Miami-Dade Permit Volume Flat Year Over Year, New Construction Rises 7.7%

MIAMI, Sept. 13, 2026 — Miami-Dade County issued 63,585 building permits between October 2025 and August 2026, a decline of 537 permits, or 0.8%, from the 64,122 permits issued during the same eleven-month period a year earlier, according to the county's open permit dataset. New-construction permits, however, increased 7.7% over the same span, rising from 8,807 to 9,488.

Dataset Scope and Comparison Window

The figures come from the Miami-Dade County open permit dataset, published on the county's ArcGIS open data service under the layer name "miamidade_permit_data" and retrieved on September 13, 2026. The dataset is a rolling window of roughly two years, containing 139,574 permit records in total. The earliest permit issued date in the set is September 12, 2024, and the latest is September 11, 2026.

Because the dataset window does not contain a complete September 2024, the year-over-year comparison uses eleven full months, October through August, for both periods. Of the 139,574 records in the full dataset, 83,810 are classified as residential, 55,756 as commercial, and 8 as unclassified.

Commercial and New-Construction Activity

Commercial permit volume rose modestly during the comparison period. The county issued 25,732 commercial permits between October 2025 and August 2026, up 1.5% from 25,341 in the prior-year period.

New-construction permits, identified in the dataset by the application type "NEW," showed stronger movement. The 9,488 new-construction permits issued between October 2025 and August 2026 represent a 7.7% increase from the 8,807 issued between October 2024 and August 2025.

For the twelve full months from September 2025 through August 2026, the county issued 69,673 permits total. Of those, 28,197 were commercial, representing 40.5% of the total, and 10,429 were new construction. Demolition permits numbered 1,362 over the same twelve months.

Monthly Pattern

The monthly distribution from September 2025 through August 2026 shows a seasonal shape with a mid-autumn trough and a spring peak. March 2026 was the busiest month in the run, with 6,498 permits issued, including 2,631 commercial permits and 1,030 new-construction permits. November 2025 was the quietest month, with 4,683 permits issued, including 1,977 commercial permits and 613 new-construction permits.

Permit Types

Across the full two-year dataset, the most common application types are interior alterations, with 24,731 permits; new construction, with 20,051; exterior alterations, with 19,905; miscellaneous work, with 17,876; and re-roof or repair, with 15,477.

Sanitation Requirements and New Construction

New-construction permit counts carry particular weight for job-site sanitation demand because federal rules set minimum toilet requirements based on crew size, regardless of the nature of the permit. Under the Occupational Safety and Health Administration construction standard 29 CFR 1926.51(c)(1), employers must provide one toilet for a crew of 20 or fewer workers. For more than 20 workers, the standard requires one toilet seat and one urinal per 40 workers. For 200 or more workers, the requirement is one toilet seat and one urinal per 50 workers.

The rule produces specific thresholds. A crew of 25 requires one toilet and one urinal. A crew of 80 requires two toilets and two urinals. A site with 250 workers requires five toilet seats and five urinals.

Accessibility requirements add a further layer. Under section 213.2 of the 2010 ADA Standards, where units are grouped in a cluster, at least 5% of the units in that cluster must be accessible, and never fewer than one per cluster.

About the data

Reporting by Miami Porta Potty Rentals Restpoint. Miami Porta Potty Rentals Restpoint publishes this newsroom from public records and published standards; figures are attributed to their source in the text.