motion. A flat distribution like 78746's points the other way: a handful of distinct homeowners and contractors each doing a different thing on a different parcel — an addition here, a remodel there, a repair down the block. Every figure on this page is a slice of the same sealed Austin snapshot that produced the citywide total, sliced down to one ZIP and reported exactly as recorded.

A building permit is a city's written authorization to begin a specific construction job, so each number below counts authorizations, not square footage, dollars, or finished homes. Scope is narrow on purpose: residential building permits (single-family and small multi-family); commercial and sub-trade permits are excluded at ingest. This is not a count of all construction permits issued in each city.

The Numbers That Matter for 78746

• ZIP 78746 logged 22 residential building permits in the May 11 – June 9, 2026 window, according to US Tech Automations' sealed permit snapshots.

• The leading work type drew just 5 permits, filed under the R- 434 Addition & Alterations / Addition and Remodel label, per City of Austin issued construction permits via data.austintexas.gov (Socrata).

• No single category dominates 78746 — the top type claims only a thin slice of the ZIP's 22 permits, a sign of fragmented, owner-by-owner work.

• Austin issued 704 permits citywide, the #3 count among the 8 metros tracked this edition.

• No dollar valuations are reported for 78746 — Austin's open-data feed publishes blank or $0 project costs on the residential permits we track, so we record those as missing.

ZIP 78746 logged 22 residential permits in 30 days, and its busiest category accounted for only 5 — proof that the work here is spread thin across many job types, not stacked into one.

Reading the Spread, Not Just the Total

The headline for 78746 is a straight count: 22 residential permits issued inside the ZIP across the 30-day window. The more telling figure is the one beside it — the leading category, additions and combined addition-remodel jobs, with 5 permits. In a ZIP where one project type ran the show, you would expect that top number to claim a heavy share of the total. Here it does not.

There is no valuation row on this page, and the absence is deliberate rather than an oversight. Austin's open-data feed does not publish usable project costs for the residential permits we track, so any dollar total would be invented. Counts and categories carry the signal instead — and for a ZIP this size, the category spread is the more useful read anyway.

A count of 22, spread across a single ZIP over a month with no category claiming more than 5, reads as a steady drip of individual residential projects — many owners doing different things — rather than one large development pushing the number up. For anyone working the neighborhood, the value is not the headline figure. It is the addresses behind it: each of the 22 is a specific parcel where someone filed to do specific work on a known date.

The citywide picture frames it. Austin's June metro permit report covers all 704 permits and the full category mix; this page is one ZIP-level cut of that same sealed snapshot.

What the 78746 Permits Actually Cover

The largest single permit category in 78746 was R- 434 Addition & Alterations / Addition and Remodel — the city's own verbatim label, presented here as Addition & Remodel. It accounted for 5 of the ZIP's permits.

That category sits squarely in the world of an established, already-built neighborhood. An addition-and-alteration permit covers expanding or reworking a home that already stands: bumping out the back of a house for more living space, adding a second story or a primary suite, finishing or converting existing square footage, and the structural and alteration work that comes with it.

It is distinct from a brand-new single-family house on a vacant lot, which Austin classifies separately. When additions and remodels lead a ZIP's mix, it usually means the housing stock is mature and owners are choosing to enlarge or upgrade what they already have rather than tear down and start over.

Additions and combined addition-remodel work led ZIP 78746 with 5 permits under the R- 434 Addition & Alterations / Addition and Remodel label — the signature of an established area where owners expand the homes they keep.

That local lean fits the wider Austin pattern, but with its own emphasis. The citywide category mix below is read from the same sealed snapshot, with the city's verbatim labels preserved:

Across the full city, renovation and repair topped the metro at 226 permits, just ahead of new single-family houses at 216, with additions and combined addition-remodel projects contributing 102. Austin as a whole runs on two engines at once — heavy remodel work and a steady pipeline of new houses. In 78746, the category that surfaces at the top of the local table is the addition-and-alteration bucket, the kind of work that expands an existing footprint rather than starting fresh.

For the people who act on permits, that distinction is the entire game. An addition-and-alteration permit signals work for remodelers, framers extending an existing structure, foundation and structural crews, and the finish trades that follow — a different buyer, on a different timeline, than the crews who chase a ground-up new-construction permit. Reading the category, not just the count, is what turns a number into a sales motion. A related read plays out in East Austin's 78702 ZIP report, another code in this edition's sealed snapshot where the remodel lean shows up differently.

Where 78746 Lands Among Austin ZIPs

A ZIP count means little in isolation. The table below places 78746 against the other active Austin ZIPs in the same sealed window, plus the citywide total, so its 22 permits read as a position rather than a bare figure. All counts are straight tallies from the same snapshot; no ZIP here carries reported valuations, for the same feed reason described above.

ZIP 78704 sets the pace at 60 permits, with 78745 right behind at 59 and 78744 at 52 — the high-volume corridor for this window. 78746's 22 sits toward the lower end of this active-ZIP slate, below 78702 at 29 and the pair of 78723 and 78748 that tied at 28. That lower volume, paired with a fragmented category spread, fits the read above: fewer total filings, but each one a distinct project rather than one repeated build.

