Conshohocken permitted 24 single-family houses from January to August 2026, more than in any full year since 2015

Conshohocken issued permits for 24 new single-family houses from January through August 2026, according to the Census Bureau's Building Permits Survey, a monthly count of new homes authorized by each local permit office. The borough permitted none in the same eight months of 2025.

From 2017 to 2025, January to August never brought more than 12 houses

The 2026 total is already above every full year from 2016 through 2025, when the most was 13, and one short of the 25 permitted in all of 2015. The permits carry a combined construction value of $5,677,276, the builders' estimate written on the permit. The borough reported to the Census Bureau in all eight months, so the figures come from its own reports.

Each new house adds a roof that will come back to the borough's permit office at its first replacement. The guide to when Conshohocken's houses were built describes the age of the houses already standing.

The July file moved 21 units into the single-family count

Most of the 2026 total comes from one filing. The year-to-date file through June listed 2 single-family houses, both permitted in February, and one building with 21 units in the category for buildings of five or more units. The file through July moved those 21 units into the single-family count, raising it to 23. The Census Bureau's documentation says its year-to-date files include late reports and corrections for prior months. One more house in August brought the total to 24.

The Census Bureau counts a rowhouse or a townhouse as single-family when a ground-to-roof wall separates it from its neighbor and it shares no heating, air conditioning or utilities with it. The permit file gives no addresses and does not say which kind of house these are.

Lower Merion permitted 356 apartment units nearby, and Upper Merion's 164 houses are an estimate

Lower Merion permitted the most new homes nearby, almost all of them in apartment buildings. The township reported a 270-unit building valued at $68,000,000 in February and an 86-unit building valued at $28,011,000 in August, for 356 units in buildings of five or more. Over the same months of 2025 it permitted one building of 426 units.

Upper Merion shows 164 single-family units for January through August, against 176 a year earlier. The township reported no months in 2026, and the Census Bureau estimated its figures. Its definitions page says it bases those estimates on the assumption that a place that did not report authorized the same share of its prior-year total as places that did. In the years the township reported every month, its counts were large: 484 single-family units in 2022 and 203 in 2023.

Whitemarsh fell to 4 single-family units from 28. Plymouth had 8, against 9. West Conshohocken shows 1, an estimate, because the borough reported no months.

Conshohocken's yearly count fell from 50 houses in 2014 to 3 in 2025

From 2014 through 2025 Conshohocken's single-family permits fell from 50 to 3 a year. The borough's one large apartment permit in that span was a 168-unit building in 2025, after August. Whitemarsh permitted more than 100 single-family units in both 2017 and 2019. Upper Merion's counts rose sharply from 2022.

Caveats

The 2026 figures are the Census Bureau's year-to-date files, which it revises as late reports and corrections arrive, as the July change in Conshohocken shows. The annual file for 2026 will replace them. A permit authorizes construction, and the file does not say when or whether building starts. The value on a permit is the builder's or the permit office's estimate of the cost of the structure, which can differ from the price a buyer pays.

Figures for any year in which a place reported fewer than 12 months, or fewer than 8 in a year-to-date file, include the Census Bureau's estimates. In 2026 that applies to Upper Merion and West Conshohocken. An estimate can differ a great deal from the final count. Conshohocken's year-to-date file for August 2016, with three months reported, showed 37 single-family units, and the 2016 annual file, with all 12 months reported, showed 13. The chart starts in 2017 for that reason.

The files count new homes only. They leave out re-roofing permits and other work on existing houses, which the borough issues under its building permit and roof addendum, as the guide to roofing permits in Conshohocken describes.