Building Permits: release dates, results and history
Building Permits last printed 1.39M on Thu, Sep 17, 2026 against a 1.41M consensus forecast and a 1.44M prior, exactly on consensus. Captured live by Helious the moment it printed.
Permits run one to two months ahead of starts, and both land in the same residential construction report, so one release gives you what is going up now and what is coming next. Builders pull permits based on where they think demand and rates are heading, and that forward look is why permits sit in the leading economic indicators. Single-family permits are the clean trend line.
The trend
How it moves Treasuries
More permits point to growth ahead, so a higher number is mildly bearish Treasuries, though on the day it barely registers. The trend is what matters, not any single print. See it scored live on the Helious desk, or read how the standard-deviation surprise is computed.
Recent prints, as captured by the desk
| DATE | ACTUAL | FORECAST | PRIOR | SURPRISE (SD) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.39M | 1.41M | 1.44M | 0.00 | ON THE SCREWS | |
| 1.44M | 1.37M | 1.37M | 0.00 | ABOVE FORECAST | |
| 1.37M | — | 1.41M | — | BELOW PRIOR |
The 3 most recent prints from the desk's live capture, which began in July 2026, so what you see here is a sample rather than the whole record. Every row links the print page published the moment that number landed, and the full graded history is served by the API.
Official series history
| PERIOD | VALUE (M UNITS SAAR) | PRIOR | CHANGE |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.40M | 1.43M | -0.03M | |
| 1.43M | 1.37M | +0.06M | |
| 1.37M | 1.41M | -0.04M | |
| 1.41M | 1.42M | -0.01M | |
| 1.42M | 1.36M | +0.06M | |
| 1.36M | 1.54M | -0.18M | |
| 1.54M | 1.39M | +0.15M | |
| 1.39M | 1.48M | -0.09M |
These are the most recent official rows, and the chart above draws the longer series behind them. The desk-captured prints higher up the page carry the consensus forecast and the standard-deviation surprise as they stood the moment each number landed.
Related indicators
Monthly, ~mid-month, jointly with housing starts · 8:30 AM ET · download a sample (CSV, recent rows), free to cite with a link to this page. The full history comes through the Helious API and MCP at api.helious.io/mcp, with depth set by plan.