How we count permits on the county and city pages
The numbers on our county and city permit pages come from the permit offices we read, and each one is a floor. We take out known duplicates, round totals down to the thousand, and only rank a contractor when we can match the permit to a Florida license. When a month or an office looks thin, the page says so instead of calling it a slowdown.
Updated
Why every number is a floor
A permit count on our county and city pages means at least this many, never the full total.
We don't read every office in every county. Some towns aren't in our record at all, some offices post late, and some of our sources start partway through their history. Jacksonville's, for one, starts in August 2022. So the real number is higher than ours, sometimes by a lot.
Totals on record leave out the rows we've marked as known duplicates, and they're rounded down to the nearest thousand. A page never prints more than we hold.
The monthly chart, and the asterisks
Each county page charts the 12 most recent published months, all trades together. A month counts as published 30 days after it closes, because permits keep landing for weeks after the month ends, and a chart that showed the open month would look like a collapse every time.
An asterisk means that month came in at least 25% under the median of the 12 shown. Nearly every time, that's an office posting late or a gap in one of our sources, not a real slowdown. We only make that call when at least six of the months have permits and the median is 30 or more. The county page names the flagged months under its chart.
Cities don't get a chart. Our monthly numbers are kept by county, so a city page shows its own department's totals and sends you to its county page for the trend.
Offices that are behind
If the newest permit we hold for a page is more than two weeks older than the day we read it, the page says so right under the date. On a county page, any office we read that hasn't posted recently is named under the totals, with the date of its latest permit.
How the filer board ranks licenses
The board covers the latest full calendar quarter. Not the one in progress: its permits are still arriving, and a board built on them would mostly reward whichever office posts fastest.
Only permits we could match to a Florida license count. Each license is ranked on its own, so a company holding two licenses can show up twice. Permits with no license we can match aren't ranked at all, which is why the board's numbers are floors too.
The busiest named trade
Each county page names the trade with the most permits over the same 12 months, picked from roofing, HVAC, plumbing, electrical, solar, windows and doors, and pool. General building permits sit out that comparison. One permit can name more than one trade, so the trade counts don't add up to the total.
What the latest-permits list shows, and what it leaves off
The issue date, the kind of work, the city and ZIP, the declared value when there is one, and the licensed contractor when we can match one. We keep street addresses, owners, phone numbers, emails and the permit's free-text description off these public pages. In Market Intel, each row carries the street address.
County pages and city pages count different things
A city page counts only that city's own building department. A county page counts every office we read in the county, cities included. So the Jacksonville page and the Duval County page show different numbers, even though the city and county are one government. The chart, the busiest trade and the filer board are kept by county, so they're on county pages only.
Questions about the numbers
Why doesn't your count match the county's?
Because ours is a floor. We don't read every office in every county, some offices post late, and some of our sources start partway through their history. The county's own number is usually higher.
Why is a month on the chart marked with an asterisk?
It came in at least 25% under the median of the 12 months shown. That's almost always late posting or a gap in one of our sources, so we flag it instead of reading it as a drop.
Why does a company show up twice on the filer board?
The board ranks licenses, not companies. A company that pulls permits under two Florida licenses gets two rows.