Median Permit in 94118: $28,192 on 63 Filings — June 2026

A ZIP that pulls dozens of residential permits in a month but carries a four-figure median is telling you something specific: this is a neighborhood of steady, modest home improvement, not a corridor of ground-up construction. That is the shape of ZIP 94118 — the Inner Richmond and Laurel Heights side of San Francisco — over the reporting window of May 11 – June 9, 2026. The area recorded 63 permits against a median permit valuation of $28,192, and the gap between those two facts is the whole story.

This report reads that gap. Every figure below is a slice of San Francisco's sealed daily permit snapshot, filtered to the 94118 postal code. We are not estimating, modeling, or projecting; we are cutting the same audited city feed down to one ZIP and reporting exactly what landed there. A building permit is the city authorization a property owner needs before legally altering, repairing, or extending a structure — and in a built-out neighborhood like the Inner Richmond, most of that authorization covers interior and envelope work on homes that already exist.

Why Volume and Median Pull in Different Directions

Start with the headline tension, because it frames everything else. ZIP 94118 logged 63 residential permits and a $28,192 median valuation in the 30-day window, according to US Tech Automations' sealed permit snapshots. Sixty-three permits is real, repeatable activity. A $28,192 median is not a teardown-and-rebuild number; it is a kitchen, a bathroom set, a seismic retrofit, a deck, a window package, or a code-driven repair. Put together, the two say the same thing from two angles: this is a market where a lot of people are improving homes they intend to keep.

That matters because the median is the midpoint, not the ceiling. The ZIP's permits add up to a $9.7M total valuation across the window — meaning that for every cluster of small jobs near the median, larger projects pull the dollar total up. A neighborhood with this profile rewards anyone working the small-and-frequent end: trades, suppliers, and service businesses who would rather book a steady stream of mid-sized renovation jobs than chase one rare megaproject. The blocks of Sacramento, California, and Lake streets generate work continuously, at a size a single crew can turn around.

ZIP 94118 carried 63 permits at a $28,192 median over May 11 – June 9, 2026 — high frequency, modest size. That is renovation demand, not new construction.

Key Findings

• ZIP 94118 recorded 63 permits in the window, per San Francisco Department of Building Inspection data via data.sfgov.org (Socrata).

• The median permit valuation in 94118 was $28,192, per the sealed daily permit snapshot.

• Permits in the ZIP totaled $9.7M in declared valuation over the window, per the sealed snapshot.

• OTC Alterations was the top permit type with 58 permits, per San Francisco Department of Building Inspection data via data.sfgov.org (Socrata).

• San Francisco as a whole logged 952 permits across the same window, per data.sfgov.org (Socrata).

• The city ranks #2 by permit count among the 8 metros in this edition, per the sealed snapshot.

How ZIP 94118 Compares in San Francisco

Because the per-ZIP cuts come from the same sealed feed, they line up cleanly against each other. The table below sets 94118 beside the other busy San Francisco ZIP codes in this window, then anchors all of them to the citywide row. Reading down the permit column shows where the work concentrates; reading the totals shows how differently a similar permit count can be valued from neighborhood to neighborhood. The 94112 report covers one of the higher-count southern ZIPs in the same format.

The comparison is where 94118 gets interesting. Several ZIPs out-permit it on count — 94122 logged 99, 94116 logged 95, 94110 logged 84 — yet 94118's $9.7M total sits at the top of this group despite its lower permit volume. A ZIP doing fewer permits at a higher total is a ZIP where the average job is larger and the work skews toward more substantial renovations. That is the signature of an older, higher-value housing stock being maintained and upgraded rather than churned. By contrast, 94131's 69 permits against a $2.9M total describe the opposite: many permits, smaller jobs each.

Among San Francisco ZIPs this window, 94118 carried $9.7M in permit valuation on just 63 permits — fewer permits, larger jobs, than higher-count neighbors like 94122 (99) or 94110 (84).

For anyone qualifying a neighborhood, that distinction is the actionable read. A high-count, low-total ZIP is a volume play; a lower-count, high-total ZIP like 94118 is a value play. The two demand different staffing, different inventory, and different outreach. Neighboring reports — the ZIP 94121 cut and the ZIP 94131 cut — show those other profiles in detail.

ZIP 94118 Permit Activity, May 11 – June 9, 2026

Here is the headline slice for the ZIP on its own, drawn straight from the sealed snapshot. Every value is the 94118 cut of San Francisco's feed for the window; nothing here is computed beyond the city's own filtering.

The single most concentrated fact on this page is the category split: of the ZIP's 63 permits, 58 were OTC Alterations. That is an unusually tight distribution, and it tells you the kind of construction happening here is overwhelmingly of one administrative type. The next section explains what that type actually covers.

What Is Getting Built in 94118

The dominant category in this ZIP, in the raw source label, is the otc alterations permit — what San Francisco's building department processes over the counter as an OTC Alterations permit. OTC Alterations accounted for 58 of the ZIP's 63 permits, per the sealed snapshot, which makes this the section that earns the page.

"OTC" stands for over-the-counter: a permit class the city issues without the long plan-check cycle that larger or more complex projects require. In practice, OTC Alterations covers the bread-and-butter of residential renovation — interior remodels that do not change the building footprint, kitchen and bathroom upgrades, electrical and plumbing reconfiguration within existing walls, window and door replacements, dry rot and termite repairs, deck and stair work, and the seismic retrofits that San Francisco's older housing stock so often needs.

These are jobs a licensed contractor can typically get approved quickly, because they fall inside a well-understood envelope of work that does not expand the structure or trigger major structural review.

