Austin's metro area registered $817 million in new construction across 201 projects and about 5.9 million square feet of buildings with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation (TDLR) between October 3 and November 2, 2026. According to ATX Things analysis of state and city filings, Austin, Texas still leads on project count — but the biggest check is a 1.2-million-square-foot Amazon building at 475 Patton Ave, and a single Jarrell school outspent Round Rock and Cedar Park combined.
How much did Austin's metro area register in new construction this month?
TDLR project registrations dated October 3 through November 2, 2026 (the latest registration in the data is November 1) show 201 projects worth $817,185,120 across Travis, Williamson, and Hays counties. Of those, 76 are ground-up new construction ($587.4 million), 121 are renovations or alterations ($227.7 million), and 4 are additions to existing buildings ($2.1 million).
That is a quieter month than October's report, which counted $1.64 billion — or $1.23 billion once a $407.8 million TxDOT highway rebuild was set aside. Against that like-for-like $1.23 billion, this month's total is about 34% lower. There is no single data-center-sized filing in this window; the largest is $100 million.
Method note (read this before the numbers): TDLR's estimated_cost is filed once per registered project, which makes it the cleanest spine for a metro total. Every dollar figure above is kept in full. The 5.9 million square feet figure excludes four entries whose filed "square footage" is land or site area rather than building floor area: Colony Park Phase 1 Subdivision (9,060,480 sq ft — about 208 acres of lots and streets), Liberty Hill Crossing Pads G–J (174,240 sq ft, exactly four acres), Tesla Railhead in Taylor (229,040 sq ft of rail-yard area on a $1.6 million budget), and a Congress Avenue streetscape filing listing 1 sq ft. One filing's city label ("Houston," for a 361 Deep Roots Dr. project in ZIP 78610) was placed in Buda. Twelve of the 201 registrations are separate TDLR entries for one hangar project at the Georgetown airport (see below); we count each as TDLR does.
What are the 10 biggest projects registered this month?
| # | Project | City | Est. Cost | Sq. Ft. | Owner | Design firm |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Project Toaster – Core and Shell | Austin (78742) | $100,000,000 | 1,200,000 | Amazon.com Services LLC | WSP USA |
| 2 | 2305-2309 Rio Grande Apartments | Austin (78705) | $97,345,948 | 466,000 | 2307 Rio Grande, LLC | Rhode Partners |
| 3 | School of Civic Leadership (BIO Building renovation) | Austin (UT campus) | $62,835,004 | 70,000 | The University of Texas at Austin | BGK Architects |
| 4 | Project Phantom | Austin (78617) | $60,000,000 | 285,000 | VC Holdings QOZ LP | Mackenzie |
| 5 | Elementary School No. 31 | Leander | $56,000,000 | 117,000 | Leander ISD | O'Connell Robertson |
| 6 | Atlas Ranch Elementary School | Jarrell | $48,000,000 | 127,670 | Jarrell ISD | Huckabee |
| 7 | Colony Park Phase 1 Subdivision | Austin (78724) | $45,000,000 | land (not counted) | City of Austin | Civilitude LLC |
| 8 | Protec PV | Georgetown | $42,000,000 | 9,936 | Berry Creek Propco LLC | MODE Design Company |
| 9 | Texas Military Department, Camp Mabry Building 8 | Austin (78703) | $36,000,000 | 145,000 | Texas Military Department | Freese and Nichols Inc. |
| 10 | Grace Learning Center Building C | Austin (78759) | $25,000,000 | 48,000 | Grace Covenant Church | FGM Architects |
Map: markers placed from the filings' recorded coordinates and checked against Google geocoding of each address (eight of ten matched within about 150 meters; the Jarrell and Georgetown markers sit on rural or highway-frontage addresses and are approximate). Numbers match the table. Base map © Google.
What is Amazon's "Project Toaster" at 475 Patton Ave?
The record is thin, so here is exactly what it says. TDLR lists Amazon.com Services LLC as the owner of "Project Toaster – Core and Shell," a 1.2-million-square-foot new building at 475 Patton Ave, Austin 78742, with a $100 million estimated cost, WSP USA as the design firm, a November 16, 2026 planned start and a July 13, 2027 planned completion. It was registered October 19.
