21 Permits, $100,000 Median: ZIP 98103

21 permits and a $100,000 median — that second figure is the one worth pausing on, because it lands exactly on Seattle's own citywide median for the same window. A building permit is a municipal record of proposed construction or renovation work, filed for city review before that work can legally start, whether the project is a small repair or a large-scale addition. Between June 13 – July 11, 2026, ZIP 98103 recorded 21 of them, well below the 35-36 permits filed in Seattle's busiest sampled ZIPs, yet its typical permit size tracks the metro's typical permit size almost precisely.

That is the tension in this ZIP: lower volume, textbook-average valuation. That tension is also the reason this report exists: a ZIP does not need to be the busiest or the biggest to be analytically interesting — sometimes the most useful signal is where a ZIP simply confirms what the metro-wide number already says. Everything below is one ZIP-level slice of the same sealed daily snapshots behind Seattle's citywide report. 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.

A citywide total can say Seattle sealed $72.2M in declared valuation this window, but it says nothing about whether any single ZIP is quietly running exactly average while others swing well above or below it. 98103 turns out to be exactly that ZIP — its own figures are a filtered slice of the same sealed snapshot behind the citywide report, not a separate count.

Key Findings

• Per US Tech Automations' sealed permit snapshots, 98103 filed 21 residential permits in the window.

• According to the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections via data.seattle.gov (Socrata), 98103's median permit valuation reached $100,000 — identical to the Seattle citywide figure.

• Per the same sealed source, 98103's permits carried $4.7M in total declared valuation this window.

• According to the same snapshots, Addition & Alteration made up 13 of 98103's 21 permits, the ZIP's leading category.

• Citywide, Seattle sealed 311 permits worth $72.2M in the same reporting window.

98103's $100,000 median matches Seattle's own citywide median permit valuation.

Frequently Asked Questions About the 98103 Numbers

Q: Does 98103 have fewer permits than most of Seattle?
A: Relative to this sample, yes. Its 21 permits trail 98115's 36 and 98117's 35, and sit close to 98118 and 98125 at 20 each. 98103 is a mid-to-lower-volume ZIP in this window, not the busiest and not the quietest.

Q: Why does 98103's median match the citywide figure so closely?
A: Both land at $100,000 this window. That is a coincidence of this specific reporting period rather than a structural rule — a sealed snapshot reports what filed, and this window's 98103 permits happened to center on the same typical value as the city overall.

Q: What does a $100,000 median permit actually represent in 98103?
A: A mid-scope renovation or addition project — larger than a simple repair, smaller than new construction. Seattle's citywide middle-half range runs from $24,475 to $328,802, and $100,000 sits toward the lower-middle of that band.

Q: Is 98103 dominated by one type of work?
A: Addition & Alteration leads at 13 of the ZIP's 21 permits, the same category that leads Seattle citywide at 193 of 311 permits — 98103's mix tracks the metro's overall pattern rather than diverging from it.

Q: How is a sealed snapshot different from checking the city permit portal directly?
A: A live portal query can return different numbers tomorrow if a record is revised. This report's figures are hashed and stored the day they are pulled, so they are locked to June 13 – July 11, 2026 and cannot be silently changed afterward.

Q: Who would act on a ZIP like 98103?
A: Remodeling contractors and suppliers looking for steady, moderate-scope renovation demand rather than a boom market, and agents reading a middling permit count as a signal of a stable, unremarkable neighborhood rather than one undergoing a construction surge.

Q: Does 98103's data come from a separate collection process?
A: No. Every figure here is a slice of the same sealed daily snapshots behind Seattle's citywide report, filtered to records carrying the 98103 ZIP code rather than gathered independently.

98103's Permit Snapshot, June 13 – July 11, 2026

$4.7M spread across 21 permits, at a $100,000 median, is a small but evenly-scaled sample. Nothing here suggests one outsized project skewing the total — the median tracking the mean-scale figure this closely is itself the signal that 98103's permits cluster around a fairly consistent size, rather than mixing a few very large filings with many very small ones.

A ZIP that lands on the citywide median rather than above or below it is, in one sense, the least remarkable entry in this sample — and that is itself useful information. Anyone trying to establish what a typical Seattle permit looks like in dollar terms could point to 98103's own figures as a working example, since its median and the metro median are, in this window, the same number.

How Seattle's Permit Values Spread Out

98103's own $100,000 median lines up directly with the citywide median in that table — not below it, as several other sampled ZIPs run, and not above it either. That places 98103's typical permit squarely at the middle of Seattle's overall distribution, between the $24,475 lower-quarter mark and the $328,802 upper-quarter mark, rather than skewed toward either end.

That exact alignment will not necessarily hold in a future window — a handful of large or small permits shifting the mix could pull 98103's own median away from the citywide figure without changing anything about how the city as a whole is trending. The alignment is a fact about this specific reporting period, not a structural property of the ZIP.

98103's median permit valuation is $100,000 — exactly Seattle's own citywide median for the same window.

