PermitPipeline Preconstruction Activity Index — August 2026
The PermitPipeline Preconstruction Activity Index is a year-over-year momentum measure centered on 100: the latest three complete months' permit applications versus the same three months one year earlier. 100 means unchanged; 90 means activity is down 10%. Each city is compared only with itself.
| May–July 2026 | Index | Applications | Year earlier |
|---|---|---|---|
| New York City (initial DOB job filings) | 89.6 | 18,009 | 20,107 |
| San Francisco (building-permit applications) | 81.6 [superseded: restated 109.7 counting both permit systems; correction] | 5,099 | 6,250 |
A permit application is an early public indication of intended work, not proof that construction will proceed. PermitPipeline treats it as an early signal.
By Josh Steinman, founder of PermitPipeline. Before building PermitPipeline, he spent nearly 20 years managing construction projects and representing owners.
NYC initial job filings and San Francisco building-permit applications declined in early summer
[Corrected: the San Francisco decline is superseded; San Francisco rose once both permit systems are counted. See the correction.]
From May through July, initial NYC DOB NOW job filings fell 10.4% year over year; San Francisco building-permit applications fell 18.4%, with July alone down 29.2%, the lowest among the 25 months examined. In New York the decline is obscured by filings attached to existing DOB jobs: initial filings were 44.6% of July's 13,871 distinct filings, while total filing volume declined just 2.1%.
Finding 1 — NYC initial job filings fell while total filing volume remained nearly flat
| Filing class (distinct filings) | Jul 2025 | Jul 2026 |
|---|---|---|
-I1 initial — opens a new DOB job | 6,775 | 6,182 |
-S subsequent — additional scope/work types on an existing job | 2,989 | 3,315 |
-P post-approval amendments | 4,161 | 4,055 |
-A/-B/-C* administrative/resubmission series | 199 | 227 |
| Unclassified remainder | 41 | 92 |
| Total | 14,165 | 13,871 |
Initial job filings declined while filings attached to existing jobs increased. The dataset excludes electrical, elevator and limited-alteration jobs, which DOB tracks separately.
Boroughs (initial filings, May–July):
| Borough | 2025 | 2026 | Index |
|---|---|---|---|
| Manhattan | 7,874 | 7,278 | 92.4 |
| Brooklyn | 4,965 | 4,336 | 87.3 |
| Queens | 4,079 | 3,544 | 86.9 |
| Bronx | 2,028 | 1,783 | 87.9 |
| Staten Island | 1,161 | 1,068 | 92.0 |
Ground-up (initial New Building filings, May–July):
| Borough | 2025 | 2026 | Index |
|---|---|---|---|
| Queens | 159 | 152 | 95.6 |
| Brooklyn | 113 | 117 | 103.5 |
| Bronx | 83 | 78 | 94.0 |
| Staten Island | 58 | 92 | 158.6 |
| Manhattan | 15 | 6 | 40.0 |
Finding 2 — the neighborhood map, named movers only
San Francisco figures in this section are on the original legacy-only coverage; see the correction.
Movers shown below passed the stability gate — 60+ (NYC) / 50+ (SF) prior-year filings, an absolute change of at least 15, and the same direction over the six months preceding this window (November 2025–April 2026 versus November 2024–April 2025), periods that do not overlap the May–July window reported here. That is a non-overlapping persistence check, not a test of statistical independence: the two windows measure the same area and are correlated. Areas failing the gate appear in the CSVs and on the city pages but are not shown here. Display rule: up to the six largest qualified moves in each direction, ranked by index; the city pages carry every row that passes the rule.
NYC rising:
| Neighborhood | 2025 | 2026 | Index |
|---|---|---|---|
| Long Island City-Hunters Point | 81 | 115 | 142.0 |
| Financial District-Battery Park City | 278 | 345 | 124.1 |
| East Williamsburg | 135 | 163 | 120.7 |
| Carroll Gardens-Cobble Hill-Gowanus-Red Hook | 252 | 285 | 113.1 |
NYC falling:
| Neighborhood | 2025 | 2026 | Index |
|---|---|---|---|
| South Jamaica | 87 | 35 | 40.2 |
| East New York-City Line | 62 | 27 | 43.5 |
| Rockaway Beach-Arverne-Edgemere | 71 | 31 | 43.7 |
| Queensbridge-Ravenswood-Dutch Kills | 92 | 45 | 48.9 |
| Auburndale | 72 | 36 | 50.0 |
| Upper West Side-Manhattan Valley | 141 | 77 | 54.6 |
SF rising:
| Neighborhood | 2025 | 2026 | Index |
|---|---|---|---|
| North Beach | 78 | 104 | 133.3 |
SF falling:
| Neighborhood | 2025 | 2026 | Index |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bayview Hunters Point | 240 | 150 | 62.5 |
| Outer Richmond | 352 | 246 | 69.9 |
| Tenderloin | 84 | 60 | 71.4 |
| Inner Sunset | 247 | 179 | 72.5 |
| Excelsior | 164 | 122 | 74.4 |
| Glen Park | 98 | 74 | 75.5 |
Finding 3 — San Francisco's July universe, itemized
San Francisco figures in this section are on the original legacy-only coverage; see the correction.
