Building permit timelines & delays, by jurisdiction
Data-backed guides to how long building permits actually take in major U.S. jurisdictions, sourced from official government performance reports, with every figure cited. We're expanding city coverage over time.
Building-permit review times in the U.S. range from a guaranteed 1-business-day turnaround to medians of well over a year, and the gap is mostly about local process, not the size of the project. Permavia tracks the official numbers for 169 jurisdictions across 50 states and DC, with every figure cited to a government source.
- The slowest reviews cluster in Hawaii and coastal California: Honolulu's median single-family permit runs 394 days.
- The fastest jurisdictions guarantee turnaround in days: Kansas City reviews one- and two-family homes in 1 business days.
- 37 of 169 jurisdictions run longer than their statutory or published target review period.
- Methodologies differ by city: compare a jurisdiction to its own target before comparing it to another.
Start with your state
Pick a state to open its statewide guide, the backbone dataset behind its city guides, and jump to the cities we've profiled there. All 50 states are covered, each guide is cited to the official record and updated regularly.
all 51 statewide guides, A to Z
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Search, filter by state, or sort by review performance. Each guide reports official figures and names the exact source they came from.
Albany's Buildings & Regulatory Compliance cites 7–10 business days to approve a permit, longer if corrections are needed; NY's Uniform Code mandates plan exam.
Alexandria targets 10 business days for residential plan review under Virginia's open-ended state standard, but historic-district work must first clear a twice-monthly Board of Architectural Review; it publishes no measured turnaround.
Anaheim posts a 10 to 20 business-day plan-review target, but its own Accela open-data permit records show plan-checked residential permits taking a median of 84 calendar days (mean 124) from application to issuance. About three-quarters of all residential permits are same-day over-the-counter; the long tail is the plan-check track, plus the city's own electric utility quoting 8 to 12 weeks for a service plan.
Anchorage's seismic (Category D2, post-2018-quake) and 50-psf snow-load requirements make residential engineering demanding, but the city publishes no permit-timeline data, and its only stated target is 4 days for pre-approved plans.
Annapolis posts a 15-day target for a single-family permit, but the binding constraints sit upstream: a Historic Preservation Commission Certificate of Approval and Chesapeake Bay Critical Area review, both on their own clocks.
Asheville's steep-slope and landslide rules already complicate hillside builds; since Hurricane Helene the city has worked through a rebuilding surge, about 945 permits by mid-2025.
Aspen's own timeline sheet puts a major residential permit at 16–18 weeks for first review, with each correction round adding another 8–10 weeks.
The City Auditor found general building permits took a median 12–21 workdays to issue and met city targets only 34–54% of the time.
Augusta enforces Maine's MUBEC through a small Bureau of Code Enforcement issuing about 500 permits a year. It posts no turnaround; the friction is the Kennebec River shoreland zone and floodplain, plus limited staff.
Austin's open data shows a new single-family home takes a median ~108 days from application to permit, far longer than the per-cycle review targets suggest.
Baltimore's standard is plan review under 30 days, but a Feb 2025 switch to a new permit system collapsed output and built a backlog.
Baton Rouge's own open permit data shows a measured median of about 15 days from application to issuance for a new home in 2024, against a 7-business-day plan-review target. The 2016 flood and a one-foot freeboard rule dominate the friction.
Construction cleared well inside statute, but multifamily review ran far over.
Highest reported volume statewide, yet construction reviews still met statute.
Bismarck is one of the few small capitals that posts review goals: 7-10 business days for residential new construction, 14-21 for commercial, most other permits within a day. It also publishes monthly permit logs; deep frost and the Missouri River are the constraints.
Boise publishes actual average first-review days by permit type each quarter, each against its goal, from 6 days (small TIs) to 46 (new multifamily L2).
Routine Boston permits issue in days, but Article 80 large-project review (50,000+ sq ft) can run months or even years.
Boulder posts no fixed permit target; discretionary use reviews average ~200 days, and since Dec 2024 new construction must be all-electric.
Bozeman issued roughly 8,977 new dwelling-unit permits since 2020 amid 43% growth, and is now rebuilding its development code under Montana's 2023 housing-reform laws.
