Through the end of September 2026, the City of Visalia had issued 683 permits for new single-family homes. Over the same months of 2025 it had issued 436, a jump of 57%, according to the city's monthly building permit comparison. That total is already higher than the 660 permits the Sun-Gazette reported for 2020, which it called the city's most productive year of the last decade. The paper's figures come from the trade publication Construction Monitor, which counts a little differently than the city does.
The neighboring cities went the other way. In the same Sun-Gazette report, Fresno issued 116 single-family permits in the first half of 2026, down from 509 a year earlier. Hanford fell from 176 to 115.
Visalia's own rulebook goes a long way toward explaining the difference. In 2014, Visalia tied the opening of new land to a running count of building permits. That count tipped in 2021, and the homes going up now sit on land that tipping point made available.
A permit counter written into the General Plan
Visalia's 2030 General Plan, adopted October 14, 2014, draws growth boundaries around the city in rings, or tiers. Tier I was the land available right away. The outer tiers were locked until the city had issued a set number of permits inside the tiers already open. Here is how Policy LU-P-21 puts it, as reproduced in a city General Plan document:
"Tier II... land would only become available for development when building permits have been issued in Tier I at the following levels, starting from April 1, 2010: Residential: after permits for 5,850 housing units have been issued."
Tier III, which is full buildout of the plan, unlocks after 12,800 housing units have been permitted across Tiers I and II, counting from that same April 2010 start date.
A city environmental review for a subdivision off Caldwell Avenue records when the first threshold was crossed: "The City met the residential permit threshold in July 2021." Since then, the city has treated land in both Tier I and Tier II as available for development.
Here's why that matters in 2026. Getting a new tract from raw farmland to a building permit takes years: annexation, a tentative map, an environmental review, then infrastructure. Land that opened in 2021 is reaching the permit stage now. The city reached the permit counter years ago, and the homes are arriving on that delay.
The 2026 count, month by month
The city's table shows every month of 2026 ahead of the same month in 2025. It also shows the year was heavily front-loaded.
| Month | New single-family permits, 2026 | Same month, 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| January | 50 | 21 |
| February | 64 | 53 |
| March | 82 | 49 |
| April | 129 | 70 |
| May | 110 | 59 |
| June | 88 | 69 |
| July | 50 | 48 |
| August | 46 | 31 |
| September | 64 | 36 |
| Year to date | 683 | 436 |
April and May together account for 239 permits, about a third of the year so far. From July through September, the monthly pace dropped back to roughly where 2025 had been running. A permit marks the start of construction, so the spring surge is the batch of homes most likely to finish and list over the coming months. For a buyer, that means the new-home choices around Visalia this winter and spring will come largely from permits pulled in April and May.
Other categories are quieter. The city issued 16 new commercial permits through September, against 24 a year earlier. In other words, the 2026 growth is almost entirely rooftops.
Where the counter put the new homes
Because the tiers are geographic, the new supply isn't scattered. It gathers at specific corners on the city's edge. The city's list of active tentative maps, last updated December 8, 2025, plus a June 2026 Planning Commission action, show where the pipeline sits:
- Ritchie Ranch, by Lennar: 320 single-family lots on about 45 acres at the southwest corner of North Demaree Street and West Riverway Avenue.
- Pratt Family Ranch Tier 3 map, by D.R. Horton: 293 single-family lots just north of the earlier Pratt Family Ranch map, at the northwest corner of Mooney Boulevard and Pratt Avenue. "Tier 3" is part of the map's name and doesn't refer to the General Plan ring.
- Blankenship, by San Joaquin Valley Homes: 203 lots at the southeast corner of South Santa Fe Street and East Caldwell Avenue. The city's review places it in Tier II, and the City Council started annexation proceedings on June 2, 2025.
- Clements Ranch, by D.R. Horton: a 292-lot tentative map on the east side of South Lovers Lane north of Caldwell Avenue. The Planning Commission approved the map on June 8, 2026, and sent the annexation on to the City Council. The full plan describes about 662 homes, including 370 multifamily units that aren't proposed for development yet.
