InstaBids - method for the Marin County, CA declared permit value figures Published free at https://instabids.ai/us/cost/methods/marin-odbl-method.txt (version: cost-places-collect v2, 2026-10-22) Contains information from Building Permit (County of Marin, CA), https://data.marincounty.gov/d/mkbn-caye, which is made available here under the Open Database License (ODbL), https://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/1-0/. The figures derived from it (per-job medians and middle-half ranges) are offered under the same licence. 1. What is read Dataset: County of Marin, CA, "Building Permit" (Socrata id mkbn-caye), read through its public API. Only these columns are requested: issued_date, type_permit, construction, fee_code_title, permit_category, description, construction_value. No name, owner, contractor, address, parcel, permit-number or contact column is ever requested, stored or published. Rows: type_permit = 'RESIDENTIAL' and issued_date on or after 2023-01-01. 2. Residential filter and shared exclusions (applied before any job rule) - Left out as not an existing home: fee_code_title naming Demolition; a new single-family dwelling (fee_code_title "Single Family Dwellings - New ..."); descriptions naming a new house or a second / accessory unit ("S F D", "SFD", "A D U", "ADU", "2ND UNIT", "SECOND UNIT", "NEW SINGLE ...", "ACCESSORY DWELLING"). - Left out as paperwork: void, revise / revised / revises / revising / revision, supplement or supplemental (also "SUPP" and misspellings), "SUPP... PERMIT #" / "TO PERMIT ", legalisation, as-built, after-the-fact, renewal, extension, change of contractor, expired-permit text. - Left out as demolition only: "DEMO", "DEMOLI", "REMOVE ... ONLY". - Left out as a combined permit: a description that also names another job of the list in section 3 (one declared value = one job). A kitchen or bathroom remodel may carry its own heating, water heater and electrical work; a garage addition may say "addition". 3. Job rules (upper-cased description; a permit counts for a job when the rule matches) roof replacement ........ "RE-ROOF" / "REROOF", not with a roof deck, rooftop, truss, rafter, addition, second story, bath, kitchen, solar or remodel central AC replacement .. A/C, AC, air conditioning, heat pump or condenser; not with a furnace, solar, panel, inverter, PV, addition, remodel, mini-split, ductless, window unit, wall or floor units, indoor heads, zones, cassettes, or wiring / circuit-only work; never multi-zone ductless model codes (MSZ-, MXZ-, SVZ- and similar), a wall split or wall-mounted unit, a disconnect-only permit, or one that also names a renovation, roofing, plaster, paint, boiler or hydronic work water heater replacement "WATER HEATER"; not with a washer, repipe, vent, relocation, pool, spa, boiler, sink, toilet, bath, kitchen, sewer, solar or furnace furnace replacement ..... "FURNACE"; not with an addition, remodel, solar, water heater or boiler electrical panel / service upgrade .. panel or service upgrade / replacement / change, or a 100 to 490 amp rating; not with solar, PV, alarm, pool, addition, remodel, generator, charger, EV, battery or temporary. A kept permit must itself name the panel, service, meter or an amp rating; a rewire or whole-house wiring (wiring and fixtures, electrical wiring, rough-in, five or more circuits), a renovation, a basement, more than one unit or meter, a transfer switch or HVAC wiring is another job deck .................... "DECK"; not a roof deck, rooftop, pool deck, addition, remodel, garage, repair, coating, balcony or waterproofing in-ground pool .......... a pool that is new / constructed / installed / in-ground; not above-ground, renovation, resurfacing, plaster, spa or hot tub, fence, barrier, alarm, enclosure, heater, solar, deck, repair, alteration, reconfiguration, cover, coping or removal solar panels ............ solar, photovoltaic or PV; not a reinstall, detach, removal, battery-only, solar hot water, roof-only, addition, remodel or re-roof window replacement ...... windows replaced / changed out / retrofit; not a storefront, skylight, new opening, egress, door, interior, renovation, well, enlargement or other job siding replacement ...... "SIDING"; not with an addition, remodel, window, roof, deck, garage, kitchen or bath kitchen remodel ......... kitchen with remodel / renovate / alter / replace / update / upgrade; not with another room, whole-house work, conversion, rewiring, HVAC, exterior work or vanity / toilet work bathroom remodel ........ bath(room) with remodel / renovate / alter / replace / update / upgrade; not with a kitchen, another room, whole-house work, conversion, rewiring, HVAC or exterior work kitchen and bathroom, every source: never a wiring-only or electrician's permit, a whole-house renovation listing several trades (two or more of paint, HVAC, insulation, windows, doors, roof, siding, trim, stairs, ceiling, carpet, gutters, or five trades in all), more than one unit, kitchen or bathroom, adding a new bathroom, a porch, stairs, sunroom, basement, attic, powder room or other room, a conversion (such as a double to a single), or damage repair house repipe ............ whole-house only (entire / whole house, all water lines or piping, a total, complete or full repipe); never a house trap, boiler, toilet, vanity, sink, shower, washer or pipe section generator installation .. "GENERATOR"; not with solar, addition, remodel, panel upgrade, temporary, portable, gas line, sub-panel or piping (in-ground pool, fence, shed, garage, driveway, repipe and septic rules exist too; in Marin they do not reach 20 valued permits, so those cells are held and no figure is published.) Room addition is HELD for every source: permit text cannot separate floor-area additions from remodels, so no room-addition figure is published. 4. Value, floor and bars Declared value = construction_value. A permit with a value under 100 counts as "no declared value". Fill = permits with a declared value / matched permits; the cell is published only when fill >= 50%. Low-value floor: half of the 25th percentile of the same job type among hired-out jobs in the U.S. Census American Housing Survey 2023 national file (a fixed 500 for solar panels and generator, which the survey lacks). Declared values below the floor are removed; the cell is held if that removes more than 25% of the valued permits. A cell is published only when at least 20 valued permits remain. 5. Figures Percentiles of the kept values by linear interpolation (numpy's default): for n sorted values v[0..n-1] and q in {0.25, 0.5, 0.75}, k = (n - 1) * q, f = floor(k), c = min(f + 1, n - 1), value = v[f] + (v[c] - v[f]) * (k - f), rounded to the dollar. The median is q = 0.5; the middle half is the 25th to the 75th percentile. Only these three figures are shown per job, with n, the data years, the source and the retrieval date. A declared value is what the applicant told the permit office the job was worth when applying. It is not an invoice and not what any contractor will charge. 6. Inputs Each Marin cell's inputs are kept in their own file, never merged with any other source: data/cost/facts/inputs/places-marin-county-ca-.csv with three columns only (declared_value, issued_month, matched_token). Every figure above recomputes from that file with the floor stated in its record.