Burlington's open data shows a ~9-day median for residential zoning permits, with 76% closed within 30 days, and Act 250 generally doesn't even apply to single-family or duplex work.
Cambridge issues permits under the Massachusetts 30-day decision rule, but the friction is the stack of mandates on top: it adopted the Specialized net-zero stretch code (all-electric or electric-ready), joined the state fossil-fuel-free building pilot, and became the first US city to require large existing buildings to reach net-zero emissions under BEUDO. Add multiple historic and conservation districts and extensive public-comment loops, and energy and discretionary review dominate the timeline, not the 30-day clock.
Carson City, a consolidated city-county, posts no permit shot clock. Two governance moves dominate: a 3% annual cap on residential permits (774 for 2026) and a 2025 decision to bring building review back in-house after years of outsourcing.
Historic-core homes clear the Board of Architectural Review across stages; flood zones require building 2 ft above base flood elevation.
Charleston, West Virginia (not South Carolina) opted into the state code and is unusual in posting review targets: residential in 3 working days, commercial 10, industrial 30. Kanawha and Elk River flood and hillside terrain are the friction.
Mecklenburg County reports completing 89–91% of scheduled plan reviews on time against a 90% goal, though land-development site-plan timeliness slipped to 76% in FY25.
Cheyenne operates under Wyoming's new Fast Track Permits Act: a complete small-home application gets a 30-day deemed-approved clock from July 2026. The catch is that the clock starts only after the city deems the application complete, so completeness screening is the real gatekeeper.
Chicago's open data shows standard new-construction permits take a ~48-day median to issue: the 10-day self-certification path roughly matches the fastest quartile of standard review.
Cincinnati issues a residential structural permit in a ~16–19-day median against a 10-day target; hillside lots, in the nation's most landslide-costly county, trigger geotechnical review.
Half of Cleveland's residential permits issue same day, but multi-department serial review leaves a long tail (one permit ran 6.6 years); design review gates new infill.
Colorado Springs does not run its own building department. The Pikes Peak Regional Building Department (PPRBD), a regional authority serving eight jurisdictions, issues building permits and does plan review, while zoning and the hillside, wildfire-interface, and expansive-soils reviews stay with the city and run in parallel. PPRBD publishes robust volume data (2,854 new single-family permits in 2024) but no measured plan-review turnaround.
Columbia enforces the statewide 2021 I-Codes on a concurrent-review model but posts no plan-review timeframe. The catastrophic 2015 flood shaped its floodplain ordinance, and historic and design districts require a Certificate of Design Approval first.
State law gives Columbus up to 30 days to approve or disapprove filed plans before inaction legally counts as a denial.
New Hampshire reserves permits to municipalities, so Concord runs its own Code Administration Division. It reports volume (523 permits in FY2024) but no turnaround; historic and Merrimack floodplain review add layers.
After a 2021–22 backlog crisis, Dallas officials report the median time to issue a residential permit fell from 72 days to about 5, and the overdue-plan backlog was cleared to zero.
Second-slowest behind San Francisco in an official cross-city benchmarking review.
Des Moines runs its own Permit and Development Center on the 2024 I-Codes but publishes no turnaround target; its open-data portal has no permit dataset. Metro growth, river floodplain, and historic-district review are the friction.
Detroit's open data shows most rehab permits now issue same day under a 2026 field-approval push, but new construction still runs a ~88-day median.
Dover posts a 15-business-day review target and reports volume rather than turnaround. It enforces its own 2018 I-Codes, with Historic District and St. Jones River floodplain review as the added layers.
Durham issues permits through a combined city-county inspections department amid a Research Triangle townhome and multifamily surge. The clearest official evidence that growth collided with capacity is the Planning Department's July 2024 notice extending site-plan review cycles from 20 to 30 days, citing staffing. Durham publishes raw permit data but no building-permit turnaround dashboard; the binding residential target is North Carolina's statutory 15-business-day plan-review rule.
