Surrey landscaping leads: what got permitted this summer

01 · What Surrey permitted this summer

We pulled every Surrey permit from the city's open-data feed that our landscaping filter matches, for the 90 days from July 5 to October 3, 2026. The count was 220 permits, and 179 of them were new homes.

Here is how they break down by type:

• New houses: 70
• Laneway houses: 57
• Duplexes: 34
• Additions and alterations: 30
• Pool and backyard work: 11
• Townhouses: 9
• Multiplexes: 9

Applicants declared about $215 million of work across those 220 permits, and 56 permits were over $1 million in declared value. Declared value is what the applicant wrote on the permit, not the final cost, so treat it as a rough sense of scale rather than a budget.

02 · The pace through the season

Activity picked up from late July. Weekly counts ran between 9 and 15 through July, then jumped to 31 in the week of July 27. Every week from then until early September came in at 21 or more.

The two most recent full weeks in our Surrey data were lower, at 11 and 13. The last 30 days on their own still added 54 permits, 45 of them new homes and 14 over $1 million declared. Surrey's feed in our system currently runs to permits issued September 24, so the newest week or two can look thin until the city publishes more.

One caution: our Surrey data starts in January 2026, so there is no last-summer number to compare against yet. We can tell you what happened this season, not whether it was up or down on 2025.

03 · Why a summer permit is a spring yard

Landscaping is one of the last trades on a new build. The permit is issued, then come excavation, framing, roofing, services and finishing, and only then does anyone grade the lot, pour the walks and lay sod. That means the 179 new homes permitted this summer are mostly bare dirt and lumber right now, and many of them will need a yard in the months ahead.

This window is easy to miss. By the time a house looks finished from the street, the builder has often already lined up a landscaper. Getting in touch while the foundation is going in gives you time to price the job properly and show up as a known name, not a stranger knocking at handover.

If you want the bigger picture on timing through the year, our new-build landscaping calendar for BC walks through when to do what.

04 · Laneways and suites change the job

Two details in this summer's Surrey numbers matter for how you quote.

Laneway houses were 57 of the 220 permits. A laneway build usually tears up most of the back yard, so the work afterwards tends to be a rebuild of what's left: a path to the second door, a small patio, a fence line, some planting and drainage. These are smaller tickets, but there are a lot of them.

100 of the 220 permits mention a secondary suite. A suite often means a separate entrance, so a side path, lighting, extra hard surfaces and sometimes a parking pad. The permit tells you that before you see the lot, which helps you walk in with a sensible scope.

Smaller signals are in there too: 7 permits mention a pool and 4 mention a retaining wall. Few in number, but each one points to a larger backyard job worth an early call.

05 · How to work these leads without cold-calling homeowners

On most new builds the person who decides on landscaping is the builder, not a future homeowner. So the practical move is to reach builders, not doorbells. Each permit in a PermitRadius list shows the builder behind it, which turns a list of addresses into a short list of people to contact.

A simple approach that respects everyone's time:

• Go through the week's list and note which builders have more than one permit near you.
• Send one short, specific note: which permit, what you'd typically handle on that type of build, and when you have capacity.
• Follow up when the build is closer to finishing, not every week.

Our guide on finding new-construction landscaping leads in BC goes into this in more detail, and the landscaping trade page explains what a landscaping list includes.

06 · What this data can and can't tell you

Every number in this post comes from the City of Surrey's open permit data as counted by PermitRadius on October 3, 2026, by issue date. A few honest limits:

• A permit is a plan, not a promise. Some builds stall or change scope.
• Declared value is the applicant's estimate, not the final cost of the project, and it says little about the landscaping budget.
• We don't yet break Surrey down by neighbourhood in these stats, so this post sticks to city-wide counts. Your weekly list is filtered to your own service radius.

You can see what we track for the city on our Surrey building permits page.

07 · Try it

The quickest way to judge whether this is useful for your crew is to look at a real list. The live demo needs no sign-up and shows a real weekly permit list. When you're ready, pricing and the 14-day trial are on one page.