Finding · updated August 5, 2026
The two speeds of an LA building permit: instant, or months of plan check
40% of LA building permits are issued the moment you apply — no plan review at all. The rest wait a median of 65 days, and a new building takes about 6 months just to get its permit.
Between May 7 and August 1, 2026, the LA Department of Building and Safety issued 15,000 building permits. Ask how long each one took to get, and the answer splits into two very different cities.
6,004 of them — 40% — went through LADBS's online express system, which issues eligible small jobs with no plan review: the feed records no application phase at all, because the permit is issued the moment you apply and pay. This is the lane for the city's everyday maintenance — 2,787 of these express permits are re-roofs alone, and the rest are bathroom remodels, water-heater swaps, attic insulation, seismic anchor bolts. The two lanes carry different-sized jobs: the median express job declares $6,000 of work, the median plan-checked one $17,000.
The other 8,994 permits carried a recorded application date and went through plan check — and there, the typical wait from application to permit was about 2 months (65 days), with 1 permit in 10 waiting more than 350 days. The wait scales with ambition:
| permit type | typical wait (median) | 1 in 10 waited over | permits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alterations & repairs | 31 days | 225 days | 4,128 |
| Swimming pools & spas | 31 days | 245 days | 607 |
| Signs | 49 days | 182 days | 327 |
| Grading & earthwork | 91 days | 411 days | 833 |
| Demolition | 93 days | 461 days | 353 |
| Building additions | 109 days | 434 days | 1,179 |
| New non-building structures | 146 days | 504 days | 395 |
| New construction | 175 days | 612 days | 1,077 |
Read the table bottom to top and it's the arc of construction itself: alterations & repairs clear in about a month, while a new construction permit — the ground-up kind — takes a median of about 6 months (175 days) just to be issued, and 1 in 10 took more than about a year and a half. That clock runs before the first shovel of dirt moves.
Plan check has a fast lane of its own. Jobs simple enough to be checked over the counter — 3,968 permits in this window — were issued in a median of 14 days, and 27% of them walked out the same day they applied. The 3,310 permits routed through regular plan check — the full review queue — took a median of about 5 months.