That's the average permit valuation per building in
Washington County in 2025. It was $202K in 2022. $211K
in 2024. It's gone up every year while permit counts
stayed flat.

This isn't just inflation. Lumber is actually down from
its 2022 peak.

What's driving the jump is mix shift —
the type of home getting permitted has changed.

Fewer entry-level specs. More custom-lot builds.

More square footage per unit.

The Washington County market is
repricing upward

even without a volume increase, and
that change is happening quietly inside numbers that
look flat

on the surface.

Multifamily went from 670 units in 2022 to 326 in 2025.

Half the pipeline.

In three years.

At the same time, average permit valuation per building
climbed 20% — with no volume increase to explain it.
Those aren't separate stories. They're one story about
who stopped building what, and where the labor went.

The apartment financing math broke when rates moved.
Multifamily developers need different returns than
single-family builders — they're underwriting to cap
rates, not monthly payments. When rates hit 7-8%, the
deals stopped penciling. Pipeline dried up. The crews
that were working those projects had to go somewhere,
and that somewhere was single-family. Specifically the
higher-end single-family that was still moving.

That's the valuation jump. Not inflation. Rotation.

Now here's what I'd watch. December 2025 logged 231
single-family permits — more than most spring months
this year. Builders don't pull permits in December
unless they have buyers lined up and want crews ready
in January. That's pipeline loading. That's not a
seasonal blip.

If February and March come in at 250+ per month, 2026
is a volume year. An actual up-cycle. If we drop back
under 175 in January, December was positioning, not
momentum.

Those numbers release mid-April. That's the read on
whether this market has legs or is just repricing in
place.

Watch for it.