BAM Key Details:
- A new Princeton and University of Chicago study of 1.1 million permits across 60 US cities finds that a standard single-family home takes nearly 4 years to build in San Francisco, compared to about 6 months in fast-building cities like Indianapolis.
- Permitting alone accounts for 30% to 43% of the difference between the fastest and slowest cities, with Miami’s permitting process taking about 1.4 years on its own.
- Single-family permitting times have tripled nationally since 2000, rising from 1.6 months to 4.9 months by 2023, while multifamily permitting time rose from 0.6 years to 1.5 years over the same stretch.
A single-family home in San Francisco takes almost four years to go from permit application to move-in ready. Build the exact same house in Indianapolis, and it’s done in about six months.
Same square footage. Same design. The zip code is the only thing that changes, and that one variable can add years to the timeline.
A new working paper from researchers at Princeton and the University of Chicago’s Booth School unpacks the data behind new construction’s speed problem for the first time, tracking permit and construction timelines across 60 U.S. cities.
Their findings show how much of that extra wait comes from construction itself, and how much comes from waiting on local governments for the green light.
How Researchers Measured This
The paper comes from a research team at Princeton and the University of Chicago’s Booth School. Leonardo D’Amico (University of Chicago), Evan Soltas (Princeton), Audrey Wang (Princeton) are listed as the paper’s authors.
Here’s how they built the data:
- Data set: about 1.1 million permit records covering 2.7 million housing units across 60 U.S. cities, dating back to 2000
- Method: a standardized project modeled for each city, using the same size single-family home and the same size 20-unit apartment building, so location is the only variable that changes
The cities in the data set are home to about 14% of the U.S. population. Together they account for roughly 1 in 13 of all housing units permitted nationally over that stretch.
One important detail to keep in mind: this is a city-level analysis built from municipal permit records (not metro-area data).
In a lot of fast-growing Sunbelt metros, a large share of single-family construction happens on unincorporated county land or in suburban jurisdictions outside city limits. So, a metro’s overall building climate can look different from what its central city’s permitting office reports here.
The Single-Family Spread, and Where the Time Goes
For a standard single-family home, the build timeline comes down almost entirely to location:
- Fastest: Indianapolis, El Paso, and Colorado Springs, around six months from application to completion
- Slowest: San Francisco, at nearly four years
Close behind San Francisco are Miami and Philadelphia, each at around 3.4 years
Permitting approval explains 30% to 43% of the difference between the fastest- and slowest-building metros. It’s time spent waiting for a yes, before a single hammer swings.
In Miami, for example, permitting alone takes about 1.4 years, whereas in Indianapolis and Albuquerque, permitting takes a matter of weeks.
Multifamily Construction Follows the Same Pattern
The multifamily numbers tell a similar story, but on a longer timeline. For a standardized 20-unit apartment building:
- Fastest: Raleigh, Grand Rapids, and Reno, around two years
- Slowest: San Francisco, Miami, and New York, 4.6 to 4.8 years
The same coastal-versus-Sunbelt split shows up here too. Averaged across those coastal cities, apartment buildings take about four years. Averaged across those Sunbelt cities, it’s about two years.
Charleston, S.C. breaks the usual coastal-Sunbelt pattern. It’s a smaller city, with one of the longest permitting stretches in the entire data set.
The researchers found something else. Cities that are slow to permit single-family homes tend to be slow to permit apartment buildings too. Permitting speed looks like a consistent trait of a city, not something that changes by project type.
A 25-Year Trend in the Wrong Direction
Permitting has gotten slower over a quarter century, well before the pandemic started:
- Single-family permitting time: 1.6 months in 2000, 4.9 months in 2023, a threefold increase
- Multifamily permitting time: 0.6 years in 2000, 1.5 years in 2023
Total project duration moves in cycles more than a straight line, which makes the permitting slowdown harder to see underneath it
The odds of a fast approval have fallen too.
- In 2000, a standardized multifamily project had a 71% chance of getting approved within six months of applying.
- By 2025, that had dropped to 44%.
For single-family homes, the odds of approval within two months fell from 88% to 70% over the same stretch.
The slowdown reaches into the South too, where a lot of U.S. housing production has concentrated in recent years. Sunbelt markets known for building fast are permitting more slowly than they used to.
Both permitting timelines have eased some since 2023. The researchers checked whether that easing was just an artifact of unfinished projects skewing the recent data, and the single-family improvement held up under that check.
The multifamily numbers are less certain, since recent-year estimates are more sensitive to how the researchers account for projects still in progress.
What the Numbers Mean for Where Housing Gets Built
Put the numbers together, and the cost of slow permitting becomes measurable. Every additional year of multifamily permitting time is associated with 3.8 fewer new homes permitted per 10,000 residents each year.
It’s also associated with 39% higher median rent in that city.
The multifamily improvement in the study’s most recent years is a small bright spot. Whether it holds, and whether it extends to single-family permitting too, is something to watch as more data comes in.
The city-versus-metro caveat is also a reminder for agents and brokers tracking local housing supply, since city hall numbers capture only part of the slowdown.
County and suburban permitting offices play a big role in how fast new construction gets built, especially in the Sunbelt markets driving a lot of the current growth.
If you serve a slow-building market, be aware of local sentiment, too, since residents accustomed to a specific neighborhood feel often resist zoning changes that would make room for more affordable housing.
