San Francisco Ranks #2 of 8 for Home Permits

San Francisco recorded 752 residential building permits in the June 13 – July 11, 2026 window — the #2 count among the 8 metros this edition tracks. Every one of those 752 permits carries a reported dollar value, the only complete-coverage metro on the panel.

Complete coverage is worth pausing on before anything else in this report. Most metros this edition report a valuation figure on only a share of their permits, which means their totals are a floor rather than a full accounting. San Francisco's 100% coverage removes that caveat entirely: the $54,429,779 total below is not an estimate built from a partial sample, it is every one of the window's 752 permits summed directly from the source feed.

A building permit is a jurisdiction's sign-off to alter, add to, or newly build a residential structure. This report's scope is narrower than "every permit": single-family and small multi-family filings only, with commercial and sub-trade permits excluded at ingest. This is not a count of all construction permits issued in each city, and the figures below are read from a sealed daily snapshot, not a live query of the city portal.

San Francisco: #2 of 8 metros by permits, 100% valuation coverage.

Key Numbers at a Glance

• San Francisco logged 752 residential building permits over the window, according to US Tech Automations' sealed permit snapshots.

• Total declared valuation reached $54,429,779 — $54.4M in compact form, per the San Francisco Department of Building Inspection via data.sfgov.org (Socrata).

• All 752 permits carry a reported valuation — 100% coverage, the only complete-coverage metro this edition, per the sealed snapshots.

• The median permit is valued at $20,000; the largest at $3,000,000, according to the Department of Building Inspection feed.

• otc alterations permit filings account for 675 of the city's permits, per the sealed daily permit snapshots.

• San Francisco ranks #2 of 8 metros for permit count but #5 for total valuation, per the sealed cross-metro snapshots.

San Francisco Among the 8 Tracked Metros

San Francisco's #2 rank for permit count sits directly behind Los Angeles's 3,576 and well ahead of Austin's 610. On valuation, the picture flips: San Francisco's $54.4M ranks #5 among reporting metros, behind Los Angeles, New York's $257.2M, Chicago's $134.6M, and Seattle's $72.2M. A high permit count paired with a middling dollar total, on top of complete valuation coverage, points to a market of frequent, modestly-priced filings rather than one that under-reports its dollar activity.

The edition covers 6,456 permits and $747.7M in valuation across 8 metros.

San Francisco ranks #2 of 8 metros by permit count, yet #5 by total valuation at $54.4M — the widest count-to-dollar gap on the panel after New York's own inverted ranking.

Cincinnati and Scottsdale anchor the small end of the panel; Scottsdale's $273,969 median remains the second-highest on the list, after New York's $296,750. Austin's 610 permits carry no valuation figures this edition, so its dollar cells stay blank by design rather than reading zero — inventing a number there would be worse than leaving the cell empty.

Set against Los Angeles's 3,576 permits and $198.7M total, San Francisco's 752 permits and $54.4M total show that a lower-volume market does not automatically mean a lower per-permit price: San Francisco's $20,000 median sits well above Los Angeles's $7,000, even though San Francisco's total dollar figure is smaller in absolute terms.

Coverage end-dates differ across the panel, too. San Francisco's own window runs June 13 – July 11, 2026, but the eight tracked metros close their feeds on dates ranging from July 10 to July 12 depending on each jurisdiction's publishing cadence, so the rows above are close in time but not on an identical cutoff.

San Francisco's Permit Snapshot

Every one of San Francisco's 752 permits in the window carries a reported valuation — 100% coverage, the only complete-coverage metro this edition.

Complete coverage means the $54,429,779 total and the $20,000 median describe the entire permit population in the window, not a sample. No other metro on this panel reaches 100%; Seattle comes closest at 99.4%. That completeness makes San Francisco's figures an unusually direct read on declared residential value: nothing here is inferred from a partial slice of the feed.

What San Francisco Is Building

Category labels below are reproduced verbatim from the sealed snapshots, including the source feed's own capitalization.

San Francisco routes most small residential work through an over-the-counter process, which the source labels otc alterations permit — issued without full plan review for work that meets pre-approved criteria, such as routine kitchen, bathroom, and finish work. That single category accounts for 675 of the city's 752 permits. The additions alterations or repairs label (51) covers similar-scope work that went through standard, non-OTC review, and the generic permit label (22) is the feed's catch-all for records that do not carry a more specific type.

