US building permits, monthly
Monthly US building-permits intelligence panel, 1960-01 onward: new privately-owned housing units authorized in permit-issuing places (total units, thousands, seasonally adjusted annual rate; FRED PERMIT, U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, New Residential Construction release, redistributed keyless via FRED fredgraph.csv). Carries 1-month and 12-month changes (levels and percents), the 3-month annualized percent change, and a contraction_flag marking months with fewer permits authorized than a year earlier. Method caveats: the 2005-02-16 release expanded the permit-issuing universe from 19,000 to 20,000 places (level break kept verbatim); Census revises history with each vintage. One row per month x USA; in-window nulls fail loudly, never imputed. Who joins this: home-improvement merchants join demand on year_month + country_code and use permits_yoy_pct / contraction_flag as housing-demand features; sales teams weight pipeline by the contraction regime.
- Rows
- 800
- Columns
- 12
- Source cadence
- Monthly
- Last refreshed
- Sep 29, 2026
- Theme
- housing
| Column | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| month_start | date | First day of the calendar month. (unit: date) |
| year_month | string | Calendar month as YYYY-MM (panel join key). (unit: string) |
| country | string | Country name (shared normalization layer). (unit: string) |
| country_code | string | ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 country code (USA). (unit: string) |
| permits_thousands | float | New privately-owned housing units authorized in permit-issuing places (FRED PERMIT; Census/HUD New Residential Construction). (unit: thousands of units, SAAR) |
| permits_mom_thousands | float | 1-month change in authorized units (null for the first panel month). (unit: thousands of units) |
| permits_mom_pct | float | 1-month percent change in authorized units (null for the first panel month). (unit: percent) |
| permits_yoy_thousands | float | 12-month change in authorized units (null for the first panel year). (unit: thousands of units) |
| permits_yoy_pct | float | 12-month percent change in authorized units (null for the first panel year). (unit: percent) |
| permits_3m_ann_pct | float | 3-month annualized percent change in authorized units (null for the first 3 panel months). (unit: percent) |
| contraction_flag | integer | 1 when 12-month permits growth is negative (fewer units authorized than a year earlier), else 0. (unit: flag) |
| row_hash | string | Deterministic 16-hex sha256 of year_month + the permit level (idempotency key). (unit: string) |
First 10 sample rows — a preview, not the complete dataset.
| month_start | year_month | country | country_code | permits_thousands | permits_mom_thousands | permits_mom_pct | permits_yoy_thousands | permits_yoy_pct | permits_3m_ann_pct | contraction_flag | row_hash |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1960-01-01 | 1960-01 | United States | USA | 1,092 | — | — | — | — | — | 0 | 1081404b5f733055 |
| 1960-02-01 | 1960-02 | United States | USA | 1,088 | -4 | -0.366 | — | — | — | 0 | 487093f986e0f227 |
| 1960-03-01 | 1960-03 | United States | USA | 955 | -133 | -12.224 | — | — | — | 0 | 9f34ea4fa9205e05 |
| 1960-04-01 | 1960-04 | United States | USA | 1,016 | 61 | 6.387 | — | — | -25.065 | 0 | 6d61ace2b4cd4e18 |
| 1960-05-01 | 1960-05 | United States | USA | 1,052 | 36 | 3.543 | — | — | -12.593 | 0 | fb3ebfeac092d576 |
| 1960-06-01 | 1960-06 | United States | USA | 958 | -94 | -8.935 | — | — | 1.262 | 0 | 3aca397ba7d6527d |
| 1960-07-01 | 1960-07 | United States | USA | 999 | 41 | 4.28 | — | — | -6.527 | 0 | c35ff658013fddaf |
