Building Permit Activity by State
Live Census Data Updated monthly
What this is
Real, officially-sourced permit counts — not our directory data
Every county page on DMV Pathway summarizes typical local fees, hours, and office contacts, generated as planning-stage estimates for layout purposes (see the notice on each county page). This page is different: the numbers below come directly from the U.S. Census Bureau's Building Permits Survey, the federal government's own monthly count of new privately-owned housing units authorized by building permit, broken out by state. Our site fetches this release automatically each month, so the table stays current without anyone editing this page by hand.
Use it to see where new single-family home construction is accelerating or slowing, state by state, and how that compares to the same month one year ago.
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By State
New single-family homes authorized, by state
| State | 1-unit permits (latest month) | Year-over-year change |
|---|---|---|
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Click any state to see its county-by-county permit office directory.
Notes
How to read these numbers
"1-unit permits" counts single-family detached homes only — the Census Bureau also tracks 2-unit, 3-4 unit, and 5+ unit buildings separately, since multi-family construction follows different cycles. Year-over-year change compares the latest available month to the same calendar month one year earlier, which controls for normal seasonal swings (permitting is always slower in January than in June). A single month can be noisy for smaller states; the Census Bureau's own site publishes seasonally-adjusted annual rates if you need a smoother trend.
This is a state-level, aggregate statistic. It does not tell you anything about a specific county's current processing times or fees — for that, use the county directory pages linked from each state.