The gap between 675 and the next two categories combined is large enough that the otc alterations permit label effectively defines San Francisco's residential permit activity this window. Anyone trying to size demand for a specific trade in this market would be reading a fundamentally different, much smaller signal if they focused on additions alterations or repairs or on the generic permit label instead of the dominant OTC channel.

Read together, San Francisco's residential permit flow this window is almost entirely alteration and repair rather than ground-up construction — consistent with a $20,000 median that is modest next to New York's $296,750, even as the OTC channel keeps the raw permit count high.

The absence of a large, distinct new-construction category in San Francisco's top three also explains why the city's $54.4M total sits well below Chicago's $134.6M and Seattle's $72.2M despite San Francisco recording more permits than either: without a category of large-dollar ground-up filings pulling the total upward, a high permit count built mostly from smaller alteration work produces a comparatively modest sum.

San Francisco's coverage rate stands at 100%, the only such metro this edition.

Where These Sealed Numbers Come From

Source: San Francisco Department of Building Inspection via data.sfgov.org (Socrata). All figures are computed directly from US Tech Automations' sealed daily permit snapshots; nothing is estimated, modeled, or extrapolated.

Municipal feeds are revised after the fact. Jurisdictions backfill records into windows that have already closed, so the numbers in this report are the values as of the seal date — a reader querying the San Francisco portal today may see a slightly different figure for the same calendar window. That is exactly why this edition is content-hash sealed rather than re-queried: it freezes what the public record said on capture day.

1. Collect. Pull the residential permit feed from the San Francisco Department of Building Inspection on data.sfgov.org daily.

2. Normalize. Map records to a common schema — permit identifier, declared valuation, category label — applying the residential scope filter at ingest.

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

4. Aggregate. Compute totals, medians, and coverage from the sealed snapshots over the June 13 – July 11, 2026 window, with no interpolation or modeling.

This report is also cross-sectional by design: it describes the June 13 – July 11, 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 sealing discipline runs through the June edition of this report — a separate sealed cross-section, not a baseline this edition measures against.

Frequently Asked Questions About San Francisco Permits

Q: Who actually pulls a dataset like San Francisco otc alterations permit counts?
A: Remodeling contractors qualifying territories, building-material suppliers timing outreach, and lenders or agents using coverage-aware valuation as a ground-truth check. The 675-permit otc alterations permit category is the largest slice any of them would monitor.

Q: Why does San Francisco have complete valuation coverage when other metros do not?
A: Coverage is a property of what the source feed itself publishes, not something this report imputes. San Francisco's Department of Building Inspection data included a declared value on all 752 permits in the window — 100% — which no other metro on the panel matched this edition.

Q: How does San Francisco's rank for permits compare with its rank for valuation?
A: San Francisco is #2 of 8 metros by permit count but #5 by total valuation at $54.4M. The gap reflects permit mix: a high volume of otc alterations permit filings keeps the count elevated while keeping the median, at $20,000, comparatively low.

Q: Does this report include commercial permits in San Francisco?
A: No. 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.

Q: Could a live query of the city 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 752-permit, $54,429,779 figures sealed here. That is why the report cites a sealed snapshot rather than a re-query.

Q: Why does San Francisco's $54.4M total sit below Chicago's and Seattle's despite a higher permit count?
A: San Francisco's top categories, otc alterations permit (675) and additions alterations or repairs (51), are alteration-and-repair work rather than large-dollar ground-up construction. Chicago's $134.6M and Seattle's $72.2M totals each include categories weighted toward higher per-permit valuations, which is enough to outweigh San Francisco's larger permit count.

Turning San Francisco Permits Into Leads

This window's numbers fit a few concrete workflows. Remodeling contractors can prioritize outreach around the 675-permit otc alterations permit category, which is clearly where the city's residential volume sits. Finish-trade suppliers can use the same category mix to time inventory for kitchen, bath, and interior work. Lenders and listing agents can treat San Francisco's 100% coverage as a rare case where the declared-valuation total needs no coverage caveat at all, and can use the $3,000,000 maximum permit alongside the $20,000 median to separate the rare larger project from the OTC-driven base that makes up most of the window.

The platform automates that signal: monitoring new filings as they post, routing leads that match a trade or territory, and drafting outreach grounded in the sealed record instead of a template. 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 market, contact us.

Source: US Tech Automations Research — computed from sealed daily permit snapshots, June 13 – July 11, 2026.