Cedar's Austin Market Monitor is a monthly newsletter for the people building Austin's housing. We use public permit data to show where the market is heading: where new homes are going, how long approvals take, and who's building. This issue covers August 2026, with data
through 4 November 2026.
Last 3 months+24%475 permits Jun–Aug 2026, vs 383 a year earlier
Permit Issue time66 daysmedian SF, last 12 months
Urban Infill15%of new permits are missing middle, last 12 months, vs 24% the year before
August Permit trends
Infill is down 9% over twelve months and makes up
21% of everything permitted in Austin.
Small-scale housing ran 1,646 homes in the twelve months
to August 2026, against 1,817 the
year before, on a city total of 7,901.
Within that, detached houses carried 1,341 homes and
the missing middle — attached single-family homes, duplexes, 3–4 unit buildings and
accessory units —
carried 305, or
19% of infill.
August: 134 permits for
134 homes.
Housing type
Permits
Homes
Detached house
130
130
Attached single-family (townhouse/rowhouse)
2
2
Duplex
2
2
DetachedMissing middle
Monthly home counts are lumpy by nature — one permit can
carry hundreds of homes. We lead on the trailing twelve months for that reason,
and treat any single month as texture rather than trend. The current partial
month is excluded entirely.
Attached single-family homes (townhouses) are read from the permit description, because Austin
files them under the same Census class as detached houses. The window total is
sound; treat the month-to-month attached single-family figure as soft.
Permit turnaround
How long the city takes to issue a new-home permit.
Median days from application to issue for permits issued
September 2025 – August 2026. The second column removes the slowest 10% of
permits to account for stalled applications.
Housing type
Permits
Median days
Excl. slowest 10%
Single-family
1,390
66
58
2–4 units
193
127
110
Multifamily & mixed use*
122
376
299
* 41% of multifamily & mixed use permits issued in this window were applied for more than three years earlier. These figures mostly reflect a backlog clearing, not what a filing today should expect.
Median days to permit issue
Single-family2–4 units
Each point is the median over the 3 months ending that
month, because 2–4 unit permits run as low as two a month. Gaps are windows
under 10 permits. Multifamily is left off: at 0–26 permits a
month its median follows which projects happened to be issued, not how long review
takes.
Where it was permitted
The top five ZIP codes carried 59% of August's infill homes.
None1–45–910+
ZIP
Homes
Share
1. 78747
20
15%
2. 78754
19
14%
3. 78653
19
14%
4. 78704
11
8%
5. 78757
10
7%
Where it is rising
The five ZIP codes with the biggest three-month gain on a year ago.
Infill homes permitted Jun–Aug 2026 against the same three months of
the year before.
−50+−20–49−1–19No change+1–19+20–49+50+
ZIP
Jun–Aug 2025
Jun–Aug 2026
Change
1. 78754
0
71
+71
2. 78653
1
34
+33
3. 78747
60
79
+19
4. 78723
6
20
+14
5. 78758
4
16
+12
Only permits inside the City of Austin full-purpose limits are
counted, so ZIPs that straddle the city line show the city's part only. Hover a
ZIP for its figures.
Top infill builders
The five builders permitting the most homes, last 6 months.
New homes permitted March – August 2026, out of
945 homes in that window.
Builder
Homes
Permits
Milestone Community Builders, LLC
96
90
Century Land Holdings II, LLC
66
66
New Home Co
46
46
Trophy Signature Homes
35
35
David Weekley Homes
30
30
The permit holder is usually the general contractor rather than
the developer, and one firm can appear under several names. 112 homes on 111 permits (12%) name no holder and are not ranked.
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