Fairfax County is the heavyweight county AHJ of Virginia (about 1.16 million residents) and is unusually transparent: it publishes measured turnaround data. In FY24, new single-family home permits averaged 67 calendar days to issuance (35 staff days plus 32 applicant days) across 1,447 permits, and residential additions averaged 45 days. The distinctive friction is marine-clay geotechnical review east of I-95 and Chesapeake Bay Resource Protection Area rules.
Arizona law puts Flagstaff on a 45-working-day clock for a new home permit, with a full fee refund if it's missed, though the clock pauses while you fix corrections.
Fort Collins offers an ~14-calendar-day expedited code review for stock plans (plus a 7-day zoning target).
Fort Lauderdale processes ~24,000 permit applications a year through its LauderBuild portal, now under Florida's 30-business-day statutory cap.
Fort Worth advertises a ~7-business-day residential first review even as it became the 11th-largest U.S. city, and sells a paid X-Team lane to skip the queue.
Frankfort issues permits under Kentucky's mandatory statewide code but publishes no turnaround. In its large historic districts a building permit waits on Architectural Review Board approval, with a 60-day hearing and 90-day decision clock; the Kentucky River floodplain adds review.
Frisco was the fastest-growing large U.S. city for much of two decades, and its bottleneck sits in platting and civil-engineering review for tract housing and master-planned communities, governed by the Texas 30-day plat clock, not in vertical building inspection. The city publishes monthly permit counts but no plan-review cycle times. The statutory backstop is Texas HB 14 (2023), which lets an applicant invoke third-party review when a deadline is missed.
Greeley typically schedules project submittals for an approximately two-week review, depending on complexity and queue.
Harrisburg enforces Pennsylvania's UCC, so a residential permit is deemed approved if not decided in 15 business days. The city publishes no measured turnaround; historic districts and a Susquehanna floodplain add the real time.
Hartford's own nightly permit data shows a median of about 14 days from application to issuance, inside Connecticut's 30-day statutory deadline, though medians have crept up lately and historic review gates street-visible work.
The Big Island is Hawaii's fastest county for single-family permits at a 127-day median, but still slow by mainland standards.
Helena runs its own state-certified building program and reported averaging about 7 days to review a residential plan (about 12 commercial), comfortably inside Montana's 10-working-day statutory cap. Historic districts and a seismic setting add the friction.
UHERO clocked Honolulu single-family permits at a 394-day median (585 for multifamily) for permits issued in early 2025.
Houston's live dashboard shows new-home plan review averaging ~31 business days against a 10-business-day service target, and new homes still face separate platting and floodplain review.
Indianapolis offers a paid accelerated plan review (5–7 business days); standard commercial first review targets 15–20 business days. No measured residential turnaround is published.
Irvine's building plan check is not the bottleneck: a new custom home carries a 20 working-day first-review target. The timeline driver in this master-planned city is the stacked design review, where every village and planning area adds its own standards, discretionary cases route to hearings posted at up to 8 weeks (Zoning Administrator) or 16 weeks (Planning Commission), and HOA architectural review runs in parallel. Irvine publishes targets but no measured actuals.
Jackson adopts its own code inland and moved permitting online in 2020, but publishes no turnaround. The story is capacity: the 2022 water-system collapse, code-enforcement staffing shortfalls, Pearl River flooding, and population decline.
Jacksonville tells applicants to expect 25–30 business days just for first review, at or beyond Florida's 30-day statutory decision cap, and drainage/subdivision review must clear first.
Jefferson City runs its own permitting on the 2018 I-Codes and asks for 3 business days to process a request. The clearest measured data is the rebuild surge after the May 2019 EF3 tornado; the Missouri River floodplain adds review.
New Jersey law gives Jersey City 20 business days to grant or deny a complete permit, even amid one of the nation's biggest high-rise booms.
Juneau, the consolidated City and Borough of Juneau, issues its own permits and targets a 2-week plan review. The defining friction is geographic: no road access, steep terrain, the Mendenhall wetlands, and adopted avalanche-hazard zones.
KCMO guarantees a 2-day first-review turnaround for one- and two-family dwelling plans; new commercial builds target 4 weeks.
In the Florida Keys the binding constraint isn't review speed: it's winning a capped ROGO/BPAS permit allocation tied to hurricane evacuation, a wait that can run years.
