November 2, 2026
An addition is how most Los Angeles homeowners get more house without buying another one. The City records every addition permit, including what was added, on which floor, and in a striking number of cases how little of the original house was kept.
We took every addition permit the City has issued on a single-family house since January 2020, removed revisions and patio covers, and left out anything involving an accessory dwelling unit. That leaves 14,326 permits that add living space to a house. They peaked in 2022 and have fallen 38% since. About one in six adds an upper floor, and about one in three on parts of the Westside. And 259 describe removing the house except for a few feet of wall.
This report publishes the figures and the dataset. It does not argue for a cause; where a number invites one, the competing readings are listed and left open.
The Dataset
- Source: City of Los Angeles open data, dataset
pi9x-tg5x— Building and Safety permits issued from 2020 to present. Public, updated daily, extracted with permits issued through October 31, 2026. - Unit: a permit that adds living space to a single-family house. New houses, the comparison in Finding 2, are new single-family dwelling permits.
- Revisions are removed. 2,553 of the 22,584 addition permits on houses since 2020 revise an earlier permit.
- Outdoor structures are separated. Patio covers, decks, trellises and carports are filed as additions too; 1,710 of them are counted apart from living space.
- ADUs are excluded. 3,882 permits that create or convert an accessory dwelling unit are left out throughout. They are a separate subject.
- Matched windows. Every year is cut to January 1 – October 31, so 2026 is compared like-for-like.
- These are permits, not buildings. This report does not measure completion.
Permits are issued by the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety.
Finding 1: Home Additions Peaked in 2022 and Have Fallen 38% Since
Addition permits issued between January 1 and October 31 rose from 1,450 in 2020 to 2,328 in 2022, then fell, to 1,689 by 2025. In 2026 the figure is 1,452: 14.0% below last year and level with 2020.
Permits adding living space to single-family houses, issued January 1 – October 31 of each year. Full-year totals are shown for completed years.
Finding 2: New Houses Are Falling Faster Than Additions
Outside Brentwood – Pacific Palisades, additions fell 15.1% this year and new-house permits fell 29.6%. The rest of the city now records 2.74 additions for every new house, the highest ratio in the seven-year record, up from 2.18 in 2022.
Permits issued January 1 – October 31 of each year, outside Brentwood – Pacific Palisades, where the fire rebuild dominates new-house permits. Additions exclude revisions, outdoor structures and anything involving an ADU.
| Community plan area, since January 2023 | Additions | New houses | Additions per new house |
|---|---|---|---|
| Westchester – Playa del Rey | 278 | 17 | 16.35 |
| Wilshire | 305 | 49 | 6.22 |
| Canoga Park – West Hills – Winnetka – Woodland Hills | 565 | 139 | 4.06 |
| Granada Hills – Knollwood | 239 | 61 | 3.92 |
| South Los Angeles | 210 | 58 | 3.62 |
| Palms – Mar Vista – Del Rey | 380 | 108 | 3.52 |
| Chatsworth – Porter Ranch | 180 | 238 | 0.76 |
| Silver Lake – Echo Park – Elysian Valley | 146 | 195 | 0.75 |
| Wilmington – Harbor City | 56 | 114 | 0.49 |
| Brentwood – Pacific Palisades | 339 | 1,533 | 0.22 |
The six highest and four lowest of the 27 areas with at least 150 permits of either kind. All areas are in the area CSV below.
Finding 3: One Addition in Six Goes Up, and About One in Three on the Westside
Across all years, 16.6% of additions include space on a second or higher floor, and the share has stayed between 15.3% and 19.5% a year. Where it happens is sharply uneven: 33.6% in West Los Angeles, 31.0% in Bel Air – Beverly Crest and 30.2% in Wilshire, against 4.7% in Sun Valley – La Tuna Canyon.
Share of additions since January 2023 that include an upper floor, for the 23 community plan areas with at least 150 additions (count in brackets). Descriptions of the existing house, such as "(E) 2-story dwelling", are not counted as going up.
