The City of Dallas saw residential permit activity stall in May, with monthly submissions and issued permits falling to some of the lowest levels all year.
Dallas’ building permit department — the Development Services Department (DSD) — saw activity for new single-family dwellings decelerate in May, with the median turnaround time breaking a four-month downtrend and more than doubling from the prior month period, the latest data from DSD’s dashboard shows.
DSD received 119 single-family permit submissions in May. This amount was two applications fewer than the 117 submitted to the department in February and just under the 122 submitted in January. It is important to note that 48 permits were submitted via paper in May and were not included in the City of Dallas’ monthly calculations.
Of the 119 permits that were submitted electronically in May, 41% were reportedly approved within five days, according to data presented in the activity dashboard.
When examining the total number of permits issued in May, which includes [submissions] in prior months and years, DSD issued 116 single-family permits, of which 119 were submitted this year, with 19 submitted in a prior year.
Although DSD had built up some positive momentum over the past few months with consecutive drops in the median issuance time, DSD could not carry that momentum through May.
DSD required 27 median days to issue a single-family permit in May (when adjusting for the time spent with the applicant and staff). If revisions were not needed during the pre-development phases, then DSD could approve permits in a third of the time. That said, DSD roughly doubled the time needed to approve when compared to March and April.
Additionally, 27 days to receive approval is well above Development Services’ 15-day goal and could be a sign that a broader slowdown in Dallas’ residential real estate market is starting to take hold. Permit activity and approval times have slowed to a crawl throughout North Texas.
Approval times under Dallas City Manager T.C. Broadnax before 2023 were widely considered poor by the local development community, with many lamenting the whole building permit process.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, slow approval times often lead to local builders going over budget and beyond their development timeline.
“Every day of delay costs $200 to $300 per project,” said Phil Crone, an executive officer at the Dallas Builders Association (DBA). He explained that receiving a permit in two weeks instead of three or four months can make all the difference for developers who rely on a swift process.
As of June 1, 2023, DSD had 296 residential applications remaining in its queue.
According to DSD, permits in the queue have been submitted but have yet to be approved. This backlog of building permits includes all active in-queue permits regardless of the submission data.
At the end of May, DSD had 312 in-queue permits listed as inactive, meaning the application had been returned to the customer and that there had been no changes for at least 90 days.
Residential data for June is scheduled to be released on July 1, 2023.
