193 Addition & Alteration Permits Lead Seattle

Seattle's 311 residential permits in the June 13 – July 11, 2026 window are led by one category: Building / Addition/Alteration — the friendly label used in this report is Addition & Alteration — with 193 filings, covering work that expands or reconfigures an existing home without a full teardown and rebuild. No other category in the window comes close to that count: Building / New, Seattle's ground-up construction line, posts 78 filings, and Demolition / Demolition posts 18.

Yet the category leading by count is not the category leading by dollars. Addition & Alteration's 193 permits carry $19.1M in total declared valuation and a $50,000 median — modest scope work, mostly. New Building's 78 permits carry $30.0M in total declared valuation and a $357,398 median, a figure that towers over both Addition & Alteration's median and Seattle's own metro-wide median of $100,000. Fewer permits, more money: that is the shape of Seattle's window this edition.

A building permit is a jurisdiction's official sign-off to alter, add to, or newly construct a residential structure. This report's scope is residential building permits — single-family and small multi-family filings; commercial and sub-trade permits are excluded at ingest. This is not a count of all construction permits issued in each city, and every figure below is drawn from a sealed daily snapshot rather than a live query of the city portal.

Seattle: 193 Addition & Alteration permits lead by count.

Seattle's Permit Numbers, in Brief

• Seattle recorded 311 residential permits in the June 13 – July 11, 2026 window, according to US Tech Automations' sealed permit snapshots.

• Total declared valuation reached $72,212,590 — $72.2M in compact form, per the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections via data.seattle.gov (Socrata).

• Building / Addition/Alteration leads with 193 permits, the most of any category, per the same sealed snapshots.

• Building / New carries $30.0M in total valuation from just 78 permits — more than Addition & Alteration's $19.1M from 193, per the sealed snapshots.

• 309 of 311 Seattle permits carry a declared valuation — 99.4% coverage, among the highest on the panel.

• Seattle ranks #6 of 8 metros for permit count but #4 for total valuation, per the sealed cross-metro snapshots.

Where Seattle's Building Dollars Actually Go

The friendly label for Building / Addition/Alteration is Addition & Alteration; it is Seattle's highest-volume category by a wide margin but not its highest-dollar one. Building / New — ground-up residential construction — carries the larger total, $30.0M against Addition & Alteration's $19.1M, on far fewer permits. Its $357,398 median sits far above both Addition & Alteration's $50,000 median and the metro-wide $100,000 median reported for Seattle overall. Demolition / Demolition, the third-largest category by count at 18 permits, does not carry declared-valuation figures in this window's feed, so its dollar cells are left blank rather than read as zero.

Seattle's 78 New Building permits carry $30.0M, more than Addition & Alteration's 193.

Read across the whole window rather than by category, Seattle's declared valuation runs from a 25th percentile of $24,475 to a 75th percentile of $328,802 — a wide band consistent with a market where the highest-volume category, Addition & Alteration at a $50,000 median, sits well below the highest-dollar category, New Building at a $357,398 median.

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

Seattle recorded 311 residential permits with $72,212,590 in total declared valuation over the window — a median of $100,000 per permit.

99.4% coverage means 309 of 311 permits carry a declared value, among the most complete coverage rates on this edition's panel — only San Francisco's 100% is higher. As with every metro in this edition, these are the values as of the seal date; Seattle's feed, like the others, can backfill or revise records into a window that has already closed (more in Methodology below).

Seattle Against the Other 7 Metros

Seattle's 311 permits rank #6 of 8 by count, behind Chicago's 555 and New York's 439, yet its $72.2M total valuation ranks #4 — ahead of both Cincinnati and Scottsdale, and closing in on Chicago's own $134.6M. Seattle's $100,000 median is the third-highest on the panel, behind only New York's $296,750 and Scottsdale's $273,969.

Cincinnati and Scottsdale anchor the panel's smaller end. 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.

Seattle ranks #6 of 8 metros by permit count, yet #4 by total valuation at $72.2M — ahead of both Cincinnati's $7.3M and Scottsdale's $23.2M.

Set against Los Angeles's 3,576 permits and $198.7M total, Seattle's 311 permits and $72.2M total look modest in absolute terms, but the comparison changes on a per-category basis: Seattle's New Building median of $357,398 sits well above Seattle's own metro-wide median of $100,000, and above every other metro's metro-wide median on this panel, including New York's $296,750 and Scottsdale's $273,969.

Coverage end-dates vary across the panel: Seattle's own window closes July 11, 2026, while the eight tracked metros close their feeds on dates ranging from July 10 to July 12 depending on each jurisdiction's publishing cadence.

How These Sealed Numbers Are Built

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.

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 Seattle portal directly 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 Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections on data.seattle.gov 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, percentiles, 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.

Seattle's valuation coverage reaches 99.4%, among the highest this edition.

Frequently Asked Questions About Seattle Permits

Q: Why does Building / New carry more valuation than the more common Addition & Alteration category?
A: Addition & Alteration posts 193 permits but a $50,000 median, reflecting smaller-scope work on existing homes. Building / New posts far fewer permits — 78 — but a $357,398 median, because ground-up construction carries substantially more declared value per filing. The result is $30.0M in New Building valuation against $19.1M for the much larger Addition & Alteration category.

Q: Could a live query of Seattle's 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 311-permit, $72,212,590 figures sealed here. That is why this report cites a sealed snapshot rather than a re-query of the live portal.

Q: Does this report count every construction permit Seattle issued?
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: How does Seattle's valuation rank compare with its permit-count rank?
A: Seattle ranks #6 of 8 metros for permit count at 311, but #4 for total valuation at $72.2M — a higher-value mix than its raw permit count alone would suggest, driven by the New Building category's outsized dollar contribution.

Q: Who uses a breakdown like Seattle's Addition & Alteration versus New Building categories?
A: Remodeling contractors watch the 193-permit Addition & Alteration category as the highest-volume opportunity. Custom home builders and larger general contractors watch the 78-permit New Building category, where the $357,398 median signals bigger-ticket work. Lenders and appraisers use the $24,475-to-$328,802 percentile band to separate a typical filing from an outlier.

Q: How does Seattle's coverage rate compare with the rest of the panel?
A: Seattle's 99.4% valuation coverage, drawn from 309 of 311 permits, is among the highest on this edition's 8-metro panel — only San Francisco's 100% coverage is higher. That means Seattle's $72,212,590 total and $100,000 median describe nearly the entire window's permit population rather than a partial slice.

Put Seattle's Permit Data to Work

This window's mix fits a few concrete workflows. Remodeling and addition contractors can prioritize outreach around the 193-permit Addition & Alteration category, the clear volume leader in the window. Custom home builders can treat the 78-permit New Building category as the higher-value segment, backed by a $357,398 median.

Lenders and appraisers can use the $24,475 to $328,802 percentile band alongside the $2,000,000 maximum permit to separate a typical filing from an outlier when underwriting. Demolition contractors, a smaller but still active segment at 18 permits, round out the window's remaining opportunity even without declared-valuation figures attached to that category this edition.

The platform automates that signal: monitoring new filings as they land, routing leads that match a category or territory, and drafting outreach grounded in the underlying sealed record. 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 trade in Seattle, contact us.

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