- Carleton Acres, by West Star Construction: 50 detached lots on the east side of Shirk Street, about a quarter-mile north of Riggin Avenue.
San Joaquin Valley Homes has also been selling in southwest Visalia. Its Andalusia community, planned for 216 homes off Roeben just south of Tulare Avenue, held its grand opening on October 11, 2025.
Not every map turns into houses. A proposed 247-lot subdivision called Cedar Crest was marked "Withdrawn" at the city's July 1, 2026 Site Plan Review meeting. An approved map gives a builder the option to build. It doesn't guarantee they will.
Northwest Visalia is where commercial growth is catching up with the homes. Costco's North Visalia warehouse opened May 21, 2026, at 6610 W. Riggin Ave. The city has also discussed rezoning 21 acres of city-owned land at the northwest corner of Riggin and Akers from public use to commercial. In the Sun-Gazette's account, Council member Brian Poochigian called the site "very valuable for any shopping center developer," pointing to nearby Costco and the plans for thousands of new homes.
How far away the next ring is
If the counter explains the boom, the question becomes how much room is left before Tier III opens. No public document gives the city's official running total. Public figures can still set a floor.
California's housing department publishes each city's annual permit reports on its APR dashboard. For Visalia, that data shows 841 units permitted in 2021, 1,301 in 2022, 351 in 2023, 600 in 2024 and 702 in 2025, or 3,795 units over five years. The city's own table adds 683 single-family homes and 34 multifamily units permitted through September 2026.
Start from the 5,850-unit mark reached in July 2021 and add every one of those permits, including the 2021 permits issued before July that shouldn't really count. That generous total comes to roughly 10,360 units. It leaves at least about 2,400 units to go before 12,800. The 2021 to 2025 average was about 760 units a year, which puts Tier III more than three years out even on that generous math. This is an estimate built from public data, not a city count.
Opening Tier II land also comes with a built-in cost. The Agricultural Land Preservation Program ordinance that went to the City Council in May 2023 calls for one acre of farmland to be preserved for every acre converted, usually through an agricultural conservation easement. It exempts projects of five acres or less. Under that text, a full-size subdivision on former farmland at the edge of town carries a preservation obligation on top of its other costs. This is general information, not legal or financial advice, so check the current rules with the city or the right professional before relying on them.
Put together, the land that's open now is the land where new homes will keep appearing for the next few years. Southeast Visalia along Caldwell and Lovers Lane, the Mooney and Pratt corner, the Demaree and Riverway area, and the Shirk and Riggin corridor are where most of the pipeline listed above sits.
What steady supply means next to a resale home
In August 2026, the median price of an existing single-family home in Tulare County was $400,000. That was up 5.6% from August 2025 and down 1.2% from July, according to the California Association of Realtors. The county's unsold inventory index was 4.2 months, and the median home sold in 27 days, compared with 32 days a year earlier. Those figures cover the whole county, not just Visalia.
That's a market where prices are still rising and homes are selling a bit faster, while Visalia keeps adding new construction at its fastest pace in years. For a buyer weighing a resale home against a new one, the timing works in your favor. The homes started in this spring's surge will compete for the same buyers during the months ahead. For a resale seller, the competition depends on location. A home a mile from Ritchie Ranch or Clements Ranch is competing with a builder's model homes. A home in an established central neighborhood mostly isn't.
FAQ
Is Visalia's growth limited to the Tier II boundary? Mostly, but the policy has an exception. It allows small annexations under 30 acres that touch the current city limits, as long as no General Plan amendment is needed and infrastructure can be extended at no cost to the city.
Does an approved tentative map mean homes are coming soon? Not always. A map gives approval for a layout of lots, and the Cedar Crest withdrawal in July 2026 shows a builder can step away from one.
Will the city revisit the tier thresholds? Policy LU-P-24 calls for the city to update the land-use and demand projections behind its growth boundaries at least once every five years. That's the process to watch for any change to the rings.
If you're choosing between a new build on Visalia's edge and an established home closer in, The Shawn Team can show you which new tracts are near the homes you're considering and what they're competing against. Get in touch and we'll go through the map together.
