The building permit process is not just a local problem, but a national one.
With the issues facing Dallas’ building permit process outlined in past reporting by The Dallas Express, we must examine the problem on a national scale and find out what led to the explosion in permit delays and what city leaders are doing to tackle the problem in their backyard.
Firstly, a brief recap. In the U.S., issuing building permits is usually done through local municipalities and officials tasked with such duties.
Applying for a building permit, whether residential or commercial, is an essential developmental process that keeps the engine of a city running. For real estate and construction experts who rely on an efficient building permit process, the unwelcome delays directly translate to prolonged construction schedules and higher building and material costs.
Regarding residential building permits in Dallas, Phil Crone, executive director of the Dallas Builders Association (DBA), said it could sometimes take three to four months before permits finally get issued.
“About 80% of DBA members report an average permit delay of 10 weeks,” Crone told Dallas City Council members in November.
On the commercial side of construction in Dallas, Linda McMahon, president and CEO of The Real Estate Council (TREC), says she receives daily emails asking why the permitting process is taking so long.
In a previous interview with The Dallas Express, McMahon cited several key aspects that slow down the process. She said that these include culture issues, staffing issues, and a reluctance to adopt new technology as causes for the lingering departmental paralysis.
When the COVID-19 pandemic sent the U.S. into government-mandated lockdowns in 2020, many cities and their building department officials chose to close down their offices and offload their legacy permitting processes to implement various online systems.
In many cases, the transition to online software came with many unforeseen issues, including non-intuitive interfaces, software bugs and glitches, a significant learning curve, and a lack of communication from building officials.
Despite the widely known fact that Dallas suffers from one of the country’s most severe building permit backlogs, other densely populated regions like New York City, Portland, and many areas of California are also grappling with their construction permitting challenges.
The solutions explored in the Bay Area, NYC, and Portland include involving local construction and engineering professionals in the permitting process and, in some cases, uniting building permit departments under one roof. The Dallas Express will explore these solutions more in Part 2 of this article.
