How long does an HVAC permit take in Austin?

Median 7 days from application to issue, measured across permits issued in the last three years.

Why do new-construction permits take so much longer?

They carry plan review, zoning and inspection steps that a like-for-like equipment swap does not. In Austin the gap is about 20x on the largest samples: 7 days median for mechanical (hvac) vs 140 days for new construction.

Where does this data come from?

PermitStack's own corpus of U.S. building permits, aggregated from official city and county open-data portals. Turnaround is date_issued minus date_filed, so it only counts permits where the source publishes both dates.

How long does a building permit actually take?

Everyone asks. Almost nobody measures it. Below is the median time from application to issue, by trade, computed on 166,391 real permits issued in Austin, Texas over the last three years.

The headline: turnaround is not one number. Among the six largest samples here, mechanical (hvac) clears in 7 days (n=18,429) while new construction takes 140 days (n=12,265) — about a 20x spread on well-populated trades. Across every category measured the range widens to 2–140 days (70x), but the thin samples at each end deserve less weight than the middle of the table.

Median permit turnaround by trade — Austin, TX

Trade / category	Permits measured	Median days	90th percentile
Foundation	2,356	2	20
Renovation	3,216	6	210
HVAC	3,986	7	161
Mechanical (HVAC)	18,429	7	205
EV charger	1,124	7	24
Solar	3,646	8	76
Plumbing	45,059	17	351
Electrical	46,042	19	302
Demolition	3,007	22	242
Roofing	2,716	33	560
Other / uncategorized	11,278	64	582
Pool	2,349	73	507
Interior remodel	7,753	77	328
New construction	12,265	140	716
Addition	3,165	140	509

Measured 2026-08-05. Median = 50th percentile of (date issued − date filed), permits issued in the trailing three years, categories with at least 300 measurable permits. The 90th-percentile column is the one worth reading before you promise a customer a date: half of addition permits clear in 140 days, but one in ten takes 509 days or more.

Why the 90th percentile matters more than the median

A median tells you the typical case. Scheduling risk lives in the tail. Several trades here have a median under three weeks and a 90th percentile past six months — the same permit type can be routine or a quarter-long wait depending on plan review, corrections and inspection backlog. If you are staffing crews or quoting lead times, the tail is the number that burns you.

How this was computed

Turnaround is date_issued − date_filed. Only permits where the source publishes both dates are counted, which is why the per-trade sample sizes differ. Permits where the issue date precedes the filing date are excluded as source errors rather than silently clamped. Austin is used here because it publishes both dates reliably across every trade; not every jurisdiction does, and PermitStack labels which ones do.

Run this query on your own city Free API key, 100 requests a day, no credit card.

Run it on your own city

Every field above is in the public API. Pull filed and issued dates for any covered city and compute the same table:

curl -H "X-API-Key: pk_your_key" \
  "https://api.permit-stack.com/v1/permits/search?city=Austin&state=TX&category=hvac&per_page=100"

See the API reference for the full parameter list, or coverage for which jurisdictions publish both dates.