Jordan’s Department of Statistics (DoS) reported that area licensed for residential construction increased 10.7% during the first seven months of 2026 compared with the same period of 2025. The report was published on 27 September and covers building permits and construction activity through July. DoS separately said total licensed building area reached 5.84 million square metres, up from 5.58 million square metres a year earlier, a 4.7% increase. The number of permits issued was 14,361, compared with 14,124, an increase of 1.7%.

The 10.7% figure applies specifically to residential licensed area. It is not the change in the total licensed area, which rose 4.7%, and it is not the change in permit count, which rose 1.7%. These are three different measures: a segment’s floor area, combined licensed area and number of approvals. One permit may relate to a building or project of very different size from another, so permit counts cannot substitute for square metres. The release does not say that all licensed projects began construction.

A building permit is an administrative approval and an indicator of planned activity, not proof that a project was completed, occupied or financed. Licensed floor area can signal a pipeline of proposed construction, but does not by itself measure construction spending, materials demand, housing completions, sales or new supply entering the market. The gap between approvals and completed buildings can vary with financing, contractor capacity, project schedules and cancellations; the short release does not quantify those transitions.

The data include licences issued by the Greater Amman Municipality and other municipalities across Jordan. They therefore cover a national set of licensing authorities rather than just the capital. However, the headline summary does not provide a municipality-by-municipality breakdown or distinguish changes in average project size. The comparison is year to date against the same months last year, which helps control for the length of the reporting window but does not establish a full-year trend.

The figures are useful for tracking the scale of construction intentions recorded by authorities. They should be read as administrative statistics for January–July, with the residential area rate kept separate from total floor area and permit counts. They do not forecast completions or property prices, and they cannot establish how much housing stock will ultimately be delivered. Future DoS releases can show whether the approvals translated into continued activity, but this report alone supports only the stated comparison for the first seven months.