BC Building Permits 2026: The State of the Province
What 125,870 building permits from 10 BC cities say about how fast permits move, what gets built, and where construction is heading in 2026. Every number below comes from official municipal open data, deduplicated to unique permits and queried on 2026-07-02. Free to cite with attribution (CC BY 4.0).
Query date: 2026-07-02. Data through 2026-06-04. Totals cover the 10 BC cities publishing machine-readable permit data, counted as unique permits (one per permit number per city; overlapping feed loads deduplicated). Victoria is building permits only; its feed's electrical, plumbing, and sign permits are excluded. Per-city windows differ: Surrey starts January 2023; Kamloops, Burnaby, and Richmond publish from 2026 only and are excluded from all trend stats below.
1. Vancouver multiplex permits jumped 2.5x in 2025
Vancouver issued 373 new-building multiplex (multiple dwelling) permits in 2025, up from 148 in 2024, after the R1-1 multiplex rezoning and the province's Bill 44 small-scale multi-unit rules took effect. 2025 was also the first year multiplex permits overtook laneway houses (365).
| Year | Multiplex new-builds | Laneway new-builds | Demolitions |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 73 | 472 | 663 |
| 2020 | 82 | 384 | 551 |
| 2021 | 91 | 297 | 612 |
| 2022 | 144 | 437 | 1,016 |
| 2023 | 124 | 296 | 680 |
| 2024 | 148 | 399 | 631 |
| 2025 | 373 | 365 | 772 |
| 2026 (to May) | 112 | 102 | 255 |
Query date: 2026-07-02. Data through 2026-06-04. City of Vancouver open data. Multiplex = new-building permits whose specific use includes "Multiple Dwelling". Laneway = new-building permits with "Laneway House".
2. Vancouver permits are the fastest they have been since 2019
The median time from application to issue in Vancouver is 63 days so far in 2026, down from a peak of 117 days in 2022, a 46% improvement. The share of permits stuck for more than a year peaked at 13.8% in 2023 and fell to 4% in 2025.
| Year | Permits issued | Median days to issue | % taking over 1 year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 5,572 | 70 | 5% |
| 2020 | 4,387 | 91 | 5.7% |
| 2021 | 5,023 | 89 | 5.4% |
| 2022 | 5,936 | 117 | 7.1% |
| 2023 | 4,690 | 99 | 13.8% |
| 2024 | 4,914 | 76 | 6.4% |
| 2025 | 5,143 | 77 | 4% |
| 2026 (to May) | 1,600 | 63 | 6.2% |
Query date: 2026-07-02. Data through 2026-06-04. Elapsed days are only published by Vancouver and Kelowna among the covered cities. Outliers above 5 years excluded from medians.
3. Kelowna issues permits in about 13 days, Vancouver takes 63
Kelowna's median issue time has stayed between 6 and 18 days every year since 2019. Vancouver has never had a median below 63 days in the same period.
Query date: 2026-07-02. Data through 2026-06-04. Each city reports elapsed days in its own open-data feed; definitions of the clock start may differ between cities, so treat this as indicative rather than a like-for-like audit.
4. New buildings wait 4x longer than renovations in Vancouver
A new-building permit in Vancouver takes a median of 202 days, versus 49 days for additions and alterations.
| Type of work | Permits since 2018 | Median days to issue |
|---|---|---|
| New Building | 10,129 | 202 |
| Demolition / Deconstruction | 6,016 | 173 |
| Salvage and Abatement | 5,635 | 55 |
| Addition / Alteration | 21,779 | 49 |
| Temporary Building / Structure | 404 | 8 |
Query date: 2026-07-02. Data through 2026-06-04. City of Vancouver permits, 2018 through 2026-06-04, types with at least 300 permits.
5. May is BC's busiest permit month, December the quietest
Across full years 2018 to 2025, May saw 11,194 permits issued across the covered BC cities, about 42% more than December (7,904).
| Month | Permits issued (2018-2025) |
|---|---|
| January | 9,436 |
| February | 9,069 |
| March | 10,713 |
| April | 9,867 |
| May | 11,194 |
| June | 10,921 |
| July | 10,556 |
| August | 10,126 |
| September | 9,945 |
| October | 10,721 |
| November | 9,950 |
| December | 7,904 |
Query date: 2026-07-02. Data through 2026-06-04. Full calendar years only (2018 to 2025) so partial 2026 data does not skew the month totals.
