A newer version of this project is available. See below for other available versions.

State of the Cities Dataset (SOCDS) Building Permits

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) United States Department of Housing and Urban Development

Version: View help for Version V1

Name	File Type	Size	Last Modified
bpdata4web.zip	application/zip	76.8 MB	03/10/2025 12:28:PM
bpdata4web_prelim.zip	application/zip	4.1 MB	03/11/2025 09:22:AM
monthly_final.zip	application/zip	36.3 MB	03/11/2025 09:28:AM
monthly_prelim.zip	application/zip	963.9 KB	03/11/2025 09:29:AM

Project Citation:

United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. State of the Cities Dataset (SOCDS) Building Permits. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2025-03-11. https://doi.org/10.3886/E222283V1

Project Description

Project Title: State of the Cities Dataset (SOCDS) Building Permits

Summary:

This database contains data on permits for residential construction issued by nearly 20,000 jurisdictions collected in the Census Bureau's Building Permits Survey. You can create output tables at the State, County, CBSA or permit-issuing jurisdiction level.

Monthly data are available from January 1997 through the most recent reporting month for about 9,000 jurisdictions that respond to the monthly survey. The remaining jurisdictions report annual data only. Thus, annual figures will not necessarily match the monthly totals.

Final monthly data for any given calendar year is published in May of the following year. For that same calendar year, any data that is published prior to the final publication date is labeled as Preliminary in this application. Preliminary data issued in the current year is subject to subsequent monthly revision throughout it's given calendar year. Both preliminary and final monthly data may also include imputed values, created by the Census Bureau when actual jurisdictional permit activity is unavailable. Since County, State, and CBSA data are derived from aggregations of jurisdictional data, their totals may reflect a mix of both reported and imputed values, and thus are not identified as imputed values in their respective output tables.

Annual data are available from 1980 through the most recent reporting year, and may also contain imputed values.

Data files include HUD's original Access 2000 databases as well as .csv extracts of the internal tables of the databases.

Original Distribution URL: https://socds.huduser.gov/permits/help

Scope of Project

Geographic Coverage: United States of America

Time Period(s): 1/1/1980 – 12/31/2024 (1980-2024)

Data Type(s): survey data

Methodology

Geographic Unit: permit-issuing jurisdiction

Related Publications

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Published Versions

V2 [2026-04-27]

V1 [2025-03-11]

Export Metadata

Dublin Core

DDI 2.5

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This material is distributed exactly as received from the data depositor. ICPSR has not reviewed, checked, or processed this material. For additional information about the study, please contact the investigator(s) directly. If you have questions about the accessibility of materials distributed by ICPSR or require further assistance, please visit ICPSR's Accessibility Center.