439 Permits, $296,750 Median: New York City

New York City recorded 439 residential building permits in the June 13 – July 10, 2026 window — the fewest of any metro ranked in the top half of this edition. Yet those 439 permits carry $257,227,841 in total declared valuation, the highest dollar total of any of the 8 metros tracked, built on a median permit valuation of $296,750, the highest median on the panel.

A building permit is a jurisdiction's official sign-off to alter, add to, or newly construct a residential structure. This report's scope is residential building permits only — single-family and small multi-family filings; commercial and sub-trade permits are excluded at ingest. This is not a count of all construction permits issued in each city, and every figure below is drawn from a sealed daily snapshot rather than a live query of the city's DOB NOW portal.

New York: 439 permits, $296,750 median, #1 of 8 for total valuation.

The Tension in New York's Numbers

• New York recorded 439 residential permits in the June 13 – July 10, 2026 window, according to US Tech Automations' sealed permit snapshots.

• Total declared valuation reached $257,227,841 — $257.2M in compact form, per NYC Department of Buildings (DOB NOW) via data.cityofnewyork.us (Socrata).

• The median permit is valued at $296,750, the highest median of any metro this edition, per the same sealed snapshots.

• New York ranks #1 of 8 metros for total valuation despite ranking #5 for permit count, per the sealed cross-metro snapshots.

• 346 of 439 permits carry a declared valuation — 78.8% coverage, per the DOB NOW feed.

• The single largest permit in the window is valued at $88,791,360, according to the sealed snapshot data.

New York's $296,750 median is the highest of any metro this edition.

Frequently Asked Questions About New York Permits

Q: Why does New York have so few permits but the highest total valuation?
A: New York's 439 permits carry a $296,750 median — far above every other metro on the panel — so a comparatively small number of filings still adds up to $257,227,841 in total declared valuation. The top categories, General Construction / Initial Permit (255), Structural / Initial Permit (54), and Foundation / Initial Permit (51), skew toward substantive building work rather than the small cosmetic jobs that dominate higher-volume metros.

Q: Does this report count every permit New York City issues?
A: No, and by design it is narrower than that. This report is sourced from DOB NOW, and the residential gate applied here is description-based and intentionally conservative; renewal permits without changes are excluded from the count. New York's totals in this report are a deliberately narrow residential slice, not citywide DOB volume. Scope is also limited to single-family and small multi-family filings — commercial and sub-trade permits are excluded at ingest, and this is not a count of all construction permits issued in each city.

Q: Could a live query of the NYC DOB NOW portal show different numbers than this report?
A: Yes. Municipal feeds backfill and revise records after a window closes, so a live query run today could differ slightly from the 439-permit, $257,227,841 figures sealed here. That is why this report cites a sealed snapshot rather than a re-query of the live portal.

Q: How does New York's rank for permits compare with its rank for valuation?
A: New York ranks #5 of 8 metros for permit count at 439, but #1 for total valuation at $257.2M. No other metro on the panel inverts its rankings this sharply.

Q: What is driving the $88,791,360 maximum permit?
A: That figure is simply the ceiling among New York's 439 permits in this window; it does not by itself set the $296,750 median, which describes the typical filing rather than the single largest one. New York's median already runs far above alteration-heavy markets like Los Angeles ($7,000 median) or San Francisco ($20,000 median), independent of any single outlier permit.

Q: Who uses a data set like New York's DOB NOW permit categories?
A: Structural and foundation contractors use the 54-permit Structural / Initial Permit and 51-permit Foundation / Initial Permit categories to size a higher-ticket segment of the market. Lenders and appraisers use the $296,750 median alongside the $88,791,360 maximum to separate typical filings from outliers. General contractors use the 255-permit General Construction / Initial Permit category as the broadest single entry point into the window's volume.

What New York Permits Are For

General Construction / Initial Permit is New York's largest category by a wide margin, covering initial approval for general residential construction work — 255 of the window's 439 permits. Structural / Initial Permit (54) and Foundation / Initial Permit (51) round out the top three, both tied to a building's underlying frame and footing rather than finish work — the kind of scope that tends to carry a higher price tag than a cosmetic remodel, consistent with New York's $296,750 median running well above medians in alteration-heavy markets like Los Angeles's $7,000 or San Francisco's $20,000.

New York's largest category, General Construction, posts 255 permits.

Together these three categories, General Construction / Initial Permit, Structural / Initial Permit, and Foundation / Initial Permit, cover the great majority of New York's 439 permits this window. All three represent initial-stage approvals rather than renewals, consistent with the coverage note above that renewal permits without changes are excluded from this report's count. A reader comparing New York's category list with a metro like Los Angeles or San Francisco will notice it skews toward foundational and structural approvals rather than the alteration-and-repair categories that dominate elsewhere on the panel.

