August Austin Permit Report

Permit snapshot

August Permit trends

Multifamily is up 13% over twelve months and makes up 79% of everything permitted in Austin.

Apartment-scale permitting ran 6,255 homes in the twelve months to August 2026, against 5,557 the year before. On a city total of 7,901 homes, that is 79% of all new housing permitted inside Austin.

This is the number that moves the city's headline figure. It is also the one that moves on a handful of decisions rather than on broad market conditions — see below.

August: 16 permits for 994 homes.

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.

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.

* 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

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

Every multifamily home permitted in August was in four ZIP codes.

Where it is rising

The five ZIP codes with the biggest three-month gain on a year ago.

Multifamily homes permitted Jun–Aug 2026 against the same three months of the year before.

In multifamily a single permit can move a ZIP by hundreds of homes, so read these as where projects landed, not as neighbourhood trends.

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 multifamily builders

The five builders permitting the most homes, last 6 months.

New homes permitted March – August 2026, out of 2,662 homes in that window.

The permit holder is usually the general contractor rather than the developer, and one firm can appear under several names.

Notable projects

3 projects of 20+ homes, carrying 99% of the month.

August's 16 permits resolve to 4 projects once grouped by builder and ZIP. These are the largest.

The permit holder is usually the general contractor rather than the developer, and one firm can appear under several names.

Spotlight

989 of August's 994 multifamily homes came from three projects.

August's 16 multifamily permits resolve to 4 projects once grouped, of which 4 carry three or more homes. The largest three are 99% of the month.

That concentration is the structural fact about this segment. A month is not a market reading — it is a small number of decisions, any one of which can double the total.