What a building permit counts

The permit figures on this site come from the Census Bureau's Building Permits Survey, which collects from local permit-issuing offices the number of new privately owned housing units they authorised. The site shows those counts through August 2026.

Units, not permits

The survey's headline figure is housing units, not permit documents. One permit for an apartment building with 120 flats counts 120 units; one permit for a detached house counts one. The site uses units throughout and says "units authorised" or "homes authorised" for that reason.

Structure size

Units are reported by the size of the building they are in: one unit (a detached or attached single-family house), two units, three or four units, and five or more units. The site shows single-family in the darker bar and everything else together, with the four classes in each city's comparison table. The survey does not classify by tenure, price or size in square feet.

Permit-issuing places

The reporting unit is the office that issues permits: a city, a town, a township, or a county for its unincorporated area. Where a city is the permit office, its figure covers the city's jurisdiction; unincorporated areas appear as a separate county entry. About 20,000 places report; the site builds a page for those with at least 12 units authorised in the latest 12 months, or in the 12 before.

Monthly and annual, and imputation

Some offices report every month and some once a year. For monthly tables the Census Bureau imputes figures for places that report annually, based on their prior reporting; the annual files replace those imputations with reported totals once received. Monthly numbers are therefore revised and can differ from the sum implied by the later annual file. The site's monthly bars use the monthly files and its yearly bars the annual files.

Permits, starts and completions

A permit authorises construction. Some permitted units are never started, some are started months later and some take years to complete. The Census Bureau's separate starts and completions series are national and regional samples, not place-level counts, so this site shows permits only.

Per 1,000 residents

To compare a large county with a small one the site divides the latest 12 months of units by the area's estimated population and multiplies by 1,000. Population comes from the Census Bureau's vintage 2025 estimates: counties and states directly, incorporated places where the permit office matches one. Township and unincorporated-area offices have no matching estimate and show a dash.

The survey's documentation is at census.gov/construction/bps.