Census revises August building permits up to 1,403,000, still below July

Census revised its estimate of August 2026 building permits to a seasonally adjusted annual rate (SAAR) of 1,403,000 units. The number comes from the Census Bureau’s Building Permits Survey, which posted its fuller monthly count on September 24, 2026, a week after the preliminary figure appeared in the September 17 New Residential Construction release. The revised August rate sits 2.1% below the revised July rate of 1,433,000 but 4.2% above August 2025’s 1,347,000. It also lands 9,000 units higher than the 1,394,000 preliminary estimate Census reported on release day. The current reading ranks as the seventh-lowest of the past 25 months, and it sits below the trailing 12-month average of about 1,425,000.

What moved

By Census region, permits fell in the Northeast and Midwest and rose in the West from July to August. The Northeast dropped 15.8% to a 128,000 rate, the Midwest fell 5.8% to 212,000, the South held flat at 748,000, and the West rose 2.3% to 315,000. The South alone accounts for more than half of national permit volume.

By structure type, single-family permits were revised to an 880,000 rate, up from the preliminary 878,000 but down 1.6% from July’s revised 894,000. Permits for buildings with five or more units came in at 475,000, revised up from a preliminary 467,000 but down 1.5% from July’s 482,000. The remaining 48,000 permits, about 3% of the total, covered buildings with two to four units. Single-family permits made up 63% of the August total and five-plus-unit buildings made up 34%.

How to use this number

If your backlog sits mostly in one Census region, weight this release by that region instead of the national figure. A Northeast contractor watching permits fall 15.8% in a single month gets an early read on bid volume six to nine months out, since permits typically lead the start of construction by that stretch. Compare the regional permit trend against your own bid pipeline to see whether your backlog is outrunning or lagging the broader market.

The single-family and multifamily split is also worth tracking on its own if you work with production homebuilders or multifamily developers. Both segments eased from July this month even as the multifamily share held near a third of total volume, so a shift in that ratio is worth watching before it shows up in your own bid calendar.

Revisions and caveats

Today’s release revises the August estimate rather than adding a new month of data. The Building Permits Survey publishes twice for the same month: a preliminary national estimate in the New Residential Construction release, usually around the 12th workday, and a fuller estimate with state and metro detail around the 17th workday. The August SAAR moved from 1,394,000 to 1,403,000 between those two releases as more permit offices reported in.

Since January 2022, the survey has tabulated the full universe of roughly 20,000 permit-issuing places rather than a probability sample, so Census does not publish a margin of error for the permits figure. That distinguishes it from housing starts, which still come from a sample survey and carried a stated ±12.0% confidence interval in the September 17 release. Nonresponding jurisdictions have their permit activity imputed from division- and state-level ratios tied to each place’s prior-year permit count; Census reported an average unit response rate of about 66% for revised monthly estimates in 2024. The U.S. and regional totals are also revised again each year during Census’s annual benchmarking process, so August’s rate could move once more when 2026 annual results are finalized.