PermitPipeline Preconstruction Activity Index — August 2026

Edition: August 2026 · covering May–July 2026 · data extracted August 24, 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.

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

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

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):

Ground-up (initial New Building filings, May–July):

Finding 2 — the neighborhood map, named movers only

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, so the check is independent. 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:

NYC falling:

SF rising:

SF falling:

Finding 3 — San Francisco's July universe, itemized

Both main lanes shrank by roughly a quarter. The plan-reviewed projects still coming forward are larger: fewer filings, with a higher median declared value — 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 (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.

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

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).

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%.