Against Austin's busiest ZIP at 60 permits, 78746's 22 is a quieter slate — and with no category above 5, it is a quiet built on variety rather than a single dominant job type.

Read against the 704 citywide total, no single ZIP carries the market — activity is spread broadly across Austin, and a working strategy means covering several ZIPs rather than betting on one. The same cross-sectional discipline runs through every report in this edition, including the permit prediction ledger, where forecasts are sealed before outcomes exist and scored against public records later.

How These Figures Are Produced

Source: City of Austin issued construction permits via data.austintexas.gov (Socrata). The 78746 figures are a ZIP-level cut of the same sealed snapshots that produce Austin's citywide totals — the same scope, the same window, sliced to one ZIP. Scope: residential building permits (single-family and small multi-family); commercial and sub-trade permits are excluded at ingest. This is not a count of all construction permits issued in each city.

All figures are computed directly from US Tech Automations' sealed daily permit snapshots; nothing is estimated, modeled, or extrapolated.

Coverage note for Austin: Austin's open-data feed publishes $0 or blank project costs on the residential permits we track; we normalize those to missing rather than report a literal $0, so no valuation aggregates are given. That applies to 78746 exactly as it applies to the citywide report — counts and categories, no dollars. A missing number reported honestly beats a fabricated number reported confidently.

The pipeline behind every figure on this page:

1. Collect. Pull each day's newly issued residential permits from Austin's Socrata endpoint, applying the residential scope filter at ingest.

2. Normalize. Map every record to a common cross-metro schema and tag each permit to its ZIP; blank or implausible project costs are normalized to missing rather than treated as real values.

3. Seal daily. Hash the day's snapshot and append it to a content-addressed store. Sealed snapshots are never edited, restated, or backfilled.

4. Aggregate. Compute the 78746 totals for May 11 – June 9, 2026 by reading only the sealed snapshots, then publish the result with its source attribution.

Because the snapshots are sealed, the 22 figure is auditable: anyone holding the stored records can re-derive it, and no later upstream revision can quietly rewrite this page.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How many residential building permits did ZIP 78746 record in this window?
A: ZIP 78746 recorded 22 residential building permits over the May 11 – June 9, 2026 window. That count covers single-family and small multi-family building permits only; standalone electrical, plumbing, mechanical, and commercial permits are filtered out at ingest, so the total volume of all construction paperwork in the ZIP is higher than this figure.

Q: Why does the leading category have only 5 permits?
A: Because the work in 78746 is spread across many job types rather than concentrated in one. The top category — R- 434 Addition & Alterations / Addition and Remodel — drew 5 permits, and the remaining filings are distributed across other residential work. A flat spread like this is the fingerprint of many separate owners doing different projects, not one builder repeating a single motion.

Q: Why does this report show no dollar valuations for 78746?
A: Austin's open-data feed publishes $0 or blank project costs on the residential permits we track. We normalize those to missing rather than report a literal $0, so no valuation aggregates are given for this ZIP. A blank field reported honestly is more useful than a fabricated dollar figure reported confidently.

Q: What kind of work do the 78746 permits actually cover?
A: The single largest category was R- 434 Addition & Alterations / Addition and Remodel — labeled here as Addition & Remodel — with 5 permits. That bucket covers expanding or reworking a home that already stands: room additions, second-story or suite additions, converting existing space, and the structural alteration work that comes with it, rather than building a new house on a vacant lot.

Q: Is 22 permits a lot for one Austin ZIP?
A: It is on the lower end of this edition's active-ZIP slate. Against the busiest ZIPs — 78704 at 60 and 78745 at 59 — it is modest, and it sits below 78702 at 29 and the 78723 and 78748 pair that tied at 28. The compare table above shows exactly where it lands among Austin's other active ZIPs.

Q: Does this report include any month-over-month or year-over-year trend?
A: No. This edition is cross-sectional — it describes one 30-day window and compares ZIPs to each other within it. It makes no claim about whether 78746 is rising, falling, or holding. Trend lines require multiple sealed editions, and those comparisons are published only once the sealed history exists to support them.

Put Permit Data to Work

A ZIP-level permit count becomes useful the moment someone acts on the addresses inside it. In 78746 that means remodelers and addition specialists reading the expand-what-you-own lean, structural and framing crews tracking where homes are being enlarged, suppliers timing inventory to local project flow, lenders reading residential activity as a ground-level demand signal, and agents treating an addition permit as an early pre-listing cue. Even with no dollar field, a permit's existence, category, and date carry most of the signal a sales team needs to decide who to call and when.

US Tech Automations turns those signals into automated workflows: monitoring new permits as they land in the sealed snapshots, routing matching records by ZIP and category to the right list, and drafting outreach for human review before anything is sent. You can explore the data behind this report at permits.ustechautomations.com.

If your team works residential construction in 78746 — or anywhere across the 8 metros in this edition — see how permit-driven automation works for real estate teams.

Source: US Tech Automations Research — computed from sealed daily permit snapshots, May 11 – June 9, 2026.