$69M in 30 Days: San Francisco Building Permit Report — June 2026
San Francisco issued 952 residential building permits during the May 11 – June 9, 2026 reporting window, with a combined declared valuation of $68,860,310. This report, part of the June 2026 edition from US Tech Automations Research, presents what the sealed records show: permit counts, declared valuations, the category mix, and how the city stacks up against the other metros tracked this edition.
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. Every figure below is read from sealed daily snapshots — append-only records hashed at capture — never from estimates or models.
Key Findings
San Francisco logged 952 residential building permits over 30 days, according to the San Francisco Department of Building Inspection via data.sfgov.org (Socrata).
Total declared valuation reached $68,860,310 for the window, per the same sealed daily permit snapshots.
Valuation coverage stands at 100%, with all 952 permits valued — the only complete-coverage metro this edition, per the sealed snapshots.
The median permit is valued at $19,395; the largest at $6,000,000, according to the Department of Building Inspection feed.
The otc alterations permit category accounts for 883 of the city's permits, per the sealed daily permit snapshots.
San Francisco Permit Activity, May 11 – June 9, 2026
The headline numbers are straightforward. Over the 30-day window, San Francisco's Department of Building Inspection issued 952 residential building permits — single-family and small multi-family work — carrying a combined declared valuation of $68,860,310, or $68.9M in compact form. The median permit comes in at $19,395, and the largest single permit in the window is valued at $6,000,000.
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Residential permits issued | 952 |
| Permits with recorded valuation | 952 |
| Valuation coverage | 100% |
| Total declared valuation | $68,860,310 ($68.9M) |
| Median permit valuation | $19,395 |
| Largest single permit valuation | $6,000,000 |
| Reporting window | May 11 – June 9, 2026 |
The first thing that stands out is coverage. San Francisco reports a declared value on every single permit in the window — 952 of 952, or 100% coverage. No other metro in this edition reaches complete coverage, which makes San Francisco's valuation figures an unusually direct read on declared residential construction value: the totals and the median describe the entire permit population, not a sample.
Every one of San Francisco's 952 permits in the window carries a recorded valuation — 100% coverage, the only complete-coverage metro in the June 2026 edition.
The second thing is the shape of the distribution. A median of $19,395 set against a single permit as large as $6,000,000 tells you the typical San Francisco residential permit is modest alteration work, while a small number of large projects carry a disproportionate share of the declared value. We make no estimate of that split — only the sealed figures above — but the gap between the median and the maximum is itself informative for anyone sizing the market.
Top Permit Categories
San Francisco's permit taxonomy is distinctive. The city routes most small residential work through an over-the-counter process, which appears in the data under the label otc alterations permit. That category dominates the window. Category labels below are reproduced verbatim from the sealed snapshots.
| Category | Permit Count |
|---|---|
| otc alterations permit | 883 |
| additions alterations or repairs | 50 |
| permit | 15 |
The otc alterations permit category accounts for 883 of the city's 952 permits in the window. The additions alterations or repairs category follows with 50 permits, and a generic permit label appears on 15 records. The practical read: San Francisco's residential permit flow is overwhelmingly alteration and repair work rather than ground-up construction.
For contractors and suppliers, that skew matters. A market dominated by over-the-counter alteration permits produces renovation-scale opportunities — frequent, smaller-ticket projects — rather than the long-cycle, high-valuation leads that new-build markets generate. The valuation profile in the previous section, with its $19,395 median, is consistent with that picture.
How San Francisco Compares Across 8 Metros
San Francisco ranks second among the 8 metros in this edition by permit count, behind Los Angeles and ahead of Austin. The full cross-metro picture, drawn from the same sealed snapshots, looks like this (an em dash marks valuation data not available for that metro):
| Metro | Permits | Total Valuation | Median Valuation | Coverage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Los Angeles | 4,042 | $201.2M | $7,000 | 93.5% |
| San Francisco | 952 | $68.9M | $19,395 | 100% |
| Austin | 704 | — | — | — |
| Chicago | 566 | $117.1M | $35,500 | 85.7% |
| Seattle | 438 | $103.5M | $121,908 | 98.9% |
| New York | 430 | $159.5M | $204,720 | 77.9% |
| Cincinnati | 123 | $9.8M | $20,000 | 95.9% |
| Scottsdale | 79 | $28.4M | $474,131 | 87.3% |
Across all 8 metros, the June 2026 edition seals 7,334 residential permits with $688,331,017 in declared valuation — 6,171 permits (84%) carry a recorded value.