That a single ZIP would run 58 of its 63 permits through this one channel is exactly what you would expect from a neighborhood of established single-family homes and small multi-family buildings. There is little vacant land in the Inner Richmond to build on, so almost all permitted activity is renovation of what already stands. For a trade business, that concentration is a gift: you are not guessing what the work is. It is alterations, repairs, and upgrades to occupied homes — predictable in scope, repeatable in process, and frequent enough to keep a calendar full.

The handful of permits outside OTC Alterations rounds out the picture without changing it. They sit in the same residential-improvement family — the additions, alterations, and repairs that make up the rest of San Francisco's permit mix citywide. Across the whole city, that pattern holds: otc alterations permit is the leading category with 883 permits, followed by additions alterations or repairs at 50. The 94118 slice is a sharper, more concentrated version of the citywide shape.

How San Francisco Compares Across 8 Metros

To place the ZIP in context, it helps to see the city it sits inside. This edition covers 8 metros and 7,334 permits in total, worth $688.3M in declared valuation. San Francisco is a heavyweight in that set: 952 permits, #2 by permit count and #5 by total valuation across the edition.

The citywide median of $19,395 is worth holding next to the 94118 median of $28,192. The ZIP's typical permit is valued higher than the San Francisco median — another sign that 94118's work skews toward larger renovations than the city as a whole. A neighborhood whose median permit clears the citywide midpoint is one where the homes, and the budgets behind the jobs, run above average. The citywide spread — from a lower-quartile permit at $8,700 to an upper-quartile permit at $48,018 — frames the range, and 94118's median lands in the upper half of that band.

Methodology

These figures come from the San Francisco Department of Building Inspection via data.sfgov.org (Socrata). The 94118 numbers are a ZIP-level cut of that same sealed metro snapshot — we apply the postal-code filter to San Francisco's audited permit feed and report what remains, nothing more. All figures are computed directly from US Tech Automations' sealed daily permit snapshots; nothing is estimated, modeled, or extrapolated.

A note on scope: this report covers 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 window is fixed at May 11 – June 9, 2026, and every figure is cross-sectional — a single sealed view of that period, with no comparison to prior months.

Here is how the snapshot behind this ZIP cut is built:

1. Collect. Pull the day's permit records from each jurisdiction's public open-data portal — for San Francisco, the Department of Building Inspection feed on data.sfgov.org.

2. Normalize. Map each jurisdiction's fields to one common schema (permit type, valuation, location, status) so a San Francisco record and a record from another metro can be compared cleanly.

3. Seal daily. Content-hash the normalized day and append it to a tamper-evident store, so the snapshot for any past day can be reproduced byte-for-byte.

4. Aggregate. Roll the sealed daily records up across the May 11 – June 9, 2026 window, then filter to the 94118 ZIP to produce the slices in this report.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Does this count every permit issued in ZIP 94118?
A: No. This is residential building permits only — single-family and small multi-family. Commercial and sub-trade permits are excluded at ingest, so the 63 count reflects residential activity, not all construction in the ZIP.

Q: Why is the median permit valuation only $28,192?
A: Because most permits here are renovations, not new buildings. With 58 of 63 permits in the OTC Alterations class — interior remodels, repairs, and upgrades — the typical job is modest in declared value even though the ZIP totals $9.7M across the window.

Q: What does an OTC Alterations permit actually cover?
A: Over-the-counter alterations are residential improvements that do not expand the building footprint — kitchen and bath remodels, electrical and plumbing work inside existing walls, window replacements, repairs, and seismic retrofits. San Francisco issues them without a full plan-check cycle.

Q: Why does 94118 have a higher total than ZIPs with more permits?
A: A lower permit count paired with a higher total means larger average jobs. ZIP 94118 logged 63 permits worth $9.7M, topping this group on total even though ZIPs like 94122 (99) and 94110 (84) ran more permits at smaller sizes.

Q: How does the ZIP compare to San Francisco overall?
A: The city logged 952 permits at a $19,395 median. ZIP 94118's $28,192 median sits above that citywide midpoint, which signals renovation budgets in this neighborhood run higher than the San Francisco average.

Q: Who pulls these permits?
A: Property owners and the licensed contractors working for them. In a built-out neighborhood like the Inner Richmond, that means homeowners upgrading homes they intend to keep, working with general contractors and specialty trades on alterations and repairs.

Put Permit Data to Work

A sealed snapshot is a single, tamper-evident view of a market at a moment in time — and for the people who serve a neighborhood, that view is a worklist. A general contractor reading 94118 sees a ZIP where 58 of 63 permits are alterations: a steady book of remodels and repairs to bid on. A materials supplier reads the same data to time inventory toward the work that is actually being permitted. A lender reads renovation demand off the permit flow. A real estate agent reads pre-listing signals in the homes pulling permits before they hit the market.

US Tech Automations turns that signal into workflow. We monitor permit feeds like San Francisco's as they seal each day, route the records that match a client's territory and trade, and draft the outreach that turns a fresh permit into a booked conversation — so a contractor working the Richmond is not refreshing a city portal, they are getting the qualified jobs delivered. The same sealed-snapshot discipline that produces this report sits underneath those automations; you can browse the live permit corpus at permits.ustechautomations.com.

If you work this neighborhood and want permit signals routed into your pipeline automatically, see how we build agentic workflows for real estate. For the full city picture, the San Francisco June report aggregates every ZIP, and the permit prediction ledger shows how we seal and later score these snapshots against public outcomes.

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