6. About 1 in 11 Vancouver permits is a $1M+ project
9.3% of Vancouver permits with a declared value are for projects of $1 million or more (median project: $95,000). Surrey runs bigger: 14.3% of its permits are $1M+ with a median of $129,641.
| City | Permits with value | Median value | 90th percentile | % at $1M+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vancouver | 37,399 | $95,000 | $950,500 | 9.3% |
| Kelowna | 15,097 | $49,000 | $820,000 | 7% |
| Surrey | 6,417 | $129,641 | $1.3M | 14.3% |
| Victoria | 4,817 | $50,000 | $608,000 | 6.5% |
Query date: 2026-07-02. Data through 2026-06-04. Declared construction value at issuance, not final cost; permits with no reported value excluded. Victoria is building (BP) permits only; the trade permits in its feed are excluded. Surrey data starts January 2023, so its totals cover a shorter window. Each city defines and reports declared value in its own feed, so compare medians across cities with care.
7. 2026 pace: Surrey up 19%, Vancouver down 18%
Comparing January through April 2026 against the same four months of 2025, Surrey issued 940 permits versus 789 a year earlier. Vancouver moved the other way: 1,407 versus 1,724.
| City | Jan-Apr 2025 | Jan-Apr 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vancouver | 1,724 | 1,407 | -18% |
| Maple Ridge | 999 | 1,081 | +8% |
| Surrey | 789 | 940 | +19% |
| Kelowna | 554 | 548 | -1% |
| New Westminster | 193 | 206 | +7% |
| Prince George | 235 | 197 | -16% |
| Victoria | 167 | 188 | +13% |
Query date: 2026-07-02. Data through 2026-06-04. Identical Jan 1 to Apr 30 windows in both years, unique permits only, cities with data in both periods. Each city publishes its own permit mix (Victoria counted as building permits only; Surrey's feed includes sign and small-work permits), so compare each city with itself year over year; the levels are not like-for-like across cities.
8. Downtown is Vancouver's busiest permit neighbourhood
Over the last 12 months, Downtown led Vancouver with 614 permits, followed by Kensington-Cedar Cottage (301) and Dunbar-Southlands (241).
Query date: 2026-07-02. Data through 2026-06-04. City of Vancouver local planning areas, 12 months ending 2026-06-04.
Methodology
- Source: official municipal open-data portals for 10 BC cities, aggregated in the Van Permit Audit permit warehouse. Queries run 2026-07-02; newest permit record 2026-06-04.
- Deduplication: the warehouse ingests some cities from more than one overlapping feed (Victoria appears in five, Surrey in two), and some feeds were loaded more than once. All counts on this page are unique permits: one per permit number per city, keeping the most recently imported record. Raw warehouse row counts are higher and should not be cited.
- What each city's count includes: every city is counted from its own official building-permit feed, and city names are normalized (case and whitespace) before grouping. Victoria's feed also publishes electrical (EP), plumbing (PP), and sign (SP) permits; only its building (BP) permits are counted here. Other cities' feeds keep their published scope (for example, Surrey's includes sign permits), so cross-city totals are indicative; year-over-year comparisons within one city are the reliable read.
- Coverage windows differ by city: most feeds start January 2018, Surrey starts January 2023, New Westminster 2020, and Kamloops, Burnaby, and Richmond publish from 2026 only (excluded from all trend and comparison stats).
- Issue-time (elapsed days) statistics use only Vancouver and Kelowna, the two covered cities that publish elapsed days. Values above 5 years are treated as data errors and excluded.
- Project value is the declared construction value at issuance, not the final build cost.
- Multiplex counts are new-building permits whose specific use category includes "Multiple Dwelling" in the City of Vancouver feed.
- License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. Cite as "Source: Van Permit Audit (vanpermitaudit.ca)". CSV downloads on the open dataset page.
Frequently asked questions
How many building permits are issued in British Columbia?
The Van Permit Audit warehouse holds 125,870 unique building permits worth $65.5B in declared construction value across 10 BC cities, issue dates 2018 through 2026-06-04.
How long does a building permit take in Vancouver in 2026?
A median of 63 days so far in 2026, based on 1,600 issued permits. That is down from a peak median of 117 days in 2022.
How many multiplex permits has Vancouver issued since the rezoning?
Vancouver issued 373 new-building multiplex (multiple dwelling) permits in 2025, up from 148 in 2024, roughly a 2.5x jump after the R1-1 multiplex rezoning and the province's Bill 44 small-scale multi-unit rules took effect. Another 112 were issued in the first five months of 2026.
What is the busiest month for building permits in BC?
May, with 11,194 permits issued across full years 2018 to 2025. December is the quietest at 7,904.
Which BC city is issuing more permits in 2026?
Comparing January through April 2026 to the same window in 2025: Surrey is up 19% (789 to 940), while Vancouver is down 18% (1,724 to 1,407).
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Source: Van Permit Audit national permit dataset, aggregated from official municipal open-data sources, issue dates 2018 to present. Citation: “Source: Van Permit Audit (vanpermitaudit.ca).”