Building Permits — Arlington County
31,328 residential building permits, 2012-2026, from Arlington’s open data portal — real data, refreshed daily.
Building permits are not what SB 665 asks for. A permit authorizes construction; Section A(9) covers the land-entitlement decisions that come first — rezonings, site plans, subdivisions. This tab shows what a locality with good permit data can already publish. The SB 665 Development Applications tab shows what the bill actually requires.
Residential Permits
31,328
2012-2026
New Construction
4,659
15% of permits
Total Permit Value
$3.8B
Additions + alterations + new
Data Source
Arlington Open Data
347,903 total records
Residential Permits Filed by Work Type
Counted by application date — a bar is when the permit was filed, whether or not it was ever issued. 2012-2026. One row per permit.
Residential Permit Locations
One dot per permit, placed from coordinates in the county extract. Coloured by work type — the only category Arlington records. Shows new construction by default; filter by year and work type.
Residential New Construction — Cohort State Distribution Over Time
Arlington residential new construction permits, applications 2012 onward (PermitSubTypeCode 'RNEW' under Permits Plus, 'New' under Permit Arlington). The Closed/Finaled band only appears from 2022: Permits Plus recorded no completion date, so earlier cohorts show as Issued indefinitely even though about 78% of them did final — read the missing green as unrecorded, not as unfinished. One row per filed permit. Note that townhouse buildings are filed as one permit per unit by Arlington, so they are counted accordingly. At each day t, every application is in exactly one of: In Review, Issued (active), Closed/Finaled, or Rejected/Expired. In-Review applications turn red after the SB 665 12-month threshold. Bands are shares of the permits actually observed to day t, not of the whole cohort — a permit filed last month says nothing about day 200, so it is excluded there rather than counted as still in review. Each chart therefore stops where its remaining sample gets too thin (the 'obs' figure), which is why recent cohorts run shorter. All cohorts share the same 0–2 year x-axis so they can be compared at a glance.
Processing Time (Applied → Issued)
Days from application to issuance, counting only permits that were issued. This is how long approval takes, not how long a pending application has been waiting.
| Work Type | Permits | Median | Mean | 90th %ile |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| New Construction | 4,057 | 110d | 135d | 230d |
| Additions | 13,048 | 35d | 56d | 128d |
| Alterations | 10,694 | 8d | 16d | 35d |
Application Outcomes by Year
| Year | Total | Closed | P<1y | P>1y | Den/Wd |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | 1,437 | 1,345 | - | 47 | - |
| 2013 | 1,447 | 1,366 | - | 58 | - |
| 2014 | 1,646 | 1,568 | - | 35 | - |
| 2015 | 2,479 | 2,290 | - | 79 | - |
| 2016 | 2,478 | 2,105 | - | 127 | - |
| 2017 | 2,520 | 2,112 | - | 136 | - |
| 2018 | 2,559 | 1,941 | - | 168 | - |
| 2019 | 2,492 | 1,521 | - | 288 | - |
| 2020 | 1,485 | 1,048 | - | 149 | - |
| 2021 | 1,657 | 816 | - | 169 | - |
| 2022 | 2,005 | 789 | - | 284 | 1 |
| 2023 | 2,363 | 938 | - | 353 | - |
| 2024 | 2,522 | 985 | - | 365 | - |
| 2025 | 2,752 | 942 | 174 | 195 | - |
| 2026 | 1,486 | 150 | 705 | - | - |
SB 665 / HB 356 — Section A(9)
Localities over 3,500 population must report residential development applications submitted, approved and denied each year — with unit counts, unit types, tenure, affordability targeting and permitted density. Some localities already publish parts of this; Section A(9) makes the reporting uniform statewide.