The contrast with Los Angeles is instructive: LA issued 4,042 permits — the most of any metro this edition — but with a median valuation of just $7,000, far below San Francisco's $19,395. New York sits at the opposite pole: only 430 permits, but a median of $204,720, reflecting a permit mix weighted toward larger projects.
Chicago recorded 566 permits at a $35,500 median with $117.1M in total declared valuation, while Seattle logged 438 permits worth $103.5M at a $121,908 median. Seattle's coverage of 98.9% is the closest any metro comes to San Francisco's 100%. Austin reports 704 permits but no valuation data this edition, so its valuation cells are blank by design rather than zero.
The smaller markets round out the table: Cincinnati with 123 permits and $9.8M in declared valuation, and Scottsdale with 79 permits whose $474,131 median — the highest in the edition — points to a permit mix concentrated in high-value residential work.
Because every metro is measured the same way, over the same May 11 – June 9, 2026 window, with the same residential-only ingest rules, these rows are genuinely comparable. The differences in the table reflect differences in the cities, not differences in methodology.
Methodology
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.
This edition is cross-sectional. It reports the May 11 – June 9, 2026 window on its own terms and makes no comparison to prior periods, because the sealed history needed to support trend claims does not yet exist. Scope is residential building permits (single-family and small multi-family); commercial and sub-trade permits are excluded at ingest, so these figures should not be read as a count of all construction permits issued in each city.
The pipeline behind every number in this report:
Collect. Pull the residential permit feed from each jurisdiction's public data portal every day — for San Francisco, the Department of Building Inspection dataset published on data.sfgov.org via Socrata.
Normalize. Map each record to a common schema (permit identifier, issue date, declared valuation, category label), excluding commercial and sub-trade permit types at ingest.
Seal daily. Hash each day's normalized snapshot and append it to a content-addressed store, so figures cannot be silently revised after the fact.
Aggregate. Compute window totals, medians, and coverage directly from the sealed snapshots over the May 11 – June 9, 2026 reporting window — no interpolation, no modeling.
The same sealing discipline underpins our permit prediction ledger, where predictions are committed to the record before outcomes are observable. Sealing first and publishing second is the whole point: a reader can hold these numbers to account because they were fixed at capture.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: How many residential building permits did San Francisco issue in the latest reporting window?
A: 952 residential building permits were issued between May 11 – June 9, 2026, according to San Francisco Department of Building Inspection data published via data.sfgov.org (Socrata) and captured in sealed daily snapshots. The figure covers single-family and small multi-family work only.
Q: What is the total declared valuation of those permits?
A: $68,860,310 in total declared valuation across the window — $68.9M in compact form — with a median permit valuation of $19,395 and a maximum single-permit valuation of $6,000,000. Every figure is read directly from sealed snapshots rather than estimated.
Q: What is valuation coverage, and why does it matter here?
A: Coverage measures how many permits carry a declared value. San Francisco's coverage is 100% — all 952 permits report a valuation — making it the only metro in this edition with complete coverage. High coverage means the totals and medians describe the full permit population rather than a subset.
Q: Which permit category dominates San Francisco's residential activity?
A: The otc alterations permit category, with 883 permits in the window. The additions alterations or repairs category accounts for 50 permits, and a generic permit label appears on 15 records. Alteration and repair work, not new construction, drives the city's residential permit volume.
Q: How does San Francisco compare to the other metros in this edition?
A: Second by permit count: Los Angeles leads with 4,042 permits, San Francisco follows at 952, ahead of Austin's 704. On median valuation, San Francisco's $19,395 sits well below New York's $204,720 and Scottsdale's $474,131, but above Los Angeles' $7,000.
Q: Does this report include commercial or sub-trade permits?
A: No. The dataset covers residential building permits (single-family and small multi-family) only; commercial and sub-trade permits are excluded at ingest. This is not a count of all construction permits issued in each city, and the figures should not be compared against citywide permit totals from other sources.
Put Permit Data to Work
Permit data of this kind is most useful to the people who act on it the same week it lands. Contractors use it to qualify renovation-heavy territories before committing marketing spend. Building-product suppliers time outreach to projects that have just been permitted. Agencies fold jurisdiction-level numbers into local market reports for clients. Lenders read declared valuations as a ground-truth signal of where money is actually being put into housing stock.
US Tech Automations turns these permit signals into automated workflows: monitoring new permits as they appear in jurisdiction feeds, routing qualified records to the right sales territory, and drafting outreach grounded in sealed, verifiable data rather than scraped guesswork. You can explore the underlying permit corpus at permits.ustechautomations.com, or contact us to scope a monitoring or lead-routing workflow built on your market.
Source: US Tech Automations Research — computed from sealed daily permit snapshots, May 11 – June 9, 2026.
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