How long does an HVAC permit take in Austin?

Median 10 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 19x on the largest samples: 7 days median for mechanical (hvac) vs 131 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 permit systems and 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 166,387 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=17,146) while new construction takes 131 days (n=13,008) — about a 19x spread on well-populated trades. Across every category measured the range widens to 2–131 days (66x), 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	2,355	2	19
EV charger	1,081	7	27
Renovation	5,238	7	235
Mechanical (HVAC)	17,146	7	191
Solar	3,850	8	77
HVAC	5,873	10	183
Battery	572	13	29
Plumbing	44,204	16	342
Electrical	45,995	19	301
Roofing	2,637	30	382
Demolition	4,187	32	315
Interior remodel	8,861	77	366
Pool	1,918	78	559
Other / uncategorized	6,370	88	624
Addition	3,092	116	426
New construction	13,008	131	695

Measured 2026-09-30. 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 new construction permits clear in 131 days, but one in ten takes 695 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.