Finding 4: Hundreds of "Additions" Keep Only a Few Feet of the Old House
259 addition permits since 2020 describe removing the existing house except for a stated length of wall or foundation, then building the new one. A typical description reads: "Remove entire dwelling except for 2 linear feet of wall/foundation on west side of lot." The number in 2025, 62, was 2.4 times the 26 recorded in 2023.
Where the length kept is stated (240 permits), the median is 9.9 feet of wall or foundation; a quarter kept 4 feet or less, and 40 kept 2 feet or less. None carries wildfire-rebuild wording.
| Year | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Near-rebuild permits | 24 | 35 | 38 | 26 | 43 | 62 | 31* |
As a share of all rebuilds since 2023, counting near-rebuilds and new-house permits together, they are 3.3% citywide and 4.7% outside the Palisades, but 13.9% in Encino – Tarzana and 12.9% in Palms – Mar Vista – Del Rey, roughly one rebuild in seven or eight.
* 2026 to October 31. Counts are a floor: some descriptions are phrased in ways the rule does not catch, and 120 more near-rebuilds that also create an ADU are excluded under this report's definition.
Finding 5: Going Up Takes About Twice as Long to Permit
From application to permit issue, the median for a ground-floor addition was 103 days; for an addition with an upper floor it was 202 days. The slowest quarter of upper-floor additions took 385 days or more. Near-rebuilds took a median of 133 days.
| Addition type | Permits | Median days | Middle half |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ground floor only | 6,207 | 103 | 45–225 days |
| Upper floor | 1,236 | 202 | 118–385 days |
| Near-rebuild | 162 | 133 | 80–217 days |
Addition permits issued from January 2023 to October 31, 2026. The clock includes time the application spends with the applicant, so it is not City processing time alone, and only permits that were issued are counted.
Possible Readings
- The fall since 2022 fits higher borrowing costs, higher construction costs, or demand pulled forward into 2021 and 2022. The permit record carries none of those variables, so it cannot separate them.
- The rising ratio of additions to new houses comes mostly from falling new-house permits rather than rising additions. It may reflect the relative cost of building new against staying put; the record does not say.
- Westside up, Valley out fits smaller lots on the Westside and larger ones in the Valley. It equally fits land values, hillside constraints, or the City's house size rules (see our House Size Limits Report). None of those is recorded on the permit.
- Near-rebuilds could reflect keeping existing setbacks or other conditions a new building might not be allowed, differences in what a remodel and a new house each require, or plain structural and design choices. The permit records what is kept, not why.
Opportunity Spotlight
- In some areas the work is mostly additions. Westchester – Playa del Rey, Wilshire and the West Valley record 4 to 16 additions for every new house.
- If you are going up, plan for about six to seven months to permit. The median is 202 days, against 103 for a ground-floor addition.
- A "remodel" may be most of a new house. In Encino – Tarzana and Palms – Mar Vista – Del Rey roughly one rebuild in seven or eight is filed this way. The permit's own description says what is being kept.
- Fewer additions overall means less competition for design and permitting time than at the 2022 peak.
Method
- Revisions. A supplemental permit revises an earlier one: an original's middle block ends in 0000 and a revision counts up from it. Revisions numbered as originals but described as "supplemental to permit #…" (including misspellings) are removed as well.
- Living space or outdoor. Each permit is classified by what its "addition" is of. "Addition to the house with a new porch" is living space; "patio cover addition" is not. A hand check found about 95% of sampled permits correctly classified in each direction.
- ADUs. Any permit whose description creates or converts an accessory dwelling unit, attached ADU or junior ADU is excluded.
- Upper floor means the added space includes a second or higher floor. Descriptions of the existing house ("(E) 2-story SFD") are ignored and common misspellings are handled. Hand checks put the rule at about 92% precision with few misses.
- Near-rebuild means the description removes the house except for a stated length of wall or foundation, or keeps "only" a stated length, in a removal or major-remodel context. Garage teardowns are excluded, and every stated piece of wall kept is added up. A hand check of 20 found all 20 correct.
