Chicago issued 1% fewer permits than last year and 74% more screened construction value — $4.88B against $2.81B. Its average stated permit is $1.33M, second only to Vancouver in this series. And 1,783 of its 3,667 permits, 49%, are filed by a named individual rather than a firm: Chicago is simultaneously a big-project market and a homeowner market, with very little in between.
Permit volume tracks last year almost exactly. Value does not: March and April 2026 each cleared $1B against roughly $400M in the same months of 2025. That gap is the whole story of the half.
1,856 Chicago permits carry coordinates and not one of them lands in Chicago. Our geocoder resolved these addresses against an Ontario context, so they plot in southern Ontario instead — a bug on our side, not a gap in the city's data. We check every coordinate against the bounding box of the city it claims to be in, which is why this section is empty rather than showing you a map of the wrong place.
Re-geocoding is queued. Every other number on this page reads from the permit record itself and is unaffected — the map is the only section that depends on coordinates.
The firm table below is thin on purpose — once individual filers are set aside, Chicago's named applicants are mostly the city's own demolition department and event contractors. The signal here is the split itself: 1,783 permits with a homeowner on the form, and a value line driven by a small number of very large jobs that the applicant field does not name.
| # | Applicant of record | Permits | Screened value |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ALLIANCE DEMOLITION AND EXCAVATION SERVICES INC | 49 | $2M |
| 2 | VIEWPOINT SERVICES INC DBA BROPHY EXCAVATION | 41 | $1M |
| 3 | EXECUTIVE CONSTRUCTION , INC. | 38 | $61M |
| 4 | FRACKIEL BUILDERS, INCORPORATED | 38 | $1M |
| 5 | SKENDER CONSTRUCTION LLC | 34 | $116M |
| 6 | JC ANDERSON INC | 29 | $26M |
| 7 | MCDONAGH DEMOLITION, INC | 27 | $3M |
| 8 | POWER CONSTRUCTION COMPANY, LLC | 27 | $221M |
| 9 | BUILDER LUXURY INC | 26 | $1M |
| 10 | MK CONSTRUCTION & BUILDERS, INC. | 25 | $8M |
| 11 | DEVELOPMENT SOLUTIONS, INC | 24 | $20M |
| 12 | BEAR CONSTRUCTION COMPANY | 22 | $22M |
| 13 | CLUNE CONSTRUCTION COMPANY, L.P. | 22 | $28M |
| 14 | BULLEY & ANDREWS, L.L.C. | 21 | $111M |
| 15 | ALL-BRY CONSTRUCTION COMPANY | 19 | $20M |
| 16 | CHICAGO ROOF DECK & GARDEN, LLC | 19 | $1M |
| 17 | ALL CONCRETE CONTRACTORS INC | 18 | n/a |
| 18 | ANM MECHANICAL SERVICES LLC | 17 | $4M |
| 19 | BIG CONSTRUCTION LLC | 17 | $24M |
| 20 | REDMOND CONSTRUCTION CORP. | 17 | $27M |
20 of the half's permits — 1% — were filed by the property owner or a named individual rather than a firm. Those jobs have no contractor of record yet, which is the earliest a trade can reach them.
| Type | Permits | Value |
|---|---|---|
| PERMIT - RENOVATION/ALTERATION | 2,645 | $2.35B |
| PERMIT - NEW CONSTRUCTION | 698 | $2.51B |
| PERMIT - WRECKING/DEMOLITION | 324 | $25M |
Ranked by the construction cost stated on the permit, after the value screen described in the methodology. These are single permits, not whole developments — a tower can appear as several.