New York's Permit Snapshot, June 13 – July 10, 2026

New York recorded 439 residential permits with $257,227,841 in total declared valuation over the window — a median of $296,750 per permit, the highest median of any metro this edition.

78.8% coverage means 346 of 439 permits carry a declared value; the remaining permits appear in the feed without one, so the total above is a floor, not a ceiling. These are the values as of the seal date — New York's DOB NOW feed, like every municipal feed in this edition, can backfill or revise records into a window that has already closed (more in Methodology below).

New York Against the Other 7 Metros

New York's 439 permits rank #5 of 8 by count — well behind Los Angeles's 3,576 and Chicago's 555 — yet its $257.2M total valuation ranks #1, ahead of Los Angeles's own $198.7M. New York's $257.2M total valuation is the highest of any metro this edition. New York's median of $296,750 towers over Los Angeles's $7,000 median, evidence that a market with far fewer permits than Los Angeles, Chicago, or San Francisco (752) still outweighs all of them on dollars.

Seattle's $72.2M and Chicago's $134.6M sit well below New York's total despite Seattle's own high $100,000 median, simply because both metros recorded far more permits at lower typical values. Cincinnati and Scottsdale anchor the smaller end of the panel; Scottsdale's $273,969 median is the second-highest on the list, behind only New York's.

New York's 439 permits are the fewest of any top-ranked metro, yet its $257,227,841 in total valuation is the highest of any of the 8 metros this edition tracks.

San Francisco offers the sharpest contrast on the panel: 752 permits against New York's 439, yet a $54.4M total against New York's $257.2M. The difference is not coverage — San Francisco's valuation coverage runs to 100% against New York's 78.8% — it is category mix. San Francisco's permits skew toward small alteration work, while New York's General Construction / Initial Permit, Structural / Initial Permit, and Foundation / Initial Permit categories skew toward substantive residential building work with a materially higher typical price tag.

Coverage end-dates vary across the panel: New York's own window closes July 10, 2026, while other tracked metros close as late as July 12, so the rows above are close in time but not on an identical cutoff.

How New York's Sealed Numbers Are Built

Source: NYC Department of Buildings (DOB NOW) via data.cityofnewyork.us (Socrata). All figures are computed directly from US Tech Automations' sealed daily permit snapshots; nothing is estimated, modeled, or extrapolated.

Sourced from DOB NOW, the residential gate applied here is description-based and intentionally conservative, and renewal permits without changes are excluded. New York's counts in this report are a deliberately narrow residential slice, not citywide DOB volume.

Municipal feeds are also revised after the fact: jurisdictions backfill records into windows that have already closed, so the figures in this report are the values as of the seal date. A reader querying DOB NOW directly today may see a slightly different count or valuation for this same window — precisely why this edition is content-hash sealed rather than re-queried.

1. Collect. Pull the day's residential permit feed from DOB NOW on data.cityofnewyork.us.

2. Normalize. Apply the description-based residential gate and exclude renewal permits without changes, before any aggregation.

3. Seal daily. Hash each day's snapshot and store it append-only, so figures cannot be quietly revised later.

4. Aggregate. Compute totals, medians, and coverage from the sealed snapshots over the June 13 – July 10, 2026 window.

This report is also cross-sectional by design: it describes the June 13 – July 10, 2026 window on its own terms and does not compare this edition against the June 2026 predecessor or any other prior period. No month-over-month or trend claim is made or implied anywhere in this report — each edition stands on its own sealed numbers.

The same discipline runs through the June edition of this report, a separate sealed cross-section rather than a baseline this edition compares against.

Turning New York's Permit Data Into an Edge

This window's mix fits a few specific groups well. Structural and foundation contractors can prioritize the Structural / Initial Permit (54) and Foundation / Initial Permit (51) categories as a higher-ticket segment distinct from general remodeling. General contractors can treat the 255-permit General Construction / Initial Permit category as the broadest single entry point into New York's window. Lenders and appraisers can use the $296,750 median alongside the $88,791,360 maximum to separate a typical filing from an outlier project when underwriting.

The platform automates that signal: monitoring new filings as they land, routing leads that match a category or territory, and drafting outreach grounded in the underlying sealed record. Explore the underlying data at permits.ustechautomations.com, and see the same sealing discipline applied to forecasts in the permit prediction ledger. To scope a monitoring or lead-routing workflow for your trade in New York, contact us.

Source: US Tech Automations Research — computed from sealed daily permit snapshots, June 13 – July 10, 2026.