Which Bay Area Cities Have the Most Teardown & New-Construction Activity?
The most active Bay Area cities for combined teardown (demolition) and new-construction permits were Los Gatos, Saratoga, Palo Alto, as of AddressIntel's September 2026 read. Saratoga led on teardowns with 22 demolition permits, and Los Gatos led on new construction with 29 new-construction permits. Across the 16 Silicon Valley cities that publish a classifiable permit work type, builders pulled 94 demolition and 141 new-construction permits in the current data window.
How We Measure It
AddressIntel scrapes municipal building departments across Silicon Valley every day. For each city we count two leading indicators of redevelopment: demolition permits (the teardown signal) and new-construction permits (the build signal). A city’s activity score is simply the sum of those two counts for the cycle, and the ranking below is ordered by that score. It is a measure of where developers are actually pulling permits, not asking prices or listing counts.
Bay Area City Ranking, September 2026
| # | City | Demolition | New-build | Activity | Median price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Los Gatos | 13 | 29 | 42 | $2,998,000 |
| 2 | Saratoga | 22 | 15 | 37 | $3,948,000 |
| 3 | Palo Alto | 8 | 22 | 30 | $3,380,000 |
| 4 | Cupertino | 16 | 14 | 30 | $3,095,000 |
| 5 | San Mateo | 0 | 21 | 21 | $1,623,500 |
| 6 | Menlo Park | 7 | 10 | 17 | $3,600,000 |
| 7 | Redwood City | 10 | 5 | 15 | $2,424,500 |
| 8 | Atherton | 6 | 5 | 11 | $9,850,000 |
| 9 | Burlingame | 1 | 6 | 7 | $2,995,000 |
| 10 | Sunnyvale | 4 | 2 | 6 | $2,224,500 |
| 11 | Hillsborough | 5 | 0 | 5 | $10,400,000 |
| 12 | San Carlos | 0 | 4 | 4 | $2,224,500 |
| 13 | Santa Clara | 0 | 4 | 4 | $1,695,000 |
| 14 | Mountain View | 0 | 2 | 2 | $2,298,444 |
| 15 | Woodside | 0 | 2 | 2 | $4,588,000 |
| 16 | Foster City | 2 | 0 | 2 | — |
Source: AddressIntel municipal permit ingestion, September 2026. “Activity” is the combined count of demolition and new-construction permits. Permit counts move month to month; this page reflects the most recently published edition. Ranked here are the 16 of 23 tracked cities that recorded at least one classifiable demolition or new-construction permit this window. Belmont, Campbell, East Palo Alto, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, San Jose, South San Francisco are tracked but not ranked, so we publish no count for them rather than a zero we cannot stand behind. The reason varies and we do not guess at it: some file work under a generic permit type that never says what the job is (Palo Alto files most jobs as “Project - Building Permit”; San Jose reports the building type), others simply had a quiet window.
What the Ranking Tells Developers
High new-construction counts in cities like Los Gatos and Saratoga signal markets where builders are already winning entitlements and dirt is trading for redevelopment, useful both for sourcing comparable spec-build exits and for gauging competition. Demolition-heavy cities flag where the teardown cycle is earliest, which often precedes a wave of new-construction filings a few months out. To turn this into deals, pair the ranking with our teardown ROI model and the live deal screener.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Which Bay Area cities have the most teardown and new-construction activity?
As of AddressIntel's September 2026 edition, the Bay Area cities with the most combined teardown and new-construction permit activity were Los Gatos, Saratoga, Palo Alto. Saratoga led on teardowns (22 demolition permits) and Los Gatos led on new construction (29 new-construction permits). AddressIntel tracks demolition and new-construction permits across the SF Peninsula and South Bay and publishes the full ranking free, updated monthly.
How does AddressIntel measure teardown and new-construction activity?
AddressIntel scrapes municipal building departments daily and counts demolition permits (the teardown signal) and new-construction permits per city. Each city gets an activity score equal to its combined demolition + new-construction permit count, and cities are ranked by that score. Only cities whose building department publishes a classifiable permit work type are ranked: Palo Alto files most work as a generic "Project - Building Permit" and San Jose reports the building type rather than the work performed, so for those a demolition count of zero would mean "not published" rather than "none", and AddressIntel excludes them instead of scoring them at zero.
How often is the Bay Area city ranking updated?
The ranking is regenerated monthly from the latest municipal permit data as part of AddressIntel’s Silicon Valley Developer Market Opportunities Report. This page always reflects the most recent published edition.
See the Full Monthly Report
The complete city ranking, recent land-buy comps, and the month’s top ranked teardown and spec-build opportunities, with developer-ROI math, live in the AddressIntel Silicon Valley Developer Market Opportunities Report.