| 1960-08-01 | 1960-08 | United States | USA | 994 | -5 | -0.501 | — | — | -20.296 | 0 | daf2618e18311fc3 |
| 1960-09-01 | 1960-09 | United States | USA | 984 | -10 | -1.006 | — | — | 11.306 | 0 | 6ed22d421c7e7eee |
| 1960-10-01 | 1960-10 | United States | USA | 972 | -12 | -1.22 | — | — | -10.38 | 0 | 345e220ec912c232 |
Profiled Sep 29, 2026 from snapshot
Measured- Completeness
- 99.7%
- Rows
- 800
- Columns
- 12
- Columns with gaps
- 5
| Column | Missing | Distinct | Range | Distribution |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| month_startdate | 0% | 856 | Jan 1, 1960 → Aug 1, 2026 | — |
| year_monthvarchar | 0% | 807 | — |
|
| countryvarchar | 0% | 1 | — |
|
| country_codevarchar | 0% | 1 | — |
|
| permits_thousandsdouble | 0% | 694 | 513 → 2,419median 1,377 | 16 outside 1st–99th percentile |
| permits_mom_thousandsdouble | 0.13% | 302 | -419 → 326median 2 | 16 outside 1st–99th percentile |
| permits_mom_pctdouble | 0.13% | 805 | -23.97 → 33.92median 0.1443 | 16 outside 1st–99th percentile |
| permits_yoy_thousandsdouble | 1.5% | 653 | -1,131 → 856median 48.5 | 16 outside 1st–99th percentile |
| permits_yoy_pctdouble | 1.5% | 825 | -55.03 → 93.76median 3.57 | 16 outside 1st–99th percentile |
| permits_3m_ann_pctdouble | 0.38% | 874 | -84.12 → 535.42median 3.52 | 16 outside 1st–99th percentile |
| contraction_flagbigint | 0% | 2 | 0 → 1median 0 | |
| row_hashvarchar | 0% | 970 | — |
|
- Current
20260929T230707Z-06f5207b7173 · sha256 06f5207b7173…
800 rows · first snapshot
Point any LLM at the metadata endpoint — the documentation above is machine-readable too (JSON-LD + Croissant).
curl "https://datazimuts.com/v1/datasets/fred_permit_intel/us_building_permits_monthly" | jq '{title, rows, columns_count, license}'import requests
ds = requests.get("https://datazimuts.com/v1/datasets/fred_permit_intel/us_building_permits_monthly").json()
print(ds["title"], ds["rows"], "rows")
# Sample rows for an LLM context window
for row in ds.get("sample_rows", [])[:5]:
print(row)API endpoint: https://datazimuts.com/v1/datasets/fred_permit_intel/us_building_permits_monthly
Tip: fetch /llms.txt for the full machine-readable catalog.
Where this data comes from and what was made from it. Other people's work shows as counts; only shared projects are named.
Cite this snapshot
Pinned to snapshot 20260929T230707Z-06f5207b7173 and its content hash, so readers get exactly the data you used.
US Building-Permits Intelligence (FRED, keyless). (2026). US building permits, monthly [Data set, snapshot 20260929T230707Z-06f5207b7173, sha256 06f5207b7173]. Datazimuts. Retrieved 2026-09-30, from https://datazimuts.com/en/datasets/fred_permit_intel/us_building_permits_monthly?snapshot=20260929T230707Z-06f5207b7173
@misc{dz_fred_permit_intel_us_building_permits_mo_06f5207b,
title = {{US building permits, monthly}},
author = {{US Building-Permits Intelligence (FRED, keyless)}},
year = {2026},
publisher = {Datazimuts},
howpublished = {\url{https://datazimuts.com/en/datasets/fred_permit_intel/us_building_permits_monthly?snapshot=20260929T230707Z-06f5207b7173}},
note = {Snapshot 20260929T230707Z-06f5207b7173, sha256 06f5207b7173ec04002004d99fefa48981926d097f31492f6cf1b633c604c33c; accessed 2026-09-30}
}Embed a table or a chart
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<iframe src="https://datazimuts.com/embed/chart?dataset=fred_permit_intel%2Fus_building_permits_monthly&lang=en&theme=auto&snapshot=20260929T230707Z-06f5207b7173&x=year_month&y=permits_thousands&agg=avg" title="US building permits, monthly" width="100%" height="380" style="border:0" loading="lazy"></iframe>
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