Alteration & Repair Dominates 91331, Los Angeles — June 2026

Pull the permit records for the 91331 ZIP code of Los Angeles, CA over the May 11 – June 9, 2026 reporting window and one permit type sits on top of all the others: Alteration & Repair. It is the work of changing a house that already stands — remodeling a kitchen, reworking the wiring, shoring up a foundation — rather than raising a new one. In this Pacoima-anchored corner of the San Fernando Valley, that category is the headline, and the rest of the local mix follows from it.

This report is a ZIP-level slice of the Los Angeles metro's sealed daily permit snapshots, narrowed to 91331. Every figure below comes from that same metro capture. The scope is 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. Because the snapshot series is young, this is a single-window, cross-sectional read — no trend, growth, or comparison-to-past claims appear anywhere in it.

Leading With the Dominant Category

A building permit is the formal sign-off a property owner or contractor must obtain before legally altering, adding to, or constructing a building. In 91331, the permit type that recurs most is Alteration & Repair, and the gap is not subtle.

Alteration & Repair accounted for 38 of the residential permits recorded in ZIP 91331 during the window.

That single figure frames the whole neighborhood. When the leading category is about reworking existing homes rather than building new ones, you are looking at a market of owners reinvesting in what they already hold. The paragraphs that follow break the local mix into the work types behind it, then place 91331 against its Los Angeles neighbors — but the short version is this: 91331 is a renovation ZIP inside a metro that ranks #1 for residential permit volume in this edition, and most of its filed work is improvement, not replacement.

Key Findings

• ZIP 91331 recorded 54 residential building permits in the window, per the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety via data.lacity.org (Socrata).

• Alteration & Repair led the ZIP with 38 permits, per the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety via data.lacity.org (Socrata).

• The ZIP carried $1.9M in total reported valuation, according to the sealed snapshot data.

• The median permit valuation in 91331 is $5,550, according to the sealed snapshot data.

• 91331 sits within a metro that recorded 4,042 residential permits worth $201.2M, per the same Department of Building and Safety records.

Read together, those lines describe a contained, renovation-led micro-market: a modest permit count, a low median, and a single category doing most of the work, all nested inside the largest metro in this edition.

The 91331 Mix, Category by Category

The depth of a ZIP report is in its categories, not its totals. The leading permit type here carries the raw source label Bldg-Alter/Repair / 1 or 2 Family Dwelling, which our research maps to the friendly name Alteration & Repair. The "1 or 2 Family Dwelling" qualifier is doing real work: it confines the entire dataset to single-family homes and small duplexes, the housing stock that defines Pacoima. Below, each work type gets its own read.

The three categories that shape residential filings across the wider Los Angeles metro — the same buckets that frame what 91331 contributes — rank as follows in this edition:

Alteration & Repair — the workhorse

This is the category that dominates 91331, with 38 of the ZIP's filings. An Alteration & Repair permit is pulled when an owner changes a structure they already have rather than adding floor area or starting fresh. In practice that means interior remodels, kitchen and bathroom rebuilds, electrical and plumbing reworks tied to a building change, and the structural reinforcement that keeps older Valley homes sound.

These are not teardowns. They are investments in homes people live in or rent out and intend to keep. A permit under this label tells a plumber, electrician, or general contractor that a specific address is mid-project and already committed to spending — a sharper signal than raw new-construction volume, which points to developers instead of resident owners.

In 91331, Alteration & Repair claimed 38 of the ZIP's 54 residential permits — work on existing homes, not new builds.

Additions — when owners grow the footprint

The metro's second-largest residential category is Bldg-Addition / 1 or 2 Family Dwelling, which logged 422 permits across Los Angeles. An addition permit covers exactly what it sounds like: extending a home's footprint or volume — a new bedroom, a second story, an attached accessory dwelling, a garage conversion that adds living space. It is a step up in scope from a repair.

In a built-out Valley neighborhood where lots are finite, additions matter. They are how an owner gains space without moving — the financially rational move when relocation is expensive and the existing house is sound. For a framer, foundation crew, or designer, addition filings flag larger, longer jobs than a typical alteration.

New Construction — the smallest slice

The third metro category is Bldg-New / 1 or 2 Family Dwelling, at 359 permits. This is ground-up residential construction: a new single-family home or small duplex rising on a lot, whether on vacant land or after a teardown. It is the category that points to developers and builders rather than incumbent owners.

That new construction trails both alterations and additions across the metro is itself the read. In a mature, largely built-out region, most recorded residential activity is about improving and extending the existing housing stock, not adding to it. 91331's own profile — renovation-heavy, with a low median — mirrors that wider pattern rather than breaking from it.

ZIP 91331 at a Glance, May 11 – June 9, 2026

The headline numbers for the ZIP are compact, and that is the point. A modest count paired with a low median describes a slate of small-to-mid renovation jobs rather than a handful of large developments.

A median of $5,550 is the line to sit with. It means the typical permit in 91331 is a contained job — a remodel, a system upgrade, a repair — well under the kind of valuation a ground-up build would carry. When the median runs this low against a $1.9M total, the distribution skews toward many smaller projects with a few larger ones pulling the total up.

That is precisely the shape an Alteration & Repair–led neighborhood produces, and it tells contractors the volume opportunity here is a deep base of routine work, not a few marquee jobs. Our Los Angeles building permit report shows the same category leading metro-wide.

