Basement finishing cost in New York City, NY: what 2,085 permits declare
The median declared cost of basement finishing on New York City building permits filed 2024–2026 is $50,000. Half of all permits fall between $27,000 and $112,580. The national sourced whole-project range on our basement finishing cost guide is $7,000–$23,000.
Median declared cost
$50,000
2,085 permits
Middle half
$27,000–$112,580
p25–p75
Full span after trimming
$600–$264,640
$500 floor, top 1% removed
How to read this
These figures are the project values applicants declared to the New York City permitting office, which uses them to calculate permit fees. Declared values tend to sit below the final invoice, and jobs done without a permit are not counted at all. Read the median as a floor for a permitted basement finishing job in New York City, then check it against the sourced national range and get local quotes.
Where the data comes from
Source: New York City open-data portal, dataset w9ak-ipjd. Filter: residential permits issued 2024-09-09 to 2026-09-09 whose description matchesupper(job_description) like '%BASEMENT%' AND job_type='Alteration'. Compiled 2026-09-09. Full method on the methodology page; every cell is in the CSV download.