Seattle's median permit states $139,508 — higher than Nashville, Chicago, Vancouver, Calgary or New York. Volume is flat at 3,011 and screened value is up 27% to $1.80B. Seattle does fewer, larger, better-documented jobs: 99.1% of its permits state a construction cost.
Monthly volume sits between 350 and 620 in both years with no trend. The value line runs consistently above 2025 from February onward.
1,633 Seattle permits carry coordinates and not one of them lands in Seattle. 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.
Only 2.2% of Seattle permits name an applicant — 65 of 3,011. A leaderboard built on that would rank whoever happens to have been recorded, not whoever is busiest.
Builtie resolves the firms behind a project from company and decision-maker records rather than from the permit form alone, so this gap constrains this page — not the platform. Ask for live sample projects in this market and you will see named companies against them.
| Type | Permits | Value |
|---|---|---|
| Building / Addition/Alteration | 1,990 | $493M |
| Building / New | 715 | $488M |
| Demolition / Demolition | 159 | $633M |
| Demolition | 73 | $124M |
| Building / Tenant Improvment | 70 | $64M |
| Demolition / Deconstruction | 4 | $2M |
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 | Demolish institutional building [UW CHEMISTRY LIBRARY] per plan.3923 OKANOGAN LN NE | — | $127.6M |
| 2 | Demolish Northern portable classroom accessory to Aki Kurose Middle School per plan.3928 S GRAHAM ST | — | $100.0M |
| 3 | Demolish Southern portable classroom accessory to Aki Kurose Middle School per plan.3928 S GRAHAM ST | — | $100.0M |
| 4 | PHASED PROJECT: Construct mixed-use apartment building with below-grade parking occupy per plan. Mechanical included with Phase 2.1740 NW MARKET ST | — | $52.6M |
| 5 | Demolish existing commercial building per plan.1766 NW MARKET ST | — | $49.2M |
| 6 | Demolish existing commercial building per plan.1752 NW MARKET ST | — | $49.2M |
| 7 | Demolish commercial building per plan.1740 NW MARKET ST | — | $49.2M |
| 8 | Demolish existing commercial building per plan.1734 NW MARKET ST | — | $49.2M |
| 9 | Construct addition & substantial alterations to institutional building (Aki Kurose Middle School) occupy per plan. Mechanical included3928 S GRAHAM ST | — | $41.9M |
| 10 | Demolish existing multifamily building per plan.2404 2ND AVE | — | $34.0M |
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% |
| Chicago | 3,667 | -1% | $4.88B | $1.3M | 100% |
| Seattlethis report | 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. 3 Seattle 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 Seattle before you take any number here on trust — that is the right test, and we would rather you ran it.
Unlocking the full Seattle report…