What Is Getting Built in 98133, Seattle?

What is getting built in ZIP 98133 right now? In Seattle's June 13 – July 11, 2026 reporting window, the sealed answer starts with 17 residential permits worth $5.8M — the quietest ZIP by count in this report's peer band, yet one where the typical project still runs well above the citywide median. Addition & Alteration work drives most of it, accounting for 7 of the ZIP's 17 permits.

A residential building permit is local government's sign-off to construct, add to, or alter a home, and every number below is a ZIP-level slice of the same sealed Seattle snapshot behind our metro 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.

What the Numbers Show

• Per the sealed permit snapshot data, ZIP 98133 recorded 17 residential permits in the window.

• Per the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections via data.seattle.gov (Socrata), 98133 reported $5.8M in valuation for the period.

• According to the same sealed snapshot slice, the median 98133 permit is valued at $262,229.

• Per the sealed snapshot data, Addition & Alteration leads 98133 with 7 of its 17 permits.

• Per the same sealed snapshot, Seattle logged 311 residential permits citywide in the same window.

ZIP 98133 filed 17 permits worth $5.8M in the window.

ZIP 98133 at a Glance

Citywide, the median permit is valued at $100,000, and the middle half of all Seattle filings falls between $24,475 and $328,802. 98133's $262,229 median sits well inside the upper half of that range — closer to the $328,802 top than to the $100,000 middle — even though this ZIP filed the fewest permits of any in its peer band.

98133's $262,229 median permit valuation sits far above Seattle's $100,000 citywide median, in the ZIP with the smallest permit count in this report's peer band.

What Seattle's Top Categories Actually Cover

98133's leading category is the same one leading the whole city, so understanding it means understanding what Seattle is building overall. Here are the city's three biggest categories side by side, followed by what each one actually involves.

Addition & Alteration — 193 permits citywide

Seattle's source label is "Building / Addition/Alteration," and it is both the city's largest category at 193 permits and 98133's own leading category at 7 of 17 permits. It covers work on an existing house rather than a ground-up build: room additions, interior remodels, structural repairs, and foundation work. It is the workhorse permit type almost everywhere in residential construction, which is why it tops both the citywide list and this specific ZIP.

The filers behind this category tend to be a mix of general contractors handling larger remodels and homeowners filing as owner-builders for smaller scopes. That range is part of why the category can carry both modest and substantial valuations under a single label, which matters for anyone reading a "193 permits" figure as a single uniform type of project.

Building / New — 78 permits citywide

This label covers new single- and two-family dwellings built from the ground up. Citywide it recorded 78 permits in the window — far fewer than Addition & Alteration, reflecting how much more residential permitting activity is renovation rather than fresh construction almost everywhere. This slice does not break out how many of 98133's own 17 permits fall here, so no ZIP-specific new-build figure can be reported for this window.

A New Building filing typically follows a demolition or a vacant-lot purchase, and it moves through a fuller plan-review sequence than most remodel work. That heavier process is a large part of why this category, even at a fraction of Addition & Alteration's count, still represents meaningful construction activity across the city.

Demolition — 18 permits citywide

"Demolition / Demolition" recorded 18 permits citywide, the smallest of the three leading categories. Demolition permits typically precede either a new build or a significant site change on the same lot, so a modest but steady demolition count is a normal feature of an active residential market rather than a signal of decline.

A steady demolition count alongside 78 New Building permits is consistent with a market where teardown-and-rebuild activity is a real, if minor, share of residential filings — worth watching alongside the New Building figure rather than in isolation.

How 98133 Compares in Seattle

98133 sits at the bottom of this table by permit count, but not by dollars per permit. It reported $5.8M from 17 permits — more valuation than 98118 managed from 20 permits, and a fraction below 98103's $4.7M from 21. For a look at another ZIP in this band with a similarly outsized valuation profile, see our 98125 ZIP report.

98133 filed 17 permits and reported $5.8M — the smallest permit count in this peer band, though not the smallest reported valuation.

The lesson for anyone scanning this table by permit count alone is that count and value answer different questions. 98133 would rank last on volume and still outperform two busier ZIPs on dollars filed.

What This ZIP's Numbers Don't Show

A ZIP-level slice like this one is useful precisely because it is narrow, but that narrowness has real limits worth naming.

The topCategory figure tells us Addition & Alteration leads 98133 with 7 of its 17 permits — it does not tell us what the other 10 permits cover. Those could be split across New Building, Demolition, or smaller categories in any combination; that breakdown is not part of this slice, so it cannot be reported here.

The window itself is also fixed. Every figure on this page describes June 13 – July 11, 2026 specifically. A ZIP can look quiet in one reporting window and busy in the next, and this report makes no claim about any period outside the one it covers.

