Surrey is one of the fastest-growing cities in Canada. In 2024 it issued 2,292 building permits, and in 2025 that count rose to 2,422, covering residential towers, townhouse developments, industrial parks, and commercial strips across Guildford, Newton, Cloverdale, and the new City Centre core. (Numbers sourced from Surrey open permit data as indexed in SiteWire’s warehouse, July 2026.)
For BC contractors, that volume is a consistent pipeline, if you know where to look.
What’s in Surrey’s permit data
Every Surrey building permit record includes the project address, type of work, declared project value, the permit holder’s name, and the issue date. The data is published by the City of Surrey under an open government licence and updated regularly.
Key project categories in Surrey:
- New residential, single-family homes, duplexes, townhouses in Fleetwood and Cloverdale
- Multi-family residential, towers and mid-rise in City Centre and Guildford
- Industrial, warehouse and distribution facilities in Campbell Heights
- Commercial, retail and mixed-use along 104th Avenue and King George Boulevard
- Demolition, older stock in South Surrey being replaced with higher density
Why Surrey is different from Vancouver
Vancouver’s permit volume is high but concentrated downtown and in a few dense neighbourhoods. Surrey’s volume is spread across a much larger geography, which means less competition per project in the outer areas.
A framing crew working Cloverdale townhouse projects is unlikely to run into the same three competitors chasing every job. The outer suburbs reward contractors who show up early.
How contractors use the permit feed
Finding projects at the right stage. A permit issued today typically means construction starts within 30 to 90 days. Specialty trades, HVAC, electrical, plumbing, drywall, use permit issuance as the trigger to contact the general contractor before the project is fully staffed.
Tracking competitors. If another contractor has 40 permits in a specific area, they have 40 relationships worth understanding. The permit data tells you who controls which neighbourhoods.
Finding the GC before the RFP goes out. Most residential and light commercial projects in Surrey never post formal tenders. The permit holder is usually the GC or owner-builder. A phone call the week after permit issuance is more effective than responding to a tender two months later.
Campbell Heights Industrial Park
Campbell Heights in South Surrey is one of the most active industrial permit zones in the Lower Mainland. Warehouse and distribution facilities are being built continuously. Industrial electrical, mechanical, and concrete work is concentrated here in a way that rewards contractors who specialize rather than generalize.
If you do industrial mechanical or electrical work, monitoring Campbell Heights permit issuances weekly pays off.
How SiteWire makes this easier
Downloading Surrey’s raw permit data, filtering it, and setting up alerts requires technical setup most contractors don’t want to maintain. SiteWire pulls Surrey permit data automatically, notifies you when permits matching your trade and area are issued, and lets you filter by project value, work type, and neighbourhood.
The contractors using SiteWire in Surrey are getting permit alerts before their competitors open their email.
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