Count of single-family dwelling permits well above those for multi-family units through March
Because of the new construction taking place across Sarasota County in response to the damage that the 2024 storm season wreaked, data for the midpoint of this fiscal year indicates that county staff members very likely will issue a higher total number of permits than they did in the record year of 2023, County Administrator Jonathan Lewis has reported.
During the County Commission’s May 21 budget workshop, Lewis presented a series of slides to illustrate his remarks.
One graphic to which he pointed showed that the total number of permits the county had issued through March — the midpoint of this fiscal year — was 29,305. Lewis said that figure marked “a bump of almost 6,000 permits over that same period of time [in the 2024 fiscal year]. It’s a pretty significant amount,” he added.
Through March 2024, the figure was 23,115.
The 2023 fiscal year saw the highest number of county permits ever issued, Lewis told the commissioners: more than 50,000.
Another slide put the official figure at 50,282. The low point on that slide was the 2009 fiscal year — in the midst of the Great Recession — when the county issued 21,009 permits. Even by the 2012 fiscal year, that slide showed, the permit total was only 22,806.
Turning to the data for single-family dwelling unit permits, Lewis pointed out that at the midpoint of the 2024 fiscal year, the number issued was 1,081. Through March of this year, the figure was 843.
“We are down a little bit overall,” Lewis said. Still, he continued, the total through March is “a huge number for us.”
“We never had a year prior to 2021 when we came close to almost 3,000 [single-family home permits] issued,” he told the commissioners.
The final figure for FY 2021 was 2,908.
Conversely, the slide showing data for multi-family units put the number of permits issued through March at 305; for the same period of the 2024 fiscal year, 575 were issued. A related slide showed that the record-setting year for those permits was FY 2022.
Moreover, Lewis reminded the board members, they needed to consider that, along with the single-family dwelling unit construction permits, county staff is having to handle a variety of related permits, such as those necessary for site development for the homes. Among them, he said, are permits involving stormwater, utilities and environmental reviews.
Next, Lewis turned to the data for building inspections. Through March, the total was 115,648; that compared to the figure of 93,221 through March of the 2024 fiscal year.
As Lewis put it, “We’re already more than 22,000 ahead of where we were last year. … That is a huge increase,” he pointed out, with basically the same number of inspectors as the county had on staff in the 2024 fiscal year.