The filing does not say what the building will be used for, and we did not find a public description of it from Amazon. For scale, 1.2 million square feet is about 21 football fields of floor area under roof — larger than last month's 846,300-square-foot Hutto data-center filing. Because TDLR registers the "core and shell," the interior fit-out may be filed separately later. The Rio Grande filing is the other nine-figure project: a $97.3 million, 466,000-square-foot apartment building in West Campus. Browse similar filings under multifamily projects on Zabalist.
Where did the money land, by city?
| City | Projects | Total Valuation | Sq. Ft. (buildings) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Austin | 96 | $525,746,454 | 3,626,605 |
| Leander | 15 | $74,388,196 | 425,998 |
| Georgetown | 26 | $70,276,500 | 1,072,667 |
| Jarrell | 2 | $48,100,000 | 129,720 |
| Cedar Park | 5 | $16,935,000 | 65,988 |
| Buda | 4 | $12,531,498 | 43,298 |
| Round Rock | 10 | $10,256,406 | 97,968 |
| Pflugerville | 8 | $8,034,000 | 33,439 |
| Elgin | 1 | $7,610,058 | 100,000 |
| Kyle | 3 | $7,179,314 | 10,994 |
| Dripping Springs | 4 | $6,739,000 | 9,671 |
| Manor | 1 | $6,000,000 | 55,000 |
| San Marcos | 9 | $4,985,988 | 67,805 |
| Hutto | 2 | $4,537,414 | 10,743 |
| Del Valle | 4 | $3,798,000 | 84,311 |
| Liberty Hill | 4 | $3,450,000 | 7,211 |
| Lakeway | 1 | $3,000,000 | 3,200 |
| Taylor | 2 | $1,750,000 | 578 |
| Wimberley | 1 | $1,328,292 | 1,200 |
| Florence | 1 | $264,000 | 3,300 |
| Jonestown | 1 | $175,000 | 728 |
| West Lake Hills | 1 | $100,000 | 1,367 |
Three stories sit inside that table. Jarrell: two filings, but Jarrell ISD's $48 million Atlas Ranch Elementary alone is more than Round Rock's ten projects ($10.3 million) and Cedar Park's five ($16.9 million) combined. Hutto swings the other way: it led last month at $570.6 million and registered $4.5 million this month. Leander ($74.4 million, 15 projects) passes Georgetown on dollars, led by Leander ISD's $56 million elementary school. For the Georgetown backstory, see our piece on The Junction entertainment district.
Who is actually building right now?
The owner column shows who is repeating:
| Owner | Filings | Combined value | What was filed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fineline Aviation | 12 | $9,715,500 | Twelve registrations, all dated October 8, under one name — "Executive Hangars GTU Site 6," 3700 Aero Drive, Georgetown ($637,500–$918,000 each) |
| City of Austin | 6 | $48,315,000 | Colony Park Phase 1 and two parking areas, a Congress Avenue streetscape, the Willie Mae Kirk Branch library renovation, and an Animal Center kennel building |
| Berry Creek Propco LLC | 3 | $48,000,000 | The $42 million Protec PV renovation plus two new buildings (253,164 and 126,722 sq ft) on North I-35 in Georgetown |
| HCI RBP Owner LLC | 3 | $2,104,524 | Three spec-office buildings (about 108,000–157,000 sq ft each) at Ross Business Park, Austin |
Public owners filed 14 projects worth $253.3 million — 31% of the month. That counts The University of Texas at Austin ($62.8 million BIO Building renovation), Leander ISD, Jarrell ISD, the City of Austin's Colony Park infrastructure, and the Texas Military Department's $36 million, 145,000-square-foot Camp Mabry building.
Two fine-print flags. TDLR lists the $42 million Protec PV project as a renovation of just 9,936 square feet — a cost-to-size ratio far above anything else in the month, so we report it as filed rather than interpret it. And the 3700 Aero Drive hangars are many entries for one site, which is why Georgetown's 26 projects look larger than they are; set the hangars aside and it is 14 projects and $60.6 million. Our 2026 retail boom guide covers the wider shopping wave, including this month's $7 million Whole Foods expansion in Cedar Park and Hobby Lobby in Manor ($6 million, 55,000 sq ft).
