In six places we measured, a typical home remodel permit was issued in 10 to 75 days, but the slowest 10% took two months to nearly a year. New homes took longer: from about 45 days in Montgomery County, Maryland, to nine months in Los Angeles and New York City. The numbers below come from each city’s own permit records for 2023 and 2024, and each city measures the wait a little differently, so read the definitions before comparing places.
Home remodels and additions
| Place and permit type | Median days to issue | Slowest 10% took at least |
|---|---|---|
| Seattle, single-family addition or alteration | 10 | 169 days |
| New York City, alteration of a one- or two-family building | 14 | 190 days |
| Montgomery County, MD, house or townhouse alteration | 16 | 55 days |
| Montgomery County, MD, house or townhouse addition | 45 | 151 days |
| Los Angeles, alteration or repair of a one- or two-family home (plan-checked) | 51 | 292 days |
| Chicago, renovation with standard plan review | 63 | 242 days |
| Chicago, renovation under self-certification | 9 | 76 days |
| Austin, residential addition and remodel | 75 | 343 days |
| Los Angeles, addition to a one- or two-family home | 145 | 562 days |
New homes and new buildings
| Place and permit type | Median days to issue | Slowest 10% took at least |
|---|---|---|
| Montgomery County, MD, new house or townhouse | 45 | 160 days |
| Seattle, pre-approved backyard cottage (DADU) plans | 62 | 143 days |
| Austin, new residential | 74 | 439 days |
| Seattle, middle housing (new small multi-unit) | 150 | 343 days |
| Los Angeles, new one- or two-family home | 270 | 851 days |
| New York City, new building (all types) | 275 | 715 days |
Chicago’s new construction permits, of all building types, took a median of 34 days from review start to issue (slowest 10%: 243 days).
Roofs, decks, and small repairs
| Place and permit type | Median days to issue | Slowest 10% took at least |
|---|---|---|
| Chicago, express permit for reroofing | 2 | 15 days |
| Austin, residential repair | 2 | 91 days |
| Montgomery County, MD, shed | 12 | 66 days |
| Montgomery County, MD, deck | 15 | 62 days |
| Seattle, single-family work mentioning a deck | 41 | 255 days |
| Los Angeles, re-roof of a one- or two-family home (plan-checked only) | 44 | 337 days |
In Los Angeles, most home permits skip plan check entirely: 79% of alteration and repair permits on one- and two-family homes were Express Permits issued without plan review, so the Los Angeles figures above describe only the permits that needed it.
For new homes, the permit is only the first wait. Our certificate of occupancy guide shows how long the certificate took after the permit in New York City, Los Angeles, and Miami-Dade.
How each place measures the wait
- Seattle, Montgomery County, and Austin: days from the application date to the issue date.
- New York City: days from the filing date of the initial DOB NOW job filing to its first permit.
- Los Angeles: days from submittal to issue, for plan-checked permits only. Express Permits have no separate submittal date.
- Chicago: the city’s own processing-time field, which runs from the date the city began review to the issue date.
- Which permits: Seattle, New York City, and Montgomery County figures cover permits applied for or filed in 2023 and 2024 that were later issued. Los Angeles, Austin, and Chicago figures cover permits issued in 2023 and 2024, because their data lists issued permits only.
All figures are our own calculations from each city’s open data, pulled October 23 and 24, 2026, not numbers published by the cities. The full methods and sources are in our analyses for Seattle, New York City, Los Angeles, Austin, Chicago, and Montgomery County. To look up one city, work type, and year, use the comparison tool on our permit status decoder page. In Virginia Beach, where most home alteration permits are issued within a day, see our Virginia Beach building permit search.
What makes a permit take longer
These patterns show up in the data itself.
- Correction cycles. In Seattle, single-family permits with no correction cycles were typically issued in about a day. Two cycles took a median of 51 days, three took 98, and four or more took 197.
- Plan review instead of an express or self-certified route. Chicago renovations under self-certification took a median of 9 days, against 63 days under standard plan review.
- Changing the building’s use or occupancy. In New York City, Alteration CO jobs, which need a new certificate of occupancy, took a median of 168 days to a first permit, against 14 days for ordinary alterations of one- and two-family buildings.
- Legalizing work already done. Permits that say they legalize or correct unpermitted work took about twice as long: a median of about 70 days in New York City (against 14), 101 days in Los Angeles (against 51), and 114 days in Chicago (against 63). Our guide to unpermitted work on a house has the details.
- Building something new, in some places. In Los Angeles, New York City, and Seattle, new homes took months longer than remodels. In Austin and Montgomery County, new homes took about as long as additions, and Chicago’s new construction permits were issued faster than standard-review renovations.
Limits of these figures: a median describes the typical permit, not any one project, and the slowest 10% shows how long the tail runs. Time spent before an application is filed, such as design or zoning approval, isn’t counted. The Seattle slowest-10% figures follow our Seattle analysis; the comparison tool shows a few days less (168 and 138 days) because it calculates that percentile in a slightly different way.
More from our permit data: what public permit records show across seven places.