Lansing enforces Michigan's statewide code, so the 10-business-day permit clock applies (MCL 125.1511). The city cites a typical 10-to-15-day plan review but publishes no audited turnaround; river floodplains and historic review add layers.
Clark County is one of the few jurisdictions that publishes measured compliance: new-home first reviews average ~19–20 days, ~99–100% within the 21-day goal.
Lincoln runs the consolidated Lincoln-Lancaster Building & Safety Department on its own 2021 I-Codes. It posts next-business-day inspections but no plan-review turnaround metric, despite operating an open-data portal.
Little Rock targets a 5-working-day plan review on new projects but publishes only permit volume, not turnaround. The MacArthur Park historic district and Arkansas River and Fourche Creek floodplain review are the added gates.
Long Beach issues its own permits and reports robust volume (a record 1,704 residential permits in 2024, including 747 ADUs) but publishes no median application-to-issuance turnaround. Its own October 2025 memo concedes the new state 30-to-90-day approval mandate is consistent with its goals but not always achievable. The distinctive friction is a certified coastal zone (some permits appealable to the Coastal Commission) and a citywide methane/oil-field overlay.
A UCLA study of every LA multifamily permit (2010–22) found approval alone averaged 1.8 years, and 3.9 years to occupancy.
Louisville's conversion barrier is mainly financing (downtown office vacancy ~21%) and a 2024 state density moratorium, not local fire-code rigidity; Kentucky mandates a uniform statewide code.
A 2024 regional study measured a 391-day median from letter of intent to building permit for Madison's large multifamily projects, 71% of it after land-use approval, though Madison ranked 4th-slowest of five metro cities.
Standard Maui permits ran a 379-day median in 2025; expedited Lahaina fire-recovery permits cleared in about 83 days.
Miami Beach (a separate city from Miami) issues permits under the Florida statewide shot-clock, which gives a single-family permit a 30-business-day ceiling with fee penalties for delay. But the defining friction sits outside that clock: extensive historic districts mean a wide range of work needs a Certificate of Appropriateness from the Historic Preservation Board or Design Review Board, both noticed public hearings, on top of sea-level-rise resiliency rules and post-Surfside structural recertification.
Miami-Dade County targets initial plan review in 24 hours to 10 business days, with next-business-day expedited review available.
Milwaukee's measured median is ~14 days (9 for alterations), faster than its reputation; a 2022–23 staffing crunch, not a structural feature, drove the worst delays.
Minnesota law gives Minneapolis 60 days to approve or deny a written zoning/permit request; failure to act means automatic approval.
Missoula's open data shows a ~106-day median to issue a new-residential permit, over its 8–12-week target, after it adopted a new development code in 2026 to implement Montana's housing-preemption laws.
Montgomery targets residential plan approval in about 5 working days but publishes no measured turnaround. Historic Architectural Review Board approval and Alabama River floodplain review are the added layers.
Montpelier, the smallest U.S. state capital, issues a local zoning permit (not a building permit) for homes. After catastrophic 2023 flooding, floodplain and river-corridor review now drive the downtown rebuild.
Naples permits run under Florida's statewide 30-business-day shot-clock, but the real friction is post-Hurricane Ian rebuilding: the FEMA 50% substantial-improvement rule forces flood-zone homes to be elevated to current base flood elevation, layered with a strict 42-foot city height limit, high-wind coastal engineering (160 to 170 mph design), and wetland constraints. The City of Naples publishes no measured turnaround, though neighboring Collier County reported a 2-day plan-review snapshot in late 2025.
Metro Codes requires architectural plan review within 30 days of receiving the drawing file, with no expedited review offered.
New Orleans issues a residential permit in a ~36-day median, but historic-district review (VCC/HDLC) and a documented Safety & Permits backlog push complex projects past six months.
NYC's official Mayor's Management Report shows average filing-to-approval rose 11% in one year, to 20.2 days, with objection cycles routine.
NJ's code gives Newark 20 business days to act on a permit; it was the top NJ municipality for units authorized in Aug 2024.
A county grand jury found Oakland's plan-check capacity chronically short of demand; recent reforms cut some housing review from 10 months to two.
