Permits Recorded
16,434
Jan 1 – Jul 19, 2026
Declared Value
$7.0B
Applicant-reported
Avg. Time to Issuance
31 days
Filed → issued, mean
Contractors Identified
6
Named on permits
Executive summary
PropertyLabs recorded 16,434 building permits in Chicago between January 1 and July 19, 2026, spanning every stage of the pipeline from application through completion. Combined declared construction value across those permits totals $7.0B. Loop led all communities by declared value.
Key findings
Other is the leading asset class in Chicago, at 70% of counted permits (11457 of 16434).
GURTZ ELECTRIC CO is the most active named contractor/applicant in this dataset, appearing on 4 permits worth $953.1M in declared value.
Loop leads all communities on declared value at $1.7B across 1282 permits.
The largest recorded project is at 10000 W OHARE ST, O'Hare, declared at $730.0M.
Permit volume ran from 1891 in the earliest recorded month to 1609 in the latest — a snapshot of a live, moving pipeline rather than a finished period.
Data visualizations
Permit volume by month
Permits by asset class
Geographic analysis
Loop leads Chicago on declared value, followed by O'Hare and West Town. The table below ranks the top communities captured in this export by total declared construction value.
| Community | Permits | Declared Value |
|---|---|---|
| Loop | 1,282 | $1.7B |
| O'Hare | 200 | $1.3B |
| West Town | 682 | $943.9M |
| Near North Side | 1,273 | $667.8M |
| Near West Side | 882 | $363.0M |
| Lincoln Park | 505 | $250.2M |
| New City | 234 | $192.1M |
| Lake View | 619 | $169.0M |
Largest recorded project
10000 W OHARE ST · O'Hare
DDS 2019 CBC: FULL BUILDING PERMIT FOR THE SUPERSTRUCTURE, ENCLOSURE, AND INTERIOR FIT OUT OF SATELLITE 1 CONCOURSE TERMINAL BUILDING AT O'HARE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT. CAISSONS ONLY PERMIT UNDER 10106693. ERS ONLY PERMIT
Chicago's $7.0B in recorded declared value this period is a floor, not a ceiling — a meaningful share of permits in any city's data carry no declared value at all.
Methodology
This brief is built from Chicago's municipal permit data, normalized into PropertyLabs' unified permit schema. Figures count every permit recorded between January 1 and July 19, 2026, across all statuses — applications, reviews, issuances, and completions — so they describe the full pipeline, not just approvals. Where a municipality repeats a single master-project valuation across many sub-permits of one site, that valuation is counted once. This is a point-in-time snapshot (July 2026), not a full historical series.
Sources and limitations
Source: Chicago municipal open data / permit portal, extracted July 2026.
This snapshot reflects only the permits captured in PropertyLabs' most recent Chicago export and should not be read as a complete historical series. Unit counts are not consistently reported in this dataset and are omitted from totals. Figures are not comparable year-over-year from this file alone.
View live Chicago permit dataCitation & provenance
- Publisher
- PropertyLabs Research
- Last updated
- July 2026
- Municipal source
- Chicago Data Portal
- Methodology
- Read the methodology
Suggested citation: PropertyLabs Research. "Chicago Building Permit Activity: July 2026 Snapshot." Updated July 2026. https://propertylabs.org/resources/chicago-building-permit-activity
Related city permit pages
Los Angeles: Permit Activity Overview
Multifamily and commercial permit trends for Los Angeles.
Austin: Permit Activity Overview
Multifamily and commercial permit trends for Austin.
Philadelphia: Permit Activity Overview
Multifamily and commercial permit trends for Philadelphia.
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