Building Permit Cost and Time: Fees in Austin and Los Angeles

There is no national price for a building permit. The model residential code leaves the fee to the schedule the local government sets, and a permit is not valid until its fees are paid. Cities charge in one of two ways. Austin prices residential work from a schedule of flat and square-foot fees: in fiscal year 2026-27, $112.76 to process an application and $146.15 to review a fence or a pool, which it files as small projects. Los Angeles works the building permit fee out from what the work is worth and adds a plan check fee of 90 percent of it. On time, Texas gives a city 45 days from the application to grant or deny a building permit, to say in writing why it cannot, or to agree a deadline; a city that misses the deadline that follows may not collect the permit fees.

How a city sets the fee

The 2024 International Residential Code charges a fee for each permit on the schedule the governing authority establishes, and it makes a permit valid only once those fees are paid; an amendment waits for any added fee too. Where a city charges by value, the code counts the total value of the work: the electrical, gas, mechanical and plumbing equipment and other permanent systems, materials and labor alike. Paying the building permit fee does not settle other fees the law sets for work done alongside it, and the building official may set a refund policy. Someone who starts work that needs a permit before getting it owes an added fee, also set locally, on top of the permit fees.

Austin’s residential fees, fiscal year 2026-27

Austin sets its fees each year by ordinance. The Council adopted the fiscal year 2026-27 schedule on August 12, 2026, in force from October 1, 2026. A house project pays plan review fees, then building permit fees set by trade and by square footage. A fence or a pool is filed as a small project; so are a garage conversion, a carport or porch enclosure and an amnesty certificate of occupancy. A shed that needs a permit, or an ADU, goes on the new construction or addition form, and minor repairs outside a floodplain can take an express permit.

The schedule names no deck and no shed line. What a project owes depends on the form it is filed on and its size; the fence, pool and driveway permit briefs give the lines each of those projects pays in Austin, a driveway’s review and inspection included.

Los Angeles: a fee worked out from the value of the work

Los Angeles takes the building permit fee from a table (Table 1-A of its building code) for the total value of all the work, painting, roofing, electrical, plumbing and permanent heating equipment included, and no part of the building is left out of that value because another permit covers it. Before the plans are checked, it collects a plan check fee of 90 percent of the building permit fee. For a house (the code’s R-3 occupancy), the building, electrical, plumbing and mechanical permits together cost 165 percent of the building permit fee for new construction or an alteration, and 175 percent for a swimming pool. A plan maintenance fee of 2 percent of the building permit fee pays for keeping the plans, and the state’s strong-motion surcharge is added to the permit fee.

The value comes from the Department of Building and Safety’s valuation table, a rate per square foot for each kind of work: $16 for a patio cover, $10 for a masonry wall and $14 for a concrete wall, in the table effective August 17, 2015. A 200-square-foot patio cover is therefore valued at $3,200, and Table 1-A sets the fee for that value. The code adjusts every fee each July 1 by the change in the Los Angeles-area consumer price index, so the dollar amounts printed in the code are not this year’s; ask the Department of Building and Safety for the current fee on your valuation.

How long a permit takes

The model code asks the building official to examine an application within a reasonable time, to reject one that does not conform in writing, with the reasons, and to issue the permit as soon as practicable once it does. An application not pursued in good faith is treated as abandoned 180 days after filing, unless a permit has been issued.

Texas puts a number on it. For a permit to build or improve a building or other structure in a city or its extraterritorial jurisdiction, the city must, within 45 days of the application, grant or deny it, tell the applicant in writing why it cannot yet, or agree a deadline with the applicant in writing. After such a notice it has 30 more days to grant or deny. A city that misses that 30-day deadline, or the one it agreed, may not collect the permit fees and must refund any it has collected. In Austin, reviewers’ comments come back in a report, and an update must answer every rejected comment; unresolved comments bring a rejection and may generate added fees, and a resubmittal is billed at $585.77.

California’s ADU law gives a city 15 business days to say whether an application is complete and 60 days to decide it. In Los Angeles some work needs no plan check and gets an express permit, a concrete block fence wall up to 6 feet in a residential zone outside the required front yard among it.

What adds to the bill

Revisions, resubmittals and reinspections are billed on their own lines in Austin. Work begun before its permit brings the added fee the model code allows, and Los Angeles collects investigation fees for work done without a valid permit. A permit that lapses costs again: in Los Angeles, plans for unfinished work under an expired permit are checked again for a fee on the same valuation, and Austin charges a permit holder $53.56 for each discipline, building, electrical or plumbing, on an expired residential permit. When a permit expires, and how to keep it alive, is in the guide to how a building permit works.

Whether your project needs a permit at all is the first question: the permit checker runs your project’s measurements through each city’s exemptions, and each project’s permit brief, the deck permit brief among them, sets them out.