| Category | Jul 2025 | Jul 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Over-the-counter alterations | 1,942 | 1,393 |
| Plan-reviewed additions/alterations/repairs | 94 | 75 |
| Sign - erect | 74 | 5 |
| Wall or painted sign | 11 | 0 |
| Demolitions | 3 | 2 |
| New construction | 2 | 0 |
| New construction (wood frame) | 2 | 2 |
| Grade/quarry/fill/excavate | 0 | 1 |
| Permit type 9, definition not yet published (solar and energy storage) | 0 | 28 |
Both main lanes shrank by roughly a quarter. The plan-reviewed projects still coming forward fell while the median applicant-declared value rose: median $139,000 → $250,000 (p25 $48,849 → $75,000, p75 $360,169 → $400,000; declared-value coverage 100.0% and 100.0%). Electrical permits, a separate measure of trade-permit activity, were 1,480 in July versus 1,654 (-10.5%).
Finding 4 — permit processing
San Francisco figures in this section are on the original legacy-only coverage; see the correction.
San Francisco (permits issued in July): over-the-counter median wait 0 → 3 days; same-day issuance 59.1% → 41.7% (n=1,897 vs 1,400). Plan-reviewed alterations: median 159 → 190 days (n=106 vs 89).
New York (standard plan examination, initial filings; professional self-certified filings — roughly half of all filings — received approval in a median of one day and are excluded): approvals completed during July took a median 33 days in 2025 and 34 in 2026 (n=2,584 vs 2,418). April cohorts at identical 120-day maturity: 87.6% approved within 120 days in 2025 versus 86.0% in 2026 — essentially unchanged.
Work-type segments, day-120 approval share. Edition 1 publishes every work type with at least 100 filings in both cohorts. Changes of at least 10 percentage points are highlighted as exploratory findings. These thresholds will be applied unchanged in future editions.
| Work type (standard plan examination) | Apr 2025 | Apr 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alteration CO | 41.3% (104/252) | 25.1% (52/207) | -16.1 pts |
| New Building | 25.8% (39/151) | 13.9% (15/108) | -11.9 pts |
| No Work | 87.7% (179/204) | 82.5% (165/200) | -5.2 pts |
| Alteration | 87.6% (2005/2288) | 86.0% (1545/1797) | -1.7 pts |
| Full Demolition | 83.3% (120/144) | 83.9% (130/155) | +0.5 pts |
Two segments meet the highlight threshold in this edition, reported as exploratory: Alteration-CO (41.3% to 25.1%) and New Building (25.8% to 13.9%). The dataset contains only each filing's current status, so it cannot establish why the remaining filings had not been approved by day 120.
Supporting analysis — contractor concentration
San Francisco figures in this section are on the original legacy-only coverage; see the correction.
Contractor concentration declined in both cities: the top 50 license numbers' aggregate share of permits fell from 21.8% to 20.2% in New York and from 33.7% to 30.6% in San Francisco (matched Aug–Jul windows, license-keyed, top 50 re-ranked each period; universes differ between cities, so no cross-city level comparison is made).
Revision note — 2026-08-27
This edition was corrected on 2026-08-27. No headline index reading or underlying filing count changed. NYC 89.6 and SF 81.6 reproduce unchanged from the same frozen extraction and were independently re-derived from the source datasets on 2026-08-27. The neighborhood conclusion was materially clarified.
Three percentage-point changes in Finding 4 were computed by subtracting percentages that had already been rounded to one decimal. Recomputed from the exact fractions, Alteration CO moves from -16.2 to -16.1 points, Alteration from -1.6 to -1.7, and Full Demolition from +0.6 to +0.5. The underlying counts and percentages are unchanged, and no finding changes direction or crosses a reporting threshold.
The published geographic CSVs contained only areas above the mover volume screen, while the methodology said they contained every area. They now contain every area, including the NYC unmapped Unknown row (75 prior-year and 69 current filings) and the eight San Francisco Analysis Neighborhoods below the 50-application screen. One of those eight, Visitacion Valley, moved from 47 to 65 and is the largest percentage increase in San Francisco.
Any count of San Francisco neighborhoods that increased must state its universe. Three of the 33 screened neighborhoods increased. Four of all 41 Analysis Neighborhoods increased.
San Francisco permit type 9, previously shown as an undefined newly introduced type, is identified as solar and energy-storage applications.
The six-month direction check is described as a non-overlapping persistence check rather than an independent test.
See methodology v1.1 for the full change list.
Raw permit totals made New York look almost flat. When we separated filings that open a new DOB job from follow-on filings attached to existing jobs, initial activity was down 10%. San Francisco fell even more. Staten Island's ground-up filings stood out, rising 59%.
Editor's note, September 29, 2026: the quote's statement that San Francisco fell is superseded; San Francisco rose once both permit systems are counted. See the correction.