Addition & Alteration Dominates 98118, Seattle

Twelve of the 20 residential permits filed in Seattle's 98118 this window carry one label: Addition & Alteration, the same category that leads permit activity across most of the Seattle ZIPs profiled in this edition. A building permit is a municipal record of proposed construction or renovation work, filed for city review before that work can legally begin, and in 98118 that record points overwhelmingly toward one kind of job — expanding or reconfiguring a house that is already standing, not building a new one.

The rest of this ZIP's profile tracks that lead category. 98118 filed 20 permits between June 13 – July 11, 2026, at a $61,380 median — well below Seattle's own citywide median for the same window, a gap that sets 98118 apart from the higher-median ZIPs profiled elsewhere in this same edition. Every figure here is a 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 figure like Seattle's $72.2M in declared valuation this window says nothing about how unevenly that money is spread across ZIP codes. Filtering the same sealed snapshot down to 98118 shows one end of that spread directly — the same underlying records, narrowed rather than recomputed.

Key Findings

• Per US Tech Automations' sealed permit snapshots, Addition & Alteration accounted for 12 of 98118's 20 permits this window.

• According to the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections via data.seattle.gov (Socrata), 98118's median permit valuation was $61,380 — below the Seattle citywide figure.

• Per the same sealed source, 98118's permits carried $2.6M in total declared valuation this window.

• According to the same snapshots, 98118 filed 20 residential permits, tied with 98125 for the lowest count in this sample.

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

Twelve of 98118's 20 permits this window were Addition & Alteration filings.

The rest of this report works through what that concentration means in practice, how 98118 measures up against its immediate Seattle neighbors, and what its valuation figures look like set against the city's broader distribution.

Addition & Alteration: The Work Driving 98118

The city's own record label for this category is Building / Addition/Alteration, and it covers permits that change an existing structure's footprint or layout: room additions, second-story build-outs, garage conversions to living space, and structural interior reconfiguration — work that goes beyond a simple like-for-like repair and typically touches framing, and often electrical or plumbing systems that inspectors must sign off on.

That lines up with 98118's housing stock. The ZIP, covering much of Seattle's Columbia City, Hillman City, and Rainier Beach areas, holds an older mix of single-family homes where owners more often expand or reconfigure than replace. Citywide, the same category leads Seattle's overall permit mix at 193 of 311 permits, ahead of Building/New at 78 and Demolition at 18 — so 98118's own lead category tracks the metro's broader pattern, at a below-median dollar value per job.

That kind of filing tends to follow a specific trigger more often than a market cycle: a family adding a bedroom without moving, an owner reconfiguring a single-story layout while aging in place, or a buyer bringing an older Columbia City or Hillman City house up to code after purchase. None of that appears as its own line item in the permit record — it appears only as a filing under Addition & Alteration instead of New Construction or Demolition.

Twelve of 98118's 20 permits this window were Addition & Alteration filings, at a $61,380 ZIP-level median.

For the citywide detail behind this category across all of Seattle, see Seattle Addition & Alteration Permits. That citywide breakdown is the right reference point for anyone trying to judge whether 98118's own concentration in the category is unusual or simply typical for Seattle as a whole this window.

98118 Measured Against Its Neighboring ZIPs

98118 sits at the quieter end of this sample, tied with 98125 at 20 permits — both well behind 98115's 36 and 98117's 35. On declared dollars, though, the two 20-permit ZIPs look nothing alike: 98125 carries $8.1M in total valuation against 98118's $2.6M, a large gap on an identical permit count. That split says something specific about 98118: its permits are not just fewer than the leaders, they are also smaller individually, consistent with the ZIP's below-median $61,380 typical permit value.

98125 and 98118 both filed 20 permits this window — but 98125's $8.1M in declared valuation dwarfs 98118's $2.6M.

98118's own position — tied for lowest volume, second-lowest valuation — is the clearest below-median profile in this entire sample, contrasting with 98117's above-median profile at the opposite end of the table. A caveat carries over from every ZIP comparison in this sample, too: ZIP codes are a postal delivery boundary, not a planning designation, so a shared permit count between two ZIPs does not imply a shared housing stock or a shared construction profile beneath that headline number.

For the full citywide picture, including 98103 and how Seattle compares to the other 7 tracked metros this edition, see the Seattle building permit report.