| # | Work | Applicant | Stated cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | DDS 2019 CBC: FULL BUILDING PERMIT FOR THE SUPERSTRUCTURE, ENCLOSURE, AND INTERIOR FIT OUT OF SATELLITE 1 CONCOURSE TERMINAL BUILDING AT O'HARE INTERNATIONAL AI10000 W OHARE ST | HUNT CONSTRUCTION GROUP INC | $730.0M |
| 2 | DDS 2019 CBC: INTERIOR BUILDOUT OF NEW 7-STORY CASINO, PARKING, AND EVENT CENTER BUILDING AND 34-STORY HOTEL TOWER. CAISSONS AND PILES ONLY PERMITTED UNDER 1010705 W CHICAGO AVE | BALLYS CHICAGO OPERATING COMPANY, LLC | $580.0M |
| 3 | WORK IS TO INCLUDE CONSTRUCTION OF AN ELEVATED TRANSIT STATION ON THE LOOP ELEVATED LINE AT STATE STREET AND LAKE STREET, AND ALSO IMPROVEMENTS AT THE LAKE RED 200 N STATE ST | F.H. PASCHEN, S.N. NIELSEN & ASSOCIATES, LLC. | $445.0M |
| 4 | DS 2019 CBRC: REVISION TO FULL BUILDING PERMIT 101056000 FOR THE RENOVATION OF EXISTING SPACE AND ADDITION OF APPROXIMATELY 35,960 SF AT TERMINAL 3 OF O'HARE IN10000 W OHARE AIRPORT | CLARK - W.E. O'NEIL JV | $250.0M |
| 5 | DDS 2019 CBC: FULL BUILDING PERMIT FOR THE CONFINED SPACES PORTIONS OF CONSOLIDATED TUNNEL BETWEEN FUTURE OHARE GLOBAL TERMINAL AND FUTURE SATELLITE 2 CONCOURSE10000 W OHARE ST | HUNT CONSTRUCTION GROUP INC | $220.0M |
| 6 | DDS 2019 CBC: SUPERSTRUCTURE ONLY PERMIT FOR A PROPOSED 4-STORY STADIUM WITH NO BASEMENT ON PILES. PILES ONLY PERMIT UNDER 101075594, SHALLOW FOUNDATIONS PERMIT1331 S WELLS ST | PEPPER CONSTRUCTION COMPANY | $102.0M |
| 7 | DDS 2019 CBC. NEW CONSTRUCTION FOR A ONE STORY 73,485 SF STORAGE FACILITY, CONTAINING A STORAGE (S-1) CLASSIFICATION WITH A BUSINESS (B) CLASSIFICATION AS AN AC4443 S WESTERN BLVD | ARCO/MURRAY NATIONAL CONSTRUCTION COMPANY LLC | $92.4M |
| 8 | DDS 2019 CBRC: INTERIOR ALTERATIONS TO LEVELS B2, B1, L1, AND L2 FOR BUILDING SHARED AMENITY SPACE. WORK TO INCLUDE SELECT DEMOLITION, CONSTRUCTION OF NEW NON-L100 W RANDOLPH ST | SKENDER CONSTRUCTION LLC | $50.1M |
| 9 | DDS 2019 CBRC: INTERIOR AND EXTERIOR ALTERATIONS TO EXISTING 17 STORY OFFICE BUILDING TO CONVERT IT TO A MIXED-USE BUILDING WITH GROUND FLOOR RETAIL USE, HOTEL 19 S LA SALLE ST | POWER CONSTRUCTION COMPANY, LLC | $50.0M |
| 10 | DIRECT DEVELOPER SERVICES 2019 CBC. FULL BUILDING PERMIT: MIXED-USE COMMERCIAL 3 STORY BUILDING ADDITION TO UNITED CENTER AND WILL INCLUDE 266 OFF STREET PARKIN1901 W MADISON ST | JAMES MCHUGH CONSTRUCTION CO | $50.0M |
Permit counts are directly comparable. Dollar figures are not fully comparable across borders and jurisdictions — each city defines "construction value" its own way, and the coverage column shows how many of its permits state one at all. A market is marked withheld where that share is too low to stand behind.
| Market | Permits | YoY | Screened value | Avg per costed permit | Cost coverage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| New York | 53,624 | n/a | $17.14B | $376K | 85% |
| Miami | 20,481 | +0% | $9.88B | $495K | 97.4% |
| Austin | 14,915 | -2% | withheld | n/a | 7% |
| Calgary | 9,603 | -14% | $2.93B | $333K | 91.6% |
| Nashville | 4,287 | -1% | $1.69B | $394K | 100% |
| Chicagothis report | 3,667 | -1% | $4.88B | $1.3M | 100% |
| Seattle | 3,011 | -1% | $1.80B | $604K | 99.1% |
| Hamilton | 2,337 | -7% | $897M | $405K | 94.7% |
| Vancouver | 2,036 | -9% | $3.11B | $1.6M | 98.2% |
A report is only worth the disclosure attached to it. This is the whole of it.
$1,000,000,000, and any value at or above $10,000,000 that repeats on five or more permits in the same city — a parent project total stamped onto its sub-permits, which would otherwise be counted once per sub-permit. 5 Chicago permits were screened out this half. A percentile trim was tested and rejected: it cannot tell a corrupt value from a genuine large tower.Builtie's coverage is North America wide and it is not uniform, because permit data quality is set by what each municipality publishes. The Greater Toronto Area remains the deepest market for project, builder and decision-maker data. Ask us for live sample projects in Chicago before you take any number here on trust — that is the right test, and we would rather you ran it.
Unlocking the full Chicago report…