Demolition permits in Detroit, MI

How these numbers are made

Source: City of Detroit Open Data, BSEED Building Permits, Trades Permits and Demolition Permits layers, read 18 Oct 2026. We count permits issued October 2024 through September 2026; denied and withdrawn permits are left out. The city's public permit layers carry an issue date but no permit status and no final inspection or closed date, so no finished share is shown.

Building, trades (mechanical, electrical, plumbing, elevator, fire alarm, boiler, generator) and demolition permits the City of Detroit Buildings, Safety Engineering and Environmental Department (BSEED) issues inside city limits. Revisions of an earlier permit are not counted again. Hamtramck, Highland Park, Dearborn and the rest of Wayne County run their own permit offices and are not in this file.

• The city's file has no permit status and no final inspection date, so we show neither a finished share nor time to final.
• Only building permits carry a value: the estimated contractor cost written on the application, not the final cost. Trade and demolition permits have no value, so the HVAC, electrical, plumbing and demolition figures carry none.
• Detroit issues electrical, plumbing and mechanical work as separate trades permits, so one house job can count several times, once under each kind of work. A building alteration that mentions trade work stays a remodel.
• Plumbing counts include the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department's lead service line and water main replacement programmes, which file thousands of plumbing permits a year.
• Homes are told apart by the building permit's use group and use type and, for trade and demolition permits, by the property class on the city assessor's parcel file.

Counts are permits, not jobs: one job can need several permits. Nobody paid to be on this page and nobody can. Sources and definitions →