British Columbia’s construction market spans one of the most geographically diverse provinces in Canada, from dense urban infill in Vancouver to resort development in Kelowna, suburban residential in Surrey and Langley, and institutional projects in Victoria. For contractors and trades working across the province, no single city’s permit data tells the full story.
Vancouver alone issued 5,137 building permits in 2025 representing about $5.6 billion in declared construction value, and that is just one piece of the BC market.
How permit data works in BC
Building permits in British Columbia are issued by local governments, not the province. Each municipality operates its own permitting system and publishes its data independently. This means there is no single source for province-wide BC permit data, contractors who want coverage across multiple cities need to monitor each city separately or use a tool that aggregates across them.
The major BC open data portals:
- City of Vancouver, opendata.vancouver.ca, daily updates
- City of Surrey, surrey.ca/open-data
- City of Kelowna, kelowna.ca (select dataset releases)
- City of Victoria, victoria.ca/EN/meta/open-data
- District of Saanich, saanich.ca
- City of Burnaby, burnaby.ca/City-Services/Open-Data
- City of Richmond, richmond.ca
Data format, update frequency, and field structure vary significantly between municipalities. A permit record in Surrey may not include the same fields as a permit record in Kelowna.
Vancouver: the anchor market
Vancouver is the anchor of BC’s construction market by value. With $5.6 billion in 2025 permit value across 5,137 permits, it is the province’s most closely watched market for declared construction activity.
Vancouver permit data is among the most detailed in BC, records include contractor name, declared value, neighbourhood, work type, and permit status. For contractors focused on the City of Vancouver, the open data portal provides a solid starting point, though monitoring it daily requires manual effort.
The most active work types in Vancouver in recent years have been residential alterations and new multi-family construction, reflecting the city’s density targets and the continued conversion of older single-family lots to multiplexes and laneway houses.
Surrey: high-volume residential growth
Surrey has been one of the fastest-growing permit markets in BC, driven by large-format suburban residential development in areas like Clayton, Grandview Heights, and Fleetwood. Surrey’s permit volume skews toward new residential construction, single-family, semi-detached, and row housing, at relatively high declared values per unit.
For framing crews, foundation contractors, and residential mechanical trades, Surrey’s permit feed has historically been more productive per permit than Vancouver’s, which trends toward dense multi-family and renovation work.
Kelowna: resort and residential expansion
Kelowna’s construction market has grown significantly with the influx of BC residents relocating from the Lower Mainland. Multi-family residential and resort-adjacent commercial development drive permit volume in the Central Okanagan.
Kelowna’s permit data is less consistently updated than Vancouver or Surrey, but the market is notable for contractors willing to work outside the Lower Mainland. Competition for trades is often lower, and project values have risen with land costs.
Victoria and the Capital Region
Victoria’s permit market is primarily driven by residential renovation and infill, institutional projects (provincial government, hospital districts, University of Victoria), and a modest but steady stream of commercial development in the downtown core.
The Capital Regional District covers multiple municipalities, Victoria, Saanich, Oak Bay, Esquimalt, and others, each with their own permit data. Contractors working across the CRD need to monitor all of them to maintain full visibility.
What BC contractors use permit data for
Tracking GC activity province-wide. A GC based in the Lower Mainland may pull permits in Vancouver, Surrey, Burnaby, and Langley in the same month. Province-wide permit monitoring lets you track where your best clients are working, and reach out before they’ve finalized their sub list on a project.
Identifying geographic expansion opportunities. When the Lower Mainland market tightens, permit data from Kelowna, Kamloops, or Prince George can reveal where volume is growing. Permit data is often the first indicator of a market shift before trade association reports reflect it.
Finding repeat developers. Developers who pull permits repeatedly in the same municipality, same work type, similar scale, are the highest-value targets in any contractor’s business development effort. Permit history, aggregated across the province, surfaces these patterns.
The pre-permit window in BC
Development permit applications in BC are filed with local governments before building permits are issued. In Vancouver, development applications are tracked separately from building permits and are publicly accessible. For large commercial or multi-family projects, the development permit review process runs on its own timeline and can stretch to many months before the building permit is even filed.
SiteWire tracks active development applications alongside issued permits in Vancouver (and four other Canadian cities), giving subscribers visibility into projects that have not yet broken ground and have not yet been bid. Development applications typically appear 60 to 90 days before a building permit is issued.
SiteWire’s BC coverage
SiteWire aggregates permit data from Vancouver, Surrey, Burnaby, Richmond, Kelowna, Victoria, and other BC municipalities into a single normalized feed. Filter by city, work type, declared value, or keyword, and get daily alerts when new permits match your criteria.