1,164 residential building permits across five county report weeks, 604 of them new single-family homes with $128.4M of declared value. Lehigh Acres took 63% of the new homes. Who is building, where, and what the rest of the county was permitting, from the county's own weekly reports.
Florida grants a homestead exemption to owners who live in the house as their permanent residence, so a parcel with no exemption on file is usually one the owner does not live in: a rental, a second home, a spec build, or a house so new that nobody has lived in it on a January 1 yet. For the 604 new-home permits that last case is the normal one, which is why the county-wide share is as high as 79%. The number worth watching is on the remodel side: 41% of remodel and addition permits were pulled on houses the owner does not appear to live in.
Lee County Community Development publishes one "Building Permits Issued" report per week. These are the five reports that cover August 2026 (the last one runs to September 5). Counts include permits printed as issued and those printed as awaiting payment: 776 issued, 359 payment required, 29 with no status printed.
| Week (county report period) | Residential permits | New single-family |
|---|---|---|
| 8/2/2026 to 8/8/2026 | 222 | 114 |
| 8/9/2026 to 8/15/2026 | 265 | 143 |
| 8/16/2026 to 8/22/2026 | 247 | 127 |
| 8/23/2026 to 8/29/2026 | 183 | 81 |
| 8/30/2026 to 9/5/2026 | 247 | 139 |
New single-family homes are 52% of everything the county permitted on residential parcels. The next tier is the aluminum trade: pool enclosures, screen rooms and carports together make up 209 permits, more than all remodels and additions combined (133).
| Permit type | Permits | Share of all |
|---|---|---|
| Single Family Residence | 604 | 52% |
| Pool Enclosure | 105 | 9% |
| Shed (Pre-manufactured) | 74 | 6% |
| Screen Room | 58 | 5% |
| Exterior Remodel | 57 | 5% |
| Interior Remodel | 56 | 5% |
| Other | 47 | 4% |
| Aluminum Carport | 46 | 4% |
| Detached Garage | 26 | 2% |
| Duplex | 20 | 2% |
| Single Family Addition | 17 | 1% |
| Unenclosed Structure (other than aluminum) | 11 | 1% |
Area is the parcel's mailing city on the Lee County Property Appraiser record; 604 of the 604 new-home parcels also carry map coordinates in the parcel file. "Fort Myers" here means unincorporated parcels with a Fort Myers mailing address (Gateway, San Carlos Park, Buckingham and similar), not the City of Fort Myers, which issues its own permits. Top three: Lehigh Acres (380), Fort Myers (72), Estero (61).
| Area (parcel mailing city) | New homes | Median declared value | Total declared value |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lehigh Acres | 380 | $187,000 | $76.3M |
| Fort Myers | 72 | $245,056 | $21.7M |
| Estero | 61 | $158,715 | $11.2M |
| North Fort Myers | 52 | $132,807 | $7.6M |
| Alva | 17 | $167,000 | $4.9M |
| Babcock Ranch | 10 | $127,000 | $1.4M |
| Bokeelia | 4 | $316,389 | $1.3M |
| Fort Myers Beach | 3 | $153,850 | $454K |
| Boca Grande | 2 | $325,480 | $651K |
| Saint James City | 2 | $1,268,736 | $2.5M |
| Bonita Springs | 1 | $300,000 | $300K |
Company names only, as the county and the appraiser print them (the appraiser truncates long names). The contractor of record is the licensed company on the permit; 584 of the 604 new-home permits name one, the rest are owner-builder or blank. The owner of record is the entity that held the parcel when the permit was issued; individual people are excluded, so that table covers the 501 new-home permits held by companies, funds and trusts.
| Contractor of record (company) | New-home permits |
|---|---|
| Lennar Homes LLC | 86 |
| Centex Homes | 59 |
| Stratos Construction CORP | 37 |
| D R Horton INC | 35 |
| G L Building Corporation | 22 |
| Coaston Homes LLC | 21 |
| General Contractors of Florida LLC | 16 |
| Skyline Construction Management LLC | 13 |
| O and J Construction of Florida INC | 13 |
| Pharaohs Construction Group | 11 |
| Owner of record (entity) | New-home permits |
|---|---|
| Pulte Home Company LLC | 37 |
| LNR AIV LLC | 32 |
| DR Horton INC | 29 |
| Cam7 SUB LLC | 26 |
| LEE County Homes Associates I | 22 |
| Coaston Homes LLC | 21 |
| Tp2-land-sub LLC | 20 |
| Talor Properties LLC | 14 |
| Millrose Properties Florida LL | 12 |
| Holiday Builders INC | 10 |
209 permits for aluminum structures were issued in the period. 141 of the 209 with a parcel match are on parcels with no homestead exemption on file, so a meaningful share of these buyers are landlords and second-home owners, not only residents.