- ⚠️ The square-footage field is not the area added. Where a description states a single square footage, the City's
square_footagefield matches it only about 38% of the time: it records the area of all the work, sometimes the whole house. This report publishes no size figures for that reason, and anyone using the field as "square feet added" should check it first. - Repeats. Multi-part permits for one job on the same parcel within 180 days count once (97 merged). Truncated community plan area names are merged.
- Declared valuation is not used. It is a fee figure, not a construction cost.
Download the Data
The processed dataset is published for reuse. Attribution to Blackbriar is welcome but not required; the underlying records are the City of Los Angeles'.
- home-additions-by-year.csv — additions, new houses, the rest-of-city ratio, upper-floor share and near-rebuilds by year, in the matched window
- home-additions-by-community-plan-area.csv — additions, new houses, upper-floor share and near-rebuild share by area since 2023
- near-rebuilds-by-year.csv — near-rebuild permits by year
- addition-permit-approval-days.csv — application-to-issue days for ground-floor, upper-floor and near-rebuild additions
- home-additions.json — the complete dataset, including counts at every cleaning step, the kept-wall statistics, source metadata and caveats
How Blackbriar Uses This
We build and rebuild custom homes in Los Angeles, and the first question on many projects is whether to add on or start again. What the record changes is mostly at that stage: the area tells us which route is usual there, an upper floor is planned with its own permit clock, and a near-rebuild is planned and budgeted like a new house. Our process and services pages set out how we work, and you can talk to us directly.
FAQ
How many home additions does Los Angeles permit each year?
The City of Los Angeles issued between 1,950 and 2,135 permits a year for additions of living space to single-family houses from 2023 to 2025, down from 2,714 in 2022. By October 31, 2026, the year had reached 1,452, 14.0% fewer than at the same point of 2025. These counts exclude revisions, patio covers and similar outdoor structures, and any addition that creates or converts an accessory dwelling unit.
What share of Los Angeles home additions add a second story?
About one in six: 16.6% of living-space additions since 2020 include space on a second or higher floor. The share is about one in three in West Los Angeles (33.6%), Bel Air – Beverly Crest and Wilshire, and about one in twenty in parts of the San Fernando Valley, such as Sun Valley – La Tuna Canyon (4.7%).
How long does it take to get a home addition permit in Los Angeles?
For additions permitted since 2023, the median from application to permit issue was 103 days for a ground-floor addition and 202 days for one that adds an upper floor. A quarter of upper-floor additions took 385 days or more. The clock includes time the application spends with the applicant and covers only permits that were issued.
What is a near-rebuild in a Los Angeles addition permit?
It is an addition or major remodel permit whose description removes the existing house except for a stated length of wall or foundation, then builds the new one. 259 such permits have been issued since 2020. Where the length kept is stated, the median is about 10 feet, and 40 kept 2 feet or less. The permit records what is kept, not why.
Where in Los Angeles do homeowners add on rather than rebuild?
Since January 2023, Westchester – Playa del Rey has recorded 16.4 addition permits for every new-house permit, Wilshire 6.2 and Canoga Park – West Hills – Winnetka – Woodland Hills 4.1. Brentwood – Pacific Palisades, where the fire rebuild dominates, has 0.22. Citywide it is 1.61.
Where does this data come from?
From the City of Los Angeles open data portal, dataset pi9x-tg5x (Building and Safety permits issued from 2020 to present), with permits issued through October 31, 2026. Blackbriar removed revisions, separated outdoor structures, excluded additions involving an accessory dwelling unit, classified each permit from its work description, and published the processed figures as CSV and JSON files.
Recommended
- 2026 Los Angeles Teardown & Replacement Report — what replaces a demolished house, and where
- 2026 Los Angeles House Size Limits Report — how big a house the City allows on a lot
- 2026 Los Angeles Permit Approval Timeline Report — how long new-house permits take