San Francisco permit approval times

San Francisco permit timing visualization. Every figure comes from the city's public building-permit records for permits filed on or after January 1, 2021 and issued through July 2, 2026, counted as distinct permits after duplicate permit rows are collapsed. Time to first permit issuance is measured in whole completed 24-hour periods from filing. Key medians: accessory dwelling units 339 days and single-family homes 577 days. A separate matched comparison of newly built ADUs, every permit watched for exactly two years, found 60.1 percent of the 303 filed under the 120-day law had a recorded issuance within two years, versus 44.0 percent of the 334 filed under the 60-day law; the earlier group crossed half at day 560, the later group never reached half. Those figures use their own matched yardstick and are not comparable to the issued-only medians. The filing timeline shows one real ADU, a new one-story detached unit built at the rear of a house, that finished 59 days over the 339-day median, identified by its public permit number 202308084001. Its four main milestones are Submitted on Day 0, Reviews begin on Day 45, Approved on Day 385, and Issued on Day 398. The source has 33 initial-routing rows and 32 labeled rows are shown. One row from a station with no plain-language name (which arrived and finished on day 379) is omitted. Every source row carries a recorded review result. Seven rows record an Issued Comments event — the records show what happened without saying why. 30 recorded routing-step finish events appear on one spine across Public Works, Water/Sewer, Building, Mechanical, Fire, Planning, and Coordination. A finish date means the routing step finished; it does not necessarily mean the station approved the plans. No hold windows are recorded for this permit, so the timeline draws no hold bands; an amber stripe marks the stretch between Reviews begin and Approved, while station work was underway. Recorded station finishes cluster on days 51–90, 219–233, 281–309, and 378–385. Among the 532 ADUs that eventually issued, 3, or 0.6 percent, had issued by filing day 60; 134, or 25.2 percent, by filing day 204; and 267, or 50.2 percent, by filing day 339. These figures are stated in this description rather than plotted as timeline markers, and they are not shares of every filed ADU or legal-compliance rates. For qualifying ADUs, California law generally requires the permitting agency to approve or deny the application within 60 days after receiving a completed application. DataSF does not report when an application became complete, so these records cannot measure compliance with that clock. A quarter of issued ADUs were issued in about 200 days and a quarter took over 590. The station chart spans each permit and station from earliest recorded arrival to latest recorded finish, including gaps and waiting; it is not continuous active staff time. Station medians range from roughly 163 to 263 days. Across 350 recorded planning-zoning hold windows, the median span was 96 days. The recent-issued analysis covers 325 ADUs issued January 1, 2024 through 2026-07-02, each verified against its project description. 299 of 325, or 92.0 percent, had at least one recorded comment date. 244 of 325, or 75.1 percent, had recorded comments at the same station on more than one date; that is 244 of 299, or 81.6 percent, among commented permits. Among those 299 permits, the median was 7 recorded station-comment dates across 4 stations. When the most recorded comment dates at one station was one, 55 permits had a median 29-day first-to-last comment window; two dates, 111 permits and 105 days; three dates, 67 permits and 215 days; four or more dates, 66 permits and 279 days. The chart excludes 26 permits with no recorded comment event. A recorded comment date is one unique initial-routing Issued Comments event per permit, station, and finish calendar date on or before issuance, after exact duplicate rows are removed. The frozen routing source contains 15966 raw rows, 14765 exact-unique rows, and 1201 duplicate extras. All 325 permits have at least one populated review result somewhere, but individual routing rows can be incomplete. The relationship between repeat comments and longer windows is descriptive, not causal, and incomplete routing records make recorded rates lower bounds. These counts include only permits that were issued; they do not estimate the share of all filed permits that finish. The project destination is /sandbox.

scroll

01 / 07

San Francisco consistently ranks among the country's most expensive housing markets. The city issued ~10 new single-family home permits per year over the last five years. We dug into its residential permit records to answer a question builders keep asking: how long does it actually take to get a housing permit issued?

02 / 07

Given the extremely low volume of single-family homes, we focused our analysis on Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs), which now account for one in four homes permitted statewide. Across hundreds of issued ADU permits over the last five years, the typical project took 339 days from submission to issuance.

03 / 07

The variation is striking. Among issued ADUs, the fastest 25% reached first issuance in 204 days or less, while the slowest 25% took 590 days or more. The slowest 10% took at least 933 days — more than two and a half years.

04 / 07

Our analysis also shows that ADU projects typically undergo review by multiple City departments at the same time. Each department applies its own processes and timelines, often resulting in sequential rounds of feedback, the dots on the lines. Note: In March 2026 The Mayor proposed merging the Department of Building Inspection, Planning and the Permit Center; but as of July it remains to be seen what this would mean for the process.

Quality of the Input Matters

Additional rounds of corrections at the same station were associated with several more months in the correction window. In contrast, projects with no repeat corrections at any one station had a median first-to-last correction window of 29 days. TurboPermit is designed to catch issues before submission, dramatically reducing the risk of multiple review cycles and keeping your project on the fastest path possible.

Median days from first to last recorded correction

n=55

n=111

n=67

n=66

Permits issued between 1/1/24, and 7/2/26, with 1+ comment. All records were verified against project descriptions, duplicates were removed, and each correction was counted once per permit, department, and calendar day. Time windows reflect the period from the first recorded comment to the last across all departments.

Correction-window duration by most recorded correction dates at one station
Most recorded correction dates at one station	Permits	Median days from first to last recorded correction
1	55	29
2	111	105
3	67	215
4+	66	279

05 / 07

A typical ADU permit in the dataset went through multiple rounds of corrections from several different departments, shown here as individual dots. Each correction often comes from a different reviewer, and responses arrive at different times, creating a reactionary sequence of steps for the applicant.

Department Approval TimesTypical days each department takes to approve a permit.

06 / 07

Once plans have been approved by departments, fees must be paid and a few other administrative steps taken prior to issuing the permit.

Legislation has changed, but sometimes results haven’t

Despite the state’s 60-day review mandate, the percentage of San Francisco ADU permits issued showed no meaningful acceleration across comparable 2 year periods.

This analysis uses two comparable pre- and post-policy periods: 2017–2018 and mid-2022–2024. These windows were selected to avoid the 2020–2021 pandemic-related shutdowns and focus exclusively on newly constructed ADUs.

Share of filed newly built ADUs with a recorded permit issuance, by day, under each law
Days since filing	120-day law issued share	60-day law issued share
0	0.0%	0.0%
60	0.0%	0.0%
180	5.0%	5.4%
365	26.4%	23.4%
560	50.5%	36.2%
730	60.1%	44.0%

07 / 07

TurboPermit is built to catch likely issues before you submit, keep department feedback organized, prepare the required forms, and guide your project along its permitting path, from a phone or laptop.

Open a TurboPermit project →

Schedule a call