The Addition & Alteration Work Behind the Median

Thirteen of 98103's 21 permits fall under Addition & Alteration, the city's own record label being Building / Addition/Alteration. That category covers work that changes an existing structure's footprint or layout — room additions, second-story build-outs, garage conversions, and structural interior changes — as distinct from a simple like-for-like repair. It is Seattle's single largest category citywide, at 193 of 311 permits, so 98103's own top category simply mirrors the metro's dominant pattern rather than standing out from it.

That kind of filing typically follows a specific trigger: a family needing more bedrooms without moving, an aging owner reconfiguring a single-story layout, or a buyer updating an older Wallingford or Fremont-area house after purchase. None of that shows up as its own line item in the permit record — it shows up only as a filing under Addition & Alteration rather than New Construction or Demolition.

For the citywide detail behind this category across all of Seattle, see Seattle Addition & Alteration Permits.

Thirteen of 98103's 21 permits this window were Addition & Alteration filings.

Addition & Alteration led 98103's permit mix at 13 of 21, the same category that leads Seattle citywide at 193 of 311.

98103 Against the Rest of the Sample

98103 sits in the middle tier of this sample — well behind the two lead ZIPs, 98115 at 36 permits and 98117 at 35, but slightly ahead of 98118 and 98125 at 20 apiece.

That middle-tier position is exactly what makes 98103 useful as a baseline: it is neither the outlier high-volume ZIP nor the outlier low-volume one, which is part of why its valuation figures land so close to the citywide norm. On declared dollars, 98103's $4.7M outpaces 98118's $2.6M despite a similar permit count, another sign that valuation and volume do not move together ZIP by ZIP in this edition. The full citywide comparison, including how Seattle stacks against the other 7 tracked metros, is in the Seattle building permit report.

A caveat carries over from every ZIP comparison in this sample: ZIP codes are a postal delivery construct, not a planning boundary, so similar permit counts across ZIPs do not guarantee similar housing stock or similar building activity beneath the surface number. The gap between any single ZIP in this table and Seattle's citywide total of 311 permits is expected, not surprising — a metro spread across dozens of ZIP codes should not see any one of them approach the full count, and 98103's 21 permits are consistent with that expectation.

Methodology

Source: Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections via data.seattle.gov (Socrata). All figures are computed directly from US Tech Automations' sealed daily permit snapshots; nothing is estimated, modeled, or extrapolated. Every ZIP-level figure here is a slice of the same sealed snapshots behind Seattle's citywide report, filtered to records carrying the 98103 ZIP code — not a separately collected dataset. Scope is residential building permits (single-family and small multi-family); commercial and sub-trade permits are excluded at ingest, so this is not a count of all construction permits issued in each city.

Sealing each day's snapshot rather than checking the source system again later exists for a simple reason: a live query can return a different number tomorrow if a record is revised, quietly changing a figure that has already been cited elsewhere. A sealed, hashed snapshot cannot be altered after the fact, which is what makes the numbers in this report durable references rather than moving targets.

1. Collect. Pull Seattle's residential permit feed from data.seattle.gov daily, retaining each record's ZIP code.

2. Normalize. Map every record to a common schema — permit identifier, issue date, declared valuation, category label, ZIP.

3. Seal daily. Hash each day's normalized snapshot into an append-only, content-addressed store so figures cannot be revised after the fact.

4. Aggregate. Compute ZIP-level counts, totals, and medians directly from the sealed snapshots over the June 13 – July 11, 2026 window.

This report is one slice of a July 2026 edition spanning 8 metros, 6,456 permits, and $747.7M in declared valuation at 84% coverage — a figure that reflects how completely each metro's residential feed could be normalized into the sealed schema this edition.

Put Permit Data to Work

98103's 21 permits carried $4.7M in declared valuation this window.

A ZIP with steady, average-scale permitting like 98103 fits a specific set of buyers looking for predictable, representative demand rather than an outlier market in either direction. Remodeling contractors can read consistent mid-size Addition & Alteration demand as reliable, if unspectacular, territory. Material suppliers can plan standard inventory levels around a ZIP that is not spiking in either direction. Listing agents can treat the typical-for-Seattle valuation profile as a sign of a stable, established market rather than one undergoing rapid change.

Property managers overseeing rental units in the ZIP can use the steady, average-scale permit flow as a baseline for expected maintenance and renovation activity in comparable buildings. Insurance underwriters can treat a ZIP running at the citywide median as a lower-variance risk profile than a ZIP swinging well above or below that figure.

US Tech Automations turns signals like these into automated workflows: monitoring new permit filings as they land in the jurisdiction feed, routing qualified records to the right territory, and drafting outreach grounded in sealed, verifiable data instead of scraped guesswork. A ZIP that sits at the citywide median is still worth watching, since a shift away from that midpoint in a future window would itself be a signal worth catching early. Explore the underlying permit corpus at permits.ustechautomations.com, or see how agentic workflows can monitor a territory like 98103 automatically.

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