Finally, a ZIP median is not the same as an address-level price. $262,229 describes the typical permit in 98133 this window, not any specific project, and it says nothing about how that figure would look for a single filing chosen at random rather than the middle of the distribution.

Coverage matters too. Citywide, 309 of Seattle's 311 permits carry a reported valuation, a 99.4% coverage rate — high, but not complete. A handful of permits in any ZIP, including 98133, may lack a reported dollar figure entirely, so total valuation figures here should be read as a floor rather than an exact accounting of every dollar permitted in the window.

The same caveat applies at the edition level. Across all 8 metros tracked this window, 5,411 of 6,456 total permits carry a reported valuation — an 84% coverage rate, lower than Seattle's own 99.4%. Valuation completeness varies by jurisdiction even within the same sealed snapshot, which is one reason this report sticks to Seattle's own figures rather than comparing raw dollar totals across metros.

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.

This page is a ZIP-level cut of the same sealed Seattle snapshot behind the Seattle building permit report — 98133's rows are filtered, not re-collected. Citywide, 309 of 311 permits carry a reported valuation, a 99.4% coverage rate, so dollar totals here should be read as floors. Seattle ranks #6 among this edition's 8 metros by permit count and #4 by total reported valuation. Across the full edition, 6,456 permits were logged across all 8 metros, worth $747.7M, at 84% valuation coverage over the June 13 – July 12, 2026 window.

The pipeline behind every number here runs in four steps:

1. Collect new residential permit records for Seattle each day from the city's open-data feed on data.seattle.gov.

2. Normalize raw records to a common schema — category labels, ZIP codes, and declared valuations standardized across jurisdictions.

3. Seal each day's snapshot by hashing and storing it before any analysis runs, so figures cannot be quietly revised later.

4. Aggregate the sealed records over June 13 – July 11, 2026, then slice by ZIP to produce reports like this one.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How many permits did ZIP 98133 file, and what are they worth?
A: Per the sealed snapshot, 98133 filed 17 residential permits in the June 13 – July 11, 2026 window, worth $5.8M in reported valuation, with a $262,229 median permit.

Q: Why is 98133's median so much higher than the citywide figure, given it is the quietest ZIP in this report's peer band?
A: Per the sealed data, 98133's $262,229 median sits well above the $100,000 citywide median even though the ZIP filed only 17 permits, the fewest in its peer band. Fewer, larger projects rather than many small ones are driving the ZIP's dollar total.

Q: Does Addition & Alteration mean every project in 98133 is a small remodel?
A: No. According to the sealed snapshot, Addition & Alteration covers 7 of 98133's 17 permits and spans everything from modest repairs to full room additions and structural work — the category is broad, not uniform in size. Citywide, the same category recorded 193 permits against 78 for Building / New and 18 for Demolition, so its breadth shows up at the city level too, not just within this one ZIP.

Q: How does 98133 stack up against Seattle's other filing ZIPs?
A: By count it is the quietest ZIP in this report's peer band at 17 permits, behind 98115 (36), 98117 (35), 98103 (21), and 98118 and 98125 (20 each). By reported valuation, its $5.8M beats 98118's $2.6M and comes close to 98103's $4.7M.

Q: Who would actually act on a ZIP-level report like this one?
A: Remodeling contractors and specialty subcontractors use it to size the local project pipeline; material suppliers use the category mix to plan inventory; agents and lenders read renovation density as a signal of owner investment in the neighborhood. Each group is reading the same 17 permits for a different purpose, which is exactly why a single raw count tells an incomplete story on its own.

Q: How does 98133's activity compare to the single largest permit reported anywhere in Seattle?
A: Seattle's largest reported permit valuation this window was $2,000,000, and metro-wide, 5,411 of the edition's 6,456 permits carry a reported valuation. 98133's own 17 permits and $262,229 median sit far below that single ceiling figure, yet still well above the city's overall median — evidence that this ZIP's value is broad-based rather than driven by one large project.

Put Permit Data to Work

98133's mix points at a narrow but real opportunity: contractors and remodeling specialists working Addition & Alteration jobs, suppliers stocking the finish materials those projects need, and agents watching for renovation activity ahead of a future sale. Each group wants the same thing — the permit record while the project is still staffing up, not months later.

Addition & Alteration accounts for 7 of 98133's 17 permits.

US Tech Automations turns this kind of ZIP-level signal into automated workflows: watching new filings as they post, routing matches to the right trade or territory, and drafting outreach grounded in the underlying permit record rather than a generic template. See the full category picture behind 98133's top permit type in our Seattle Addition & Alteration report. The live data behind this report is available at permits.ustechautomations.com, and if you want ZIP-level signals wired into your own pipeline, see how agentic workflows can route them automatically.

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