Where 91331 Lands Among LA ZIPs

A single ZIP's figures only mean something next to their neighbors. The table below sets 91331 against other active Los Angeles ZIP codes in this edition, with the metro headline row for scale. On volume, 91331 sits toward the lower end of the active set — fitting for a residential pocket without a major development corridor.

The contrast with the top of the table tells the story. ZIP 90272 logged 388 permits against $66.2M in valuation — high volume and high per-permit value, the profile of larger, costlier projects. 91331 runs lean on both. Neither is "better"; they describe different neighborhoods doing different work.

Look down the list and 91331 nests below a cluster of Valley ZIPs — 91335 at 83 permits, 91364 at 79, 91604 at 72 — each a residential pocket of mostly contained jobs. For anyone serving the Valley, that placement is the difference between chasing a few large jobs in a market like 90272 and building a repeatable book of smaller renovations across ZIPs like this one. The same sealed snapshot resolves neighboring Valley cuts in our sibling reports on a nearby Pacoima-adjacent ZIP and a Van Nuys-area ZIP.

How This Slice Was Built

This ZIP report is a filtered view of the Los Angeles metro's sealed daily permit snapshots, sourced from the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety via data.lacity.org (Socrata). Nothing here is bespoke to 91331 beyond the geographic filter — the same daily capture that produced the metro totals produced these ZIP figures.

The honesty statement governs every number above: All figures are computed directly from US Tech Automations' sealed daily permit snapshots; nothing is estimated, modeled, or extrapolated. Where a figure is absent from the underlying snapshot, it is absent here too.

How the pipeline runs, in order:

1. Collect. Each day, fresh permit records are pulled from the Los Angeles open-data portal and the raw capture is stored.

2. Normalize. Records are cleaned into consistent fields — category, valuation, location — without altering the source values.

3. Seal daily. The day's snapshot is content-hashed and stored append-only, so the data behind any report can be verified afterward against snapshot 1629d2cb47abd1b0.

4. Aggregate. Across the May 11 – June 9, 2026 window, the sealed daily snapshots are summed and then filtered to ZIP 91331 for this report.

At the metro level, that pipeline measured 4,042 permits carrying $201,163,491 in reported valuation, of which 3,779 had a valuation figure — a 93.5% coverage rate. Across all 8 metros in this edition, the snapshots captured 7,334 permits worth $688.3M. The metro's per-permit spread runs from a lower-quartile valuation of $2,500 to an upper-quartile valuation of $35,000, with a single high of $4,000,000 and a metro median of $7,000; 91331's $5,550 median sits at the lower end of that band, consistent with its renovation-led profile.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Is this every construction permit pulled in 91331?
A: No. The dataset covers residential building permits — single-family and small multi-family. Commercial and sub-trade permits are excluded at ingest. The 54 permits here are residential filings in the window, not all construction activity in the ZIP.

Q: Why does the median valuation look so low?
A: Because most filings are renovations, not new builds. With Alteration & Repair leading at 38 permits, the typical job is a contained remodel or repair. A median of $5,550 against a $1.9M total signals many smaller projects rather than a few large developments.

Q: What does an Alteration & Repair permit actually cover?
A: It authorizes changes to a home that already exists — interior remodels, system reworks, repairs, and code-driven upgrades on one- or two-family dwellings. It is filed under the raw label Bldg-Alter/Repair / 1 or 2 Family Dwelling and excludes ground-up new construction.

Q: How is an addition different from an alteration here?
A: An addition grows the home's footprint or volume — a new room, a second story, an added dwelling unit. The metro logged 422 addition permits, behind alterations. An alteration reworks existing space without expanding it, which is the bulk of what 91331 filed.

Q: Who pulls these permits?
A: Homeowners and the licensed contractors working for them — general contractors, electricians, plumbers, and specialty trades. In an Alteration & Repair–heavy ZIP like 91331, the filer is usually a resident owner improving a property they intend to keep.

Q: How does 91331 compare to the rest of Los Angeles?
A: It runs lower on volume and lean on valuation. The metro recorded 4,042 permits worth $201.2M; 91331 contributed 54 permits and $1.9M. Higher-value ZIPs like 90272, at 388 permits and $66.2M, host larger projects than this residential pocket.

Put Permit Data to Work

A ZIP-level permit read is a working tool, not a curiosity. Contractors use it to qualify neighborhoods — 38 Alteration & Repair permits in 91331 is a concrete list of homes mid-renovation and worth a knock. Suppliers time inventory against where remodel work concentrates. Lenders read renovation demand as a proxy for owner investment. Agents read filings as pre-listing signals, since a permitted remodel often precedes a sale.

The friction is that this data arrives raw, daily, and scattered across portals. US Tech Automations builds automations that turn that feed into routed signals — monitoring sealed permit snapshots, filtering them to a target ZIP or category, and drafting outreach the moment a relevant filing lands. The verifiable snapshots behind this report are published openly at permits.ustechautomations.com, and the same discipline anchors our permit prediction ledger, which seals forecasts before outcomes are known.

If you work this market, the real question is whether you hear about a permit weeks late or the day it seals. US Tech Automations wires that monitoring and lead routing into one workflow. See how it fits real estate teams at our real-estate AI agents.

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