The Real Deal reported Aug. 25 that construction filings across the city are rising — but big housing projects remain scarce. That's worth sitting with for a second, because those two facts usually move together, not apart.

We've seen the same split on our own board. When we covered the permit stack growing by 562 units in Brooklyn a few weeks back, not one of those units had a GC attached yet. Filed isn't built. A DOB filing is a piece of paper; a bid tab is a crew getting hired.

Part of what's driving the split is the tax code doing exactly what it was written to do. Commercial Observer reported this month that 485-x — the tax abatement that replaced 421-a — is teaching developers to stay under 100 apartments a building, because that's where the program's wage rules get easier to live with. Stack enough 80- and 90-unit buildings side by side and the filing count climbs even while the kind of 300-, 400-, 500-unit job that keeps a mid-size GC's whole crew list busy for two years stays rare.

Why this matters if you estimate for a living: don't read a rising permit count as a rising bid count. If you're a small or mid-size shop, the volume is real and it's coming in smaller packages than it used to — staff up for more jobs, not bigger ones. If you're a prime chasing nine-figure multifamily work, 2026 is shaping up thin on the private side; the bigger dollar jobs right now are sitting with the agencies — SCA, DDC, NYCHA — not with private developers.

What to do now: track your borough's permit filings by unit count, not just by count of filings, and treat anything under 100 units as the new normal size of a private job rather than the exception. If your business plan depends on landing a 300-unit private GC contract this year, have a public-agency backup on your calendar.