Sheet T-101 · San Francisco permit times
How long does a San Francisco building permit take?
Pick your project and the day you file. Dates come from 10,038 San Francisco permits filed since 2018 that went through plan review and were issued.
San Francisco permit dates
The chart below shows the median wait for every project type. Turn on JavaScript to put dates on your own project.
Filing to issue, by project type
San Francisco permits filed since 2018 that went through plan review. Select a row to see its dates above.
Residential
Commercial
Median Middle half of permits (25th to 75th percentile)
- Sheet
- T-101
- Drawing
- San Francisco permit times, filing to issue
- Date
- Oct 2026
- Scale
- Months from filing
- Drawn by
- Bay Area Architect
Data from San Francisco building permits on DataSF, filed 2018 through October 20, 2026, sorted into project types by Bay Area Architect from each permit's type, use and description. Waits run from filing to issue and include correction rounds. Your dates are worked out in your browser. We count which project types are picked, anonymously, and save nothing else.
About these estimates
How are these dates estimated?
From San Francisco building permits filed since 2018 that went through plan review and have been issued. For each project type we measure the days from filing to issue. "Likely" is the median, "fast" the 25th percentile and "slow" the 75th percentile. The estimate rests on 10,038 permits in all.
What does over the counter mean?
Smaller alterations can get an over-the-counter permit, which skips plan review. 93% of the permits in these project types since 2018 were over the counter. The dates in this tool are for the 14,661 that went through plan review, so they do not describe an over-the-counter permit.
Which projects take longest?
Offices have the shortest median wait, 3.9 months from filing to issue. New homes have the longest, 22.7 months. A home remodel that goes through plan review has a median of 8.9 months.
Why could my permit take longer than the slow date?
Permits still in review are not counted, because they have no issue date yet, so the slowest recent cases are missing and the slow date can run early. The wait also includes rounds of corrections and the time an applicant takes to answer them.