Permit Activity Rate
New privately-owned housing units authorized by building permits, measured against the resident population.
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New privately-owned housing units authorized by building or zoning permits, measured against the resident population.
The Census Bureau's definition of a building or zoning permit reads: "The approval given by a local jurisdiction to proceed on a construction project. Note that not all areas of the country require a permit for construction." A housing unit is "a house, an apartment, a group of rooms, or a single room intended for occupancy as separate living quarters" (Building Permits Survey definitions).
The survey covers new privately-owned residential construction only. Publicly owned units, "HUD-code" manufactured (mobile) homes, group quarters such as dormitories and rooming houses, transient accommodations, moved or relocated buildings, and housing units created inside an existing structure are all excluded.
Permits precede occupancy by roughly a year, so this describes the housing a place is about to have rather than the housing it has. Population denominators come from the Census Bureau's Population Estimates Program.
Metrics in this family#
Permit activity rate
Housing units authorized per 1,000 residents. Permitting is lumpy in small places, where a single filing can dominate one survey year, so the rate is read across a window of recent years rather than a single year.
Permit activity trend
Change in that rate over 3, 5, or 10 years, selectable in the tool. The family also carries a one-year change and a comparison of the latest year against its own recent average.
Ten-year permit scale
Total units authorized over the past ten years, in absolute terms rather than per resident. It separates places that permit a large amount of housing from places that permit a large amount relative to their size.
Considerations#
Annual figures run from 2013 and monthly figures from January 2020, in both cases through the most recent release. Publication lags the present, and recent periods can move as late reports arrive.
A permit is not a housing unit. Permits can expire or go unbuilt, and the interval between authorization and completion varies by market.
Not all permit offices report. The Bureau imputes activity for nonrespondents. For 2024 it reported an average unit response rate of approximately 66 percent for revised monthly estimates, rising to approximately 81 percent after the annual survey, and a total quantity response rate of approximately 79 percent monthly and approximately 90 percent for the final annual estimate (methodology).
Construction outside permit-requiring areas is not counted. The Bureau states that "for the nation as a whole, less than 1 percent of all privately owned housing units are constructed in areas not requiring building permits. However, this proportion varies greatly from state to state and among metropolitan areas."
The Bureau also warns that "changes in boundaries of localities resulting from annexations, new incorporations, etc., result in some problems of comparability over time, even for statistics for the same places."
The ten-year window spans two decennial population bases, so decade-long comparisons cross one rebasing point. Connecticut, whose county-equivalent geography was replaced by planning regions, has no ten-year county reading.
Permits are published for places, counties and metro areas, not tracts. See how we combine geographies.
References#
- 1Building Permits Survey definitionshttps://www.census.gov/construction/bps/definitions.html
- 2Population Estimates Programhttps://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/popest.html
- 3Building Permits Survey Methodologyhttps://www.census.gov/construction/bps/methodology.html