Building permit data from the first three months of 2025 are concerning. The dollar amount and number of application are down.
The dollar amount can be quite lumpy due to large projects dominating. For example there is the $400M Cardinal Glennon Hospital permit application yet to be issued. So analysis of or extrapolation from short time periods is problematic.
The quantity of permits is dominated by smaller projects. Here we see a drop of 12.6% from last year and 21% from 2023. Data are from the city’s permit database. I excluded addendums, tents, property line surveys, and such.
Why are permit applications down? January’s snowstorm and aftermath contributed certainly. Then there are high interest rates and rising building materials and labor costs. Though those have been high for a while. More recently we have uncertainty and chaos around foreign student admissions (like SLU expecting 1000 more graduate students last fall that were denied), university grant funding, federal job cuts, and tariffs.
Data from other cities would be helpful to see the bigger picture. In Chicago the number issued is down 17.7% Jan-Mar compared to last year, and 20.3% from 2023. We will see what the next quarter brings.
