Ranking Texas cities by permit processing time

[Robert Gambee]

Real estate investors need to consider many factors. But one that's often overlooked is how long it takes to get a renovation permit approved. A permit that takes 30 business days instead of 2 means an extra month of holding costs in mortgage payments, insurance, property taxes, and lost rental income. A delay like that can easily cost thousands of dollars.

However, this information isn't centralized. Each city publishes their permit timelines differently. Some put it on their website. Some bury it in PDF documents. Some don't publish it at all. Compiling this manually would have taken me many hours.

Instead, I used a tool I helped build called everyrow.io/rank to do it in about 5 minutes.

Results

I started with all 75 Texas municipalities with populations over 50,000.

For 45 of the 75 municipalities, I was able to find official processing times, either based on historical performance data or stated targets. For the remaining 30 cities that don't publish this information, I asked everyrow.io/rank to estimate based on contractor reports and comparable cities.

City	Population	Business Days	Source Type
Corpus Christi	317,317	2	Official metrics (FY22 avg: 1.75 days)
San Antonio	1,526,656	2	Official metrics (FY24 avg: 2.3 days)
Waco	146,608	2	City council presentation
Irving	258,060	3	City website
Frisco	235,208	3	City website
McAllen	148,782	3	City website
Grapevine	51,320	3	City website
... 33 more cities with official data ...
Denton	165,998	12	City council audit (2023)
Garland	250,431	14	City website
Sherman	50,229	15	City permit process guide
Georgetown	101,344	18	City website (15-20 day range)
Round Rock	135,359	30	City website

View the full dataset with all 75 cities

Key Findings

At 2 business days average, San Antonio is one of the fastest cities despite being the 7th largest city in America. Their Development Services Department publishes actual performance metrics showing FY2024 averaged 2.3 days against a 3-day goal.

Austin and Houston are in the middle of the pack. Austin processes interior remodels in 5 business days (additions take 15). Houston averages 8 days based on their August 2024 permitting report.

Georgetown (18 days) and Round Rock (30 days), neighboring cities outside Austin, are the slowest at issuing permits.

The research notes contain helpful context. For instance, they explain that Dallas reported its median residential permit time dropped from 68 days in 2022 down to 8 days in 2024.

A Note on Data Quality

Of the 75 cities researched, 45 had official performance metrics or city-stated processing times. The remaining 30 cities don't publish this information, so those values are estimates based on contractor reports and comparable nearby cities. The research notes in the full dataset include the source for each number, including the reasoning behind the estimates.

This inconsistency is itself a finding: 40% of cities in Texas don't publish permit processing timelines at all. This makes it difficult for investors to compare markets and for property owners to plan renovations.

How This Was Done

I started with a list Texas municipalities from Wikipedia and filtered to the 75 cities with populations over 50,000. Then I used everyrow.io/rank to research each city's permit processing time. I prioritized sources in the following order:

1. Official performance metrics (actual measured averages)
2. City-stated standard processing times
3. Contractor/homeowner reports with specific timelines

For each city, the system searched the city's permit office website, development services documentation, and contractor forums. Each result includes sources, which I can use to verify the number.

Cost: $3.89 in total, only 5¢ per row

Time: 5 minutes, 12 seconds

Why This Couldn't Be Done Another Way

This research would be very difficult without everyrow.io/rank.

- There's no aggregator for permit times like there is for home prices. Each city publishes (or doesn't) in their own format.
- Manual research doesn't scale. I could research one city in 10 minutes, but 75 cities would take 12+ hours.
- ChatGPT could find this information for a single city. But it's not set up for researching all 75 at once.

everyrow.io/rank handles all of this: it researches each entity, extracts the relevant number with citations, and ranks them.

Let me know if you have any questions about how everyrow.io works! I'm happy to answer them.