Seattle, Washington
Our fourth market. Every figure on this page comes from the current Seattle qualification cycle, run on issued permit records from the City of Seattle open data portal. The newest permits in this cycle were issued two days before the run; the dataset itself was updated the day of the run. Other markets open only after their data passes the same checks; the markets section on the home page shows what is live and what is in preparation.
Latest 30-day run of the qualification engine on City of Seattle records.
How to read Seattle honestly, because this market is different: the Seattle record names a contractor on only 8.3 percent of records, and the source schema has no applicant or owner column at all. That is why 404 of 441 projects (91.6 percent) are Class C watchlist items naming no party. Contractor naming is concentrated where the record supports it: all 31 Roof projects this cycle name their contractor, while only 6 of 375 Building Permit projects name one. A Seattle subscription is therefore a project watchlist with full trade and territory matching on every project, plus a named-party segment that is real but small and roof-heavy. We would rather say that plainly than dress the market up as something it is not.
The value shape is the opposite of our other markets: Seattle skews large. The median stated project value this cycle is $100,000. By stated value: 109 projects under $25,000, 139 between $25,000 and $150,000, 187 over $150,000, and 6 with no plausible value stated. 98.6 percent of projects (435) carry a stated valuation, totaling $274,895,926 counted once per project, and that total is driven by a small number of very large projects (the largest single stated value is flagged as an outlier in its own record; see the table below).
The source permit classes split this cycle’s projects as 349 residential and 92 commercial, with none unclassified.
How Seattle projects are classified
Every project carries one class, and the class says only what the record supports. No class claims that any scope of work is unfilled. In Seattle the classes also say, honestly, how often the record names anybody at all.
Class A Contractor named on a building permit
A contractor company is named in the record on one of the project’s building permits. The source carries a single untyped contractor name and never types that contractor as a general contractor, so PermitScope does not call these parties general contractors, here or anywhere. Six projects this cycle.
Class B Trade-led
No contractor is named on a building permit, but a contractor is named on a trade permit in the project, most often the roofing contractor on a Roof permit. There is no applicant fallback in this market, because the source has no applicant column; where Austin and New Orleans say applicant-led, Seattle simply has nobody else to name. 31 projects this cycle, and every one of them is a roof project whose roofer is named in the record.
Class C Watchlist
No party is named anywhere in the record. In most markets this is the small class; in Seattle it is 404 of 441 projects (91.6 percent), a structural fact about the source, not a gap in the engine. These projects still carry full scope text, stated values, and audited trade matching, so they are genuine watchlist intelligence; they just do not tell you who is running the job, because the city record does not say.
Mapped from real Seattle permit scope, hand-audited
These are the trades PermitScope has hand-audited in Seattle. Each was sampled project by project against the actual permit scope text, the matching rules were corrected locally for Seattle permit language, and the corrected counts were re-verified on fresh samples before any figure was published. Implied trades are PermitScope inference from scope text and permit types, and they are labeled as inference on every project card in every report.
Matched this cycle under the corrected, audited rules: Roofing 174 projects (39.5 percent), Painting 172 (39.0 percent), Drywall 168 (38.1 percent), Framing 160 (36.3 percent), Excavation 157 (35.6 percent), Concrete 148 (33.6 percent). 281 projects (63.7 percent) carry at least one implied trade.
Other trade labels appear in the data but have not been hand-audited in this market, so PermitScope does not market them by name here until they are audited. One label is corrected to zero and stays off the list: a landscaping label in the original run came from roofing text (a brand of roof deck material and rooftop deck wording on roof scopes), which does not document landscaping work, so no landscaping figure is presented for Seattle.
Territory in Seattle works two ways, your choice. By ZIP code: the source publishes a site ZIP on most records, and 400 of this cycle’s 441 projects carry one. Or by radius around your base address: coordinates are present on 99.8 percent of records, and PermitScope matches your projects by distance from the base point you give us. One project this cycle carries neither a ZIP nor coordinates in the record; it appears in citywide counts and in no territory slice, and we say so rather than guess where it belongs.