The distance between 98118's own 20 permits and Seattle's citywide total of 311 is the same story told at every ZIP level in this edition: no single neighborhood should approach a metro's full count, and 98118 does not, any more than the other ZIPs profiled alongside it.

The Permit Count and Valuation Picture for 98118

98118 filed 20 residential permits in the June 13 – July 11, 2026 window.

$2.6M spread across 20 permits, at a $61,380 median, describes a ZIP of modest-scope jobs rather than large single projects. Nothing in that total suggests one outsized permit carrying the sum upward — the pattern is many smaller Addition & Alteration filings rather than a few big-ticket ones.

That pattern is consistent with what a below-median ZIP typically looks like in a citywide dataset: not one dramatic project pulling the total upward, but many smaller filings landing close together in size. A ZIP posting a below-median figure is not necessarily doing less work — it may simply be doing smaller-scope work more consistently.

Seattle's Broader Valuation Spread

98118's own $61,380 median sits between the citywide 25th percentile of $24,475 and the citywide median of $100,000 — in the lower half of Seattle's overall distribution, but not at its floor. Read plainly: 98118 is not where Seattle's biggest single projects are landing this window, and it is running somewhat smaller than the city's typical permit even within that lower half.

That middle-of-the-lower-half position also means 98118 is not the cheapest ZIP in this sample by definition — it is simply running below the city's typical permit size while still sitting above the very bottom of the citywide range. The distinction matters for anyone treating below-median as a synonym for smallest, which is not the same claim.

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 in this report is a slice of the same sealed snapshots behind Seattle's citywide report, filtered to records carrying the 98118 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 returning to the source system 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 keeps every figure in this report anchored to the date it was captured.

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. The same sealing discipline underlies our permit prediction ledger, where predictions are committed to the record before outcomes are observable.

Frequently Asked Questions on 98118

Q: What kind of work is behind most 98118 permits?
A: Addition & Alteration — 12 of the ZIP's 20 permits this window — covering room additions, layout changes, and structural renovation to existing houses rather than new construction.

Q: Why is 98118's median valuation lower than Seattle's citywide figure?
A: 98118's median is $61,380 against Seattle's citywide $100,000. The gap reflects smaller-scope Addition & Alteration projects in this ZIP relative to the metro's broader mix, not a different category of work.

Q: Is 98118 one of Seattle's busier ZIPs for permits?
A: No — its 20 permits tie it with 98125 for the lowest count in this sample, well behind 98115's 36 and 98117's 35, placing 98118 firmly in the quieter half of this Seattle sample.

Q: How does a sealed daily snapshot differ from checking the city permit system directly?
A: A live query can change if the city updates a record later. This report's figures are hashed and stored the day they are captured, so they are locked to June 13 – July 11, 2026 and cannot be silently revised afterward.

Q: Who typically files Addition & Alteration permits in 98118?
A: Homeowners expanding or reconfiguring an existing house, and the general contractors and framing, electrical, and plumbing trades brought in for the structural portions of that work.

Q: Does 98118'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 98118 ZIP code rather than gathered independently.

Put Permit Data to Work

98118's total declared valuation reached $2.6M this window.

Remodeling contractors can read 98118's Addition & Alteration concentration as their exact demand profile in this ZIP, even at a smaller average project size than higher-median neighborhoods — a volume-over-ticket-size territory rather than a handful of large jobs. Material suppliers can plan for the moderate-scope renovation jobs the median value implies. Listing agents can treat a fresh addition permit as a pre-sale indicator worth watching for in a ZIP where such work is already the dominant filing type.

Property managers overseeing rental buildings in 98118 can use the below-median valuation profile as a baseline for expected maintenance costs relative to higher-median Seattle ZIPs. Appraisers working comparable-sales analysis in the neighborhood can treat the ZIP's typical permit size as context for what a documented renovation is likely to have cost, rather than assuming citywide figures apply evenly across every ZIP.

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 below-median ZIP is still worth tracking closely, since a shift toward the citywide figure in a future window would itself be a meaningful change worth catching early rather than discovering after the fact. Explore the underlying permit corpus at permits.ustechautomations.com, or see how agentic workflows can monitor a territory like 98118 automatically.

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