OKC's plan-review timeliness fell well below target during a 2020 permit surge: single-family 1-day reviews at 17% vs a 100% goal (FY21, COVID-affected), as it lost ~25% of review staff.
Olympia operates under Washington's statutory permit clock: a decision in 65 days (100 with public notice), with fee refunds for missed deadlines under SB 5290. The distinctive friction is heavy shoreline and critical-area review on a low-lying capital.
Florida's 30-business-day permit cap binds Orlando's Permitting Services Division as metro Orlando absorbs some of the nation's fastest growth.
Palo Alto is widely regarded as one of the slowest, most restrictive permitting cities in Silicon Valley. Its own City Auditor flagged pervasive timeliness problems, and in October 2024 California HCD found its ADU ordinance noncompliant with state law on roughly 20 points. Friction stacks fast: aggressive green-building and electrification mandates, a strict tree-protection ordinance, discretionary single-family Individual Review, and Architectural Review Board hearings. There is no clean published turnaround figure.
Complex Pasadena plans run 2–4 weeks per cycle and average three submissions; landmark-district projects need a Certificate of Appropriateness first.
L&I targets 15 business days for a home permit, but projects needing zoning relief have waited ~6 months for a ZBA hearing.
Publishes monthly turnaround; averages land at or inside its own goals.
Pierre, among the smallest U.S. state capitals, does require permits despite South Dakota's local-option regime, on the 2021 IBC plus a residential article. It posts review windows (2-4 days small, 1-4 weeks larger) rather than measured data.
Pittsburgh's PLI targets 15 business days to review residential plans; steep-slope and landslide-prone lots add a geotechnical hurdle.
Nine local historic districts cover ~2,635 Providence properties; exterior changes there need a Certificate of Appropriateness, decided within 45 days.
Raleigh targets 10 business days for the first review of a new single-family home, duplex, or townhouse, a goal, not a guarantee.
Reno-area first-review targets run 10–15 business days, but end-to-end housing development still takes five to eight years amid rapid growth.
Once notorious, Richmond's permit office went digital and cut standard turnaround from 45 days–2 months to about 5 business days after filling 71 vacancies.
Sacramento targets 20 working days for first review of a new home, plus 15- and 5-day second and third cycles before a permit issues.
Salem, the only IAS-accredited building division in Oregon, guarantees a 10-business-day single-family plan review, matching Oregon's statutory standard (ORS 455.467), and publishes annual first-review milestone reports. Floodplain and West Salem landslide hazards add friction.
Salt Lake City publishes first-review turnaround targets: 21 business days commercial, 14 residential.
San Antonio's DSD publishes category averages: ~26 days minor commercial, 70 complex, same-day minor repairs, but no fixed new-home target.
San Diego's by-right and affordable fast-track lanes are among California's fastest; ordinary correction-heavy projects still take months.
The city's own analysis found a 280-day median, slowest of the peer cities studied.
San José's own FY2024-25 audit found new-home plan reviews averaged 26 days against a 20-day target; only 59% of plan checks met their cycle goal.
Single-family homes run a multi-hearing Single Family Design Board process, concept, project design, then final approval, on a biweekly cadence, with appeals at two stages.
Santa Fe's historic districts mandate Spanish-Pueblo and Territorial 'Old Santa Fe Style'; routine work clears at staff level, but board cases wait for a twice-monthly hearing.
Residential permits target ~2 weeks, but Site Development Permits run 60–90 days and historic-district and 2-ft flood-elevation review add more.
Scottsdale runs its own codes and posts a 15 business-day first-review target for most new single-family homes. The signature friction is not the base building code but the desert-preservation regime layered on top: the Environmentally Sensitive Lands Ordinance requires permanent open space scaling with slope, the Native Plant Ordinance requires inventory and salvage of saguaro and other specimens, and design review governs the hillside aesthetic. No measured actual turnaround is published.
Seattle reported its own land-use categories; every reported duration exceeds statute.
As a home-rule city, Springfield adopts and enforces its own building code and publishes no measured turnaround. The friction is Lincoln-era historic preservation review and Sangamon River and Sugar Creek floodplain regulation.
