Building permits by ZIP code in Worcester

How these numbers are made

Source: City of Worcester, Informing Worcester open data: Building, Electrical, Gas, Plumbing and Mechanical Permits (ArcGIS layers), read 19 Oct 2026. We count permits issued October 2024 through September 2026; denied and withdrawn permits are left out.

Residential permits the City of Worcester's Department of Inspectional Services issues inside the city: building, electrical, gas, plumbing and mechanical permits for houses, two-families and triple-deckers and other apartment buildings. Commercial, mixed-use, school and municipal permits in the same files are not counted. Shrewsbury, Auburn and the other towns around Worcester run their own permit offices and are not in these files.

• We don't use the contractor names in the city's files. They are a mix of license holders' personal names and company names with no license number, so we can't match them to firms reliably. There are no contractor lists, rankings or firm pages for Worcester.
• The files have no declared job value, so we show no costs.
• The files have no final inspection date, so there is no time-to-final here. A permit counts as finished when the city marks it Complete; every other permit is open. The city has no separate expired status.
• Permits on buildings with three or more units count in the totals but not as homes.
• Insulation and siding permits count as remodels and repairs. Decks, and building permits the city files with no stated purpose, count under Other.
• A new house gets separate building, electrical, gas and plumbing permits, so one project can count several times, once under each kind of work.

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