Largest projects by stated value in the record
Values are the filer’s reported construction value, printed only when the record states at least $500. The party named is the party named in the record, where one is named.
| Project | Stated value | Party named in record | Recorded scope |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2929 27th Ave S | $69,876,675 | none named (Class C) | Construct new mixed-use building, occupy per plan, mechanical included (1 permit, issued 2026-10-08) |
| 123 Boylston Ave E | $57,000,000 | none named (Class C) | Demolish north commercial office building and associated south parking structure, per plan (1 permit, 2026-10-09) |
| 2402 2nd Ave | $16,012,212 | none named (Class C) | Establish use as permanent supportive housing for 83 stacked dwelling units and human services facilities; construct new mixed-use building (1 permit, 2026-10-07) |
| 1604 Aurora Ave N | $8,008,660 | none named (Class C) | Phased project: construction of a residential apartment building with below grade parking, mechanical included (1 permit, 2026-10-13) |
| 6740 M L King Jr Way S | $5,066,781 | none named (Class C) | Establish use as apartments and retail, construct new mixed use apartment building, mechanical included (1 permit, 2026-10-15) |
| 5623 A 44th Ave SW | $4,664,779 | none named (Class C) | Construct east two-family dwelling, part of a multi-unit housing development (1 permit, 2026-10-13) |
| 1405 6th Ave | $4,380,615 | none named (Class C) | Change use from medical services to concert hall; interior alterations for a performance hall at Suite 305 (1 permit, 2026-10-19) |
| 925 Terrace St | $4,281,099 | none named (Class C) | Establish use as office, construct modular office building, mechanical included (1 permit, 2026-10-15) |
| 11515 Phinney Ave N | $4,000,000 | none named (Class C) | Demolish existing one family dwelling and accessory structures, per plan (1 permit, 2026-10-07) |
Read this table with the market’s structure in mind: every one of the nine largest projects names no party at all and is Class C. Value alone never makes a named-party lead; the class follows the named parties, not the dollar figure, and in Seattle the biggest projects are watchlist items until a party appears in the record. The largest stated value on the table is flagged as an outlier in its own project record: it is the figure the live record carries, printed because the record states it, not because it has been independently validated as a budget.
Real reports, built from this cycle’s records
The Seattle sample below was generated from live records by the same engine that builds subscriber digests, and its featured projects were re-verified permit by permit against the city’s live data.
Seattle Construction Intelligence, sample report
The cycle at a glance, the largest projects with the market’s party-naming limits stated plainly, activity by audited trade, measured data quality, and three verified project cards.
Read the sample reportMethod and honesty notes
• Valuations are filer-reported construction values, not verified budgets. Placeholder values under $500 are $1, $0, or $250 in this source; the 4 projects that rest on placeholder values only are flagged and never printed as dollar figures. 10 projects carry conflicting valuations across their permits; the engine shows the conflict rather than summing them. The cycle’s largest stated value is flagged as an outlier in its project record.
• Only records with Issued or Phase Issued status are treated as active, and the fetch requires an issued date. Completed records, which carry an issued date but describe finished jobs, are excluded, never assumed active.
• A permit says work was authorized. It never says a scope is open, a bid is being taken, or a contractor is hiring. No project on this page claims availability of work.
• Completeness in the source this cycle: scope, address, and issue date 100 percent of records; valuation present on 100 percent (98.7 percent plausible at $500 or more); ZIP on 91.3 percent; coordinates on 99.8 percent; the contractor column on 8.3 percent, with no applicant or owner column in the schema at all.
Data: City of Seattle Open Data, Building Permits dataset (dataset identifier 76t5-zqzr), public records as published, public domain, with attribution to the City of Seattle. PermitScope reads the records; the city does not endorse this service, and subscribers receive no advance or privileged access to them.
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Permit data is public record information published by each city we serve. PermitScope reads and organizes the records; no city endorses this service, and subscribers receive no advance or privileged access to the records.
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