San Jose Metro Outpaced San Francisco on Apartment Permits This Year

Federal building-permit numbers through June put the San Jose metro area well ahead of the San Francisco metro on new apartment units, even though the San Francisco region holds more than twice the population. A Business Journals review of Census data found builders here secured a 350 percent jump in apartment units approved in the first half of 2026 versus the same stretch of 2025, a gain of more than 2,000 units. Compared with the first half of 2021, the San Jose area roughly doubled its apartment tally. Single-family permits locally stayed nearly flat.

The San Francisco metro, which includes Oakland, Berkeley, Hayward and parts of the North Bay, moved in the opposite direction on apartments. Through June those jurisdictions posted a 13.8 percent drop in apartment permits from the first half of 2025 and a 48 percent drop from 2021, equal to 2,135 fewer apartment units than five years earlier. Single-family permits there rose 12.2 percent year over year but still sat 35 percent below the 2021 midpoint.

Raw totals for all housing types stayed close: 3,729 permits in the San Jose metro against 3,854 in the much larger San Francisco metro. That near-tie on a smaller population base is the detail worth sitting with. Nationwide, builders received approval for 22 percent fewer units than in the first half of 2021, when construction ran at a post-pandemic peak. The South Bay’s apartment spike ran against that national slump.

Permits are not keys in the door. They do signal that lenders, cities and developers found projects worth stamping in a region that still needs tens of thousands of homes to meet state targets. Downtown San Jose towers, mid-rise blocks near transit and scattered multifamily sites all feed that count. Anyone watching whether Silicon Valley can house the people who work here now has a midyear scoreboard that favors the San Jose side of the bay.

Keep an eye on second-half numbers. A strong first six months only matters if the permits turn into occupied units.

Source: Silicon Valley Business Journal