2026-10-05
How to read permit velocity without false positives
Momentum is acceleration against a local baseline, not raw volume. How to read a Profentra score without chasing noise.
A momentum score is not a volume ranking. Profentra measures where permit activity is accelerating relative to that area's own recent history, so a quiet neighborhood that just doubled its filing rate can outrank a busy one that is holding steady.
The recent window is the latest 30 days; the baseline is the 90 days before it, normalized to a 30-day rate. The score blends velocity (60%), acceleration (20%) and persistence (20%), then applies a magnitude gate proportional to the square root of observations divided by 20. Small samples stay near the neutral 50 — a single permit cannot produce a breakout.
When an area lacks at least 12 baseline observations, velocity is neutral and the delta reads “insufficient baseline data” rather than a number. Those areas are not ranking-eligible and carry an explicit exclusion reason. A missing series is always shown as unavailable, never as zero.
Each score ships with confidence factors covering source freshness, sample and baseline sufficiency, geography quality, and date quality, so you can see how much evidence sits behind a rank before you act on it.
See the full algorithm on the methodology page.