| Area | Total | Pool enclosures | Screen rooms | Aluminum carports |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lehigh Acres | 51 | 19 | 16 | 16 |
| Fort Myers | 50 | 29 | 12 | 9 |
| North Fort Myers | 40 | 13 | 13 | 14 |
| Estero | 29 | 24 | 5 | 0 |
| Alva | 15 | 7 | 7 | 1 |
| Babcock Ranch | 9 | 5 | 4 | 0 |
| Saint James City | 7 | 2 | 0 | 5 |
| Punta Gorda | 4 | 4 | 0 | 0 |
| Fort Myers Beach | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Cape Coral | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Captiva | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
133 permits were for interior remodels, exterior remodels or additions, with a combined declared value of $13,723,282 (median $18,000). 54 of 133 (41%) are on parcels with no homestead exemption on file, which for an existing house usually means the owner does not live there: an investor fixing a rental, a flip in progress, or a second home. By area: Fort Myers (64), Lehigh Acres (31), North Fort Myers (11), Boca Grande (7), Bokeelia (4), Alva (3).
Year built is on the appraiser record for 126 of the 133 permits. The median house getting a remodel or addition was built in 1990; 47% were built before 1990. The busiest decade is the 1980s.
| Decade the house was built | Remodel and addition permits |
|---|---|
| 1940s | 3 |
| 1950s | 4 |
| 1960s | 7 |
| 1970s | 15 |
| 1980s | 30 |
| 1990s | 24 |
| 2000s | 22 |
| 2010s | 6 |
| 2020s | 15 |
Agents. Every new-home permit in Lehigh Acres is a lot that will be a finished house in six to nine months, and most are held by an entity or an out-of-area owner who will list or rent it. The remodel permits with no homestead exemption are the flip and landlord list.
Investors and wholesalers. The builder leaderboard tells you who is buying lots at volume and where. Watch the entity-owner side for the land funds and builder subsidiaries; they set the floor on lot prices.
Trades. Every one of the 604 new homes will need a pool cage, a fence, gutters, a screen room, landscaping and window treatments within a year of the permit, and the general contractor is named on the permit. The 209 aluminum permits show which areas are already buying.
What a declared value is. The value on a permit is what the applicant declared for fee purposes. It is not a sale price and not an appraisal, and for production builders it is often the construction cost only. Treat the medians as a relative measure between areas and months, not as home prices.
This page is the county-wide summary. Subscribers get the row-level version for their own ZIPs or farm area: every permit that week with the owner of record, the owner's mailing address, the absentee flag (no homestead exemption), last sale and price, year built, and the contractor. As a page and a CSV, every Monday. One buyer per area, first four weeks free.
No card, no contract. Or email [email protected] with your ZIPs.
Permits. Lee County Community Development's weekly "Building Permits Issued" reports, published at leegov.com/dcd/rpts. Five reports: 8/2/2026 to 8/8/2026, 8/9/2026 to 8/15/2026, 8/16/2026 to 8/22/2026, 8/23/2026 to 8/29/2026, 8/30/2026 to 9/5/2026. Every residential permit printed in those reports is counted once (1,164 in all); nothing is sampled, estimated or enriched from private sources.
Parcels. Each permit's parcel number (STRAP) was matched to the Lee County Property Appraiser's public parcel file (leepa.org) for the mailing city, homestead status, owner of record and year built. Homestead shares are computed over the 1,160 permits with a parcel match. Where the county report printed the site address inside the description, the row is still counted but may lack a contractor or owner, and is then excluded from the leaderboards.
Scope. Unincorporated Lee County only, August 2, 2026 to September 5, 2026. Cape Coral and the City of Fort Myers issue their own building permits and are not included, and neither are Bonita Springs, the Village of Estero, Fort Myers Beach or Sanibel where they permit for themselves; a parcel with one of those mailing cities appears here only if the county issued its permit. Commercial permits are excluded.
Privacy. This public report names companies only. No individual owner, no site address and no mailing address appears on this page. The subscriber report carries the row-level public record.
Values and medians. Declared value is the applicant's figure for permit fees. Medians exclude permits with a zero value; the square-footage median uses the 29 new-home permits that stated square footage. Percentages are rounded to the nearest whole number.
Author. PermitRadar, built and run by Melting Wax Studios. Licence for this page: CC BY 4.0, credit "PermitRadar, permitradarhq.com". Questions and corrections: [email protected]. Built September 11, 2026.