What did the city's own permit data show?
Austin's permit system stamps a project's full valuation on every sub-permit tied to it. Summing the raw feed without deduplicating inflates the total several times over — and this month it distorts the picture badly.
City of Austin building permits issued October 3–30, 2026 with a stated valuation of $500,000 or more returned 60 rows totaling $5,375,887,336 raw. Collapsing rows that share the same valuation, contractor, and street number leaves 17 distinct permits worth $1,228,037,709 — about 77% lower. Three of those dominate:
| Address | Valuation | Contractor | Permit description |
|---|---|---|---|
| 500 E 3rd St | $812,383,209 | JE Dunn Construction | New construction of Austin Convention Center – Area 2 (public project) |
| 8801 McCann Dr, Unit DP3 | $245,000,000 | Swinerton Builders Inc. | New construction of a dumpster enclosure (Smart Housing) |
| 7401 Loyola Ln | $140,000,000 | The Burt Group | New construction of a sports-facility utility building |
| 7032 E US 290 Hwy Svrd WB | $9,250,000 | Reliable Paving, Inc | New 5-story self-storage facility |
| 4330 N Lamar Blvd | $7,500,000 | Austin Canyon Corporation | New 3-story, 13,000 sq ft admin office building |
The first row is real: it is the permit for part of the downtown convention-center rebuild, a project the City Council approved at up to $1.2 billion with a $450 million addition in October 2025, according to Community Impact. The next two rows read as whole-project valuations attached to small accessory structures — a dumpster enclosure is not a $245 million building — and we could not confirm from the records which larger projects they belong to. Set those three permits aside and the other 14 distinct permits total $30.7 million. The city permit feed's newest issue date in our data is October 30; its sync status was "ok" on November 2.
What locals should know
Registration is the start of the paper trail, not the ribbon-cutting. Project Toaster lists a November 16 start and a July 2027 finish; the Rio Grande apartments list February 2027 to July 2028. Cranes follow filings by months.
You can search every project, permit, and developer yourself: Zabalist's project database, its permit tracker, and its developer directory are the public home of this data. For the broader backdrop, see our Austin economy tracker.
Method & sources
Primary spine: TDLR TABS project registrations (registered_date October 3 – November 2, 2026; latest registration November 1), Travis, Williamson, and Hays counties, 201 projects, no records excluded from cost totals. Secondary: City of Austin building permits issued October 3–30, 2026 with valuation of $500,000 or more, deduplicated on valuation + contractor + street number. Both datasets are tracked by ATX Things' sister platform Zabalist; the TDLR source records are public at tdlr.texas.gov/TABS. Football-field comparisons use 57,600 sq ft (a field with end zones). Previous editions: October 2026, September 2026, and August 2026. This window starts the day after October's ended.
FAQ
How much new construction did Austin's metro area register in the last 30 days? TDLR registrations dated October 3 – November 2, 2026 total $817 million across 201 projects in Travis, Williamson, and Hays counties, about 5.9 million square feet of buildings. That is roughly 34% below October's like-for-like $1.23 billion.
What is the biggest project filed this month? Amazon.com Services LLC's "Project Toaster – Core and Shell," a $100 million, 1.2-million-square-foot new building at 475 Patton Ave in Southeast Austin, registered October 19. The filing does not state its use.
Which suburb registered the most construction? By dollars, Leander ($74.4 million across 15 projects) leads the suburbs, ahead of Georgetown ($70.3 million, 26 filings, 12 of them hangars at one airport site) and Jarrell ($48.1 million, two filings).
Why do city permit totals and TDLR totals look so different? Austin's permit system stamps a project's full valuation on every sub-permit, so raw sums inflate; deduplicated, this month's city permits fall from $5.38 billion to $1.23 billion, and three permits carry most of it. TDLR registers each project once.
Where can I look up a specific project or developer? Zabalist's project database and developer directory are the public home of the same data.
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