Novel study finds extreme state-by-state disparity in housing construction timelines

In Raleigh, North Carolina, an entire apartment building can be constructed in the same time it would take to approve a permit for that same building in San Francisco, according to a new economics working paper on housing construction timelines in the U.S. The paper is the first such comprehensive database of its kind in the nation. 

The authors of the study — which still needs to undergo peer review and may be revised before publication — did not intend for the study to determine why some cities take so much longer to build new housing. However, they did find that longer permitting times are correlated with lower rates of housing production, and that permitting is slowing down nationwide. Marina Bolotnikova writes for Vox:

“We estimate that, in 2000, our standardized multi-family project had a 71-percent probability of approval within six months of applying for a permit,” the researchers write. “In 2025, that project had a 44-percent approval probability within six months.”

Delays in housing construction can cause homes to never be built at a time when the United States is “millions of homes in the hole,” and result in lost staff time that developers add to the cost of new homes, Vox reports.