Manhattan's share of the city's 30-day construction filing pipeline fell by roughly $86.5 million overnight, dropping from about $1.451 billion to about $1.364 billion even as the borough remained the single largest source of filing value in the city by a wide margin. The citywide filing count fell alongside it, from 11,665 applications to 11,022 — a loss of 643 filings in one overnight window.
Every borough lost filing count in the same window: Manhattan fell from 4,142 to 3,884, Brooklyn from 3,312 to 3,155, Queens from 2,454 to 2,326, the Bronx from 1,227 to 1,147, and Staten Island from 530 to 510. Queens held its filing dollars nearly flat, moving from about $810.1 million to about $766.8 million, a smaller percentage drop than its 128-filing count decline would suggest — meaning the applications that disappeared from Queens's count skewed toward smaller-dollar work, not its anchor projects.
“The ten biggest filings in the city haven't changed rank, address, or dollar amount in at least a day — the swings underneath them are all coming from smaller jobs.”
The anchor projects didn't move at all. The ten biggest individual filings in the 30-day window are unchanged in rank, address, and dollar amount from the prior cycle: NYC Economic Development Corp's $124.3 million Roosevelt Avenue alteration in Queens still leads, followed by Bushburg Builders' $89.5 million Maiden Lane job and a $73 million Seventh Avenue filing tied to Breaking Ground. Four of the ten biggest filings belong to the NYC School Construction Authority, spread across Queens and Brooklyn, which is as true today as it was a day ago.
Alteration filings remain the dominant filing type citywide by a large margin — 8,043 of the 11,022 total, or roughly three-quarters of everything filed — ahead of New Building (1,243), Alteration CO (988), and Full Demolition (226). That mix was functionally the same shape in the prior cycle, which tells you the citywide pullback is a volume story, not a shift in what kind of work contractors are filing to do.
What this means for you: Watch the direction over the next few days before you change how you staff or price a bid. One day's move is a signal to check, not a trend. How we count: NYC Department of Buildings job filings, via NYC Open Data, counted by filing date over the trailing 30 days as of November 5, 2026, compared to the prior day's snapshot. These are filed applications, not permits issued or construction started.