An independent city plus a county of 88 municipalities each run their own zoning and building codes; the City of St. Louis issues a residential permit in a measured ~22-day average.
St. Paul targets 5 business days for administrative historic design review; complex jobs wait for the once-a-month preservation commission.
Construction and final subdivisions ran over statute; multifamily came in fast.
Tallahassee operates under Florida's statewide permit clock: a residential decision in 30 business days, with a 10%-per-day fee reduction if late. The distinctive local friction is the city's strong tree-canopy protection regime.
Florida law now forces Tampa to decide a complete single-family permit within 30 business days, or cut the fee 10% per day late.
Topeka issues permits on the 2021 IRC with a simple email process. Kansas's 2025 fast-track law now requires a single-family decision within 60 days, auto-approved if missed. The Kansas River floodplain and levee zone is the local gate.
Trenton posts a 20-working-day first-review target under New Jersey's 20-business-day UCC clock. NJ DCA data show very low recent activity (about $3.1 million in 2024) in an older, built-out capital.
DC's Department of Buildings reviews most filed permit plans within 30 business days and hit all its review targets in FY2024; historic and federal review add the real friction.
Official data, cited line by line
Every number on these pages traces back to a government performance report or official dashboard: no estimates, no scraping, no vendor spin.
Sourced from the record
Figures come from official permitting performance reports and city dashboards, the same documents reviewers and councils rely on.
Benchmarked honestly
Where a statutory period exists, we benchmark the real review time against it, so you can see exactly where a jurisdiction runs over.
Traceable to the page
Each data point carries its exact table, figure, and page citation, so you can verify it in the source yourself.
Building permit timelines, answered
How long does it take to get a building permit in the U.S.?
It varies enormously by jurisdiction. Review times in our data range from a guaranteed 2-business-day turnaround for one- and two-family homes in Kansas City, MO, to a 394-day median for a single-family permit in Honolulu, HI. Most of that gap reflects local process (completeness checks, resubmittal cycles, and discretionary review) rather than the size of the project. Because cities measure time differently, compare a jurisdiction against its own target before comparing it to another.
Which U.S. cities have the slowest building-permit reviews?
Among the jurisdictions we track, the slowest are concentrated in Hawaii and coastal California: Honolulu (394-day median single-family permit), Maui County (379-day median), San Francisco (280-day median in the city's own Budget & Legislative Analyst review), Denver (274-day median in that same cross-city study), and Boulder (≈200-day average discretionary land-use review).
Which cities are the fastest or most on-target?
Kansas City, MO guarantees a 2-business-day first review for one- and two-family homes; St. Paul, MN clears compliant historic-district work in about 5 business days; Albany, NY states a 7–10 business-day rule of thumb; and Bellingham, WA met its 65-day statutory construction-review period almost exactly (64.57 days) despite handling Washington's highest reported permit volume. Austin, TX publishes a 25-business-day target for new-construction initial review.
Where does Permavia's permit timeline data come from?
Every figure traces to an official public source: a government permitting performance report, a statute, or a city's own plan-review dashboard. Each data point names the exact table, figure, report period, or page it came from. There are no estimates, scraped numbers, or vendor projections.
Can I compare permit timelines across cities directly?
Carefully. Jurisdictions measure different things: Washington reports performance against statutory deadlines, San Francisco's review measured end-to-end median processing time, and many cities publish first-review targets that exclude resubmittal cycles. We label what each figure measures so you can compare like with like: a 30-day statutory cap is not the same as a 30-day median outcome.
How often are these guides updated?
We refresh each guide as new official reports and dashboards publish. Every jurisdiction page carries its own last-updated date; the guides in this directory were last reviewed in June 2026. Where a figure is a baseline year (such as Washington's 2024 report, which predates its new statutory periods), we flag that explicitly.
What do the status labels (runs long, mixed, on target) mean?
“Runs long” means reported review times exceed the jurisdiction's statutory or published target period. “On target” means it meets or beats that period. “Mixed” means performance depends on permit type: for example, fast construction permits but slow multifamily review. Where a jurisdiction only publishes a target or a legal deadline rather than measured outcomes, we label the figure accordingly.
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