The Case for Real-Time Housing Permits

This article, written by TurboPermit CEO Robbie Leer was originally published as part of The Rooftop, a blog and multimedia series from New America’s Future of Land and Housing program. Featuring insights from experts across diverse fields, the series is a home for bold ideas to improve housing in the United States and globally.

According to The Brookings Institution, the United States is short roughly 5 million homes. This shortage has driven prices up. Last month The New York Times published Moody’s Analytics data showing that median home prices have skyrocketed from 2.5 times median income in 1950 to as high as 12.4 times today in coastal areas such as San Francisco. The National Association of Home Builders estimates that regulations add $131,734 to the price of a $499,500 home, more than 26% of the total cost.

Both political parties recognize the problem. President Trump issued an executive order to ‘Remove Regulatory Barriers to Home Construction’ in March. Meanwhile, during California debates focused on housing, Democratic primary candidates for governor and the mayor of Los Angeles shared their plans to streamline construction. Our thicket of housing regulation is such a pervasive issue that bureaucratic frustrations over home construction in LA set a main character on the path to tragedy in the hit HBO series Euphoria.

Several markets demonstrate the link between rising supply and falling rental prices. In Austin, a 10.5% increase in housing supply since 2022 drove a 20% drop in rents. San Antonio, Denver, Phoenix, and Tampa, leading the nation in multifamily construction permits, have similarly experienced sharp rent declines according to ApartmentList Data. Yet these cities remain outliers.

By and large, the US is building homes at a slower pace than its population has grown. Why?

The biggest obstacle to increasing supply is not materials or even money, it’s time. The RAND Corporation recently analyzed multifamily market-rate developments and found that on average it took longer to approve a building than to build it! These delays stem largely from backlogs in obtaining permits certifying a building is compliant with local codes. Building codes were introduced to prevent fire and structural collapse. That core safety focus remains important, but outdated processes, increasingly complex rules, and understaffed permitting offices have turned housing approvals into a multi-year ordeal costing real money. In the same study, RAND estimated as much as 8.2% of the total cost of a California project could be saved if timelines were reduced to mirror those in states like Texas.

Reducing permitting timelines doesn’t just reduce delays, it improves predictability. Homebuilders can tell you to the day how long it takes to construct a house, once permitted. What many can’t predict is how long the permitting process will take.

Los Angeles provides a stark example of these permitting delays. TurboPermit, an AI-powered permit management platform that I launched in 2024, analyzed thousands of Los Angeles residential permits and found that the median single-family home permit issued since January 1, 2025 took 297 days. A quarter of those projects took more than 754 days. Nearly a quarter of single-family projects had to be resubmitted five or more times to resolve redlines from the city. Builders joke that corrections received often depend on what the plan checker had for lunch. Projects can require clearances from up to 13 different LA departments, each with its own unique process and timeline, some of which take longer than the median 297 days on their own. This uncertainty inflates costs, deters new projects, and makes financing more difficult.

The technology to solve this problem exists. AI-powered tools like TurboPermit can understand local requirements and review building plans for compliance in minutes, flagging issues in complex building codes no differently than a word processor software underlines a misspelled word. What has long been a problem best solved by the handful of experts in each of the ~10,000 jurisdictions across the country who know their rule book inside and out can now be solved consistently for all builders and without geographic constraint. By leveraging AI to verify that building plans comply with local codes, platforms like ours have helped residential projects across the country secure approvals in half the average time with zero investment by cash-strapped municipalities. Adopting AI-assisted permitting for routine projects nationwide could dramatically accelerate housing production, while maintaining or even enhancing safety standards.

While affordability is a complex issue, real-time housing permits offer the largest impact with the least effort. These tools are already being adopted by builders, and that trend will only accelerate. A few forward-thinking jurisdictions are also seeing productivity gains from AI, and their engagement could speed up results. Ultimately, adopting these time saving tools should be in everyone’s interest. New homes generate revenue for cities and counties, improving cash flow is good for business, and building faster puts more supply on the market for homeowners and renters.

While real-time permitting alone won’t solve our housing crisis, in the year 2026 nothing less than real-time permitting should be acceptable.