The Washington State Department of Commerce has released its latest Annual Permitting Performance Report, providing a comprehensive look at permitting timelines across Washington, including 32 jurisdictions in King and Snohomish counties. The report is required by Senate Bill 5290, enacted in 2023 to improve permitting efficiency, increase transparency, and hold local jurisdictions accountable for development review timelines. It shows encouraging progress in meeting statutory review timelines while also highlighting additional opportunities to reduce the total time it takes to deliver housing.
The report also reinforces why continued reforms such as concurrent review, clear and objective development standards, and subdivision modernization remain important to reducing housing delays.
“The annual reporting requirements established under SB 5290 give policymakers and the public a clearer picture of where projects are moving efficiently and where improvements are still needed,” said MBAKS Government Affairs Director Jennifer Anderson. “The report is an important step toward transparency, but it should be viewed as one piece of a much larger picture. The next step is removing unnecessary layers of review, eliminating subjective approval criteria, and streamlining permitting to ensure every review serves a meaningful public purpose.”
Key takeaways:
- The report reinforces permitting delays remain a significant housing affordability issue. Every month a project sits in review adds cost and uncertainty, making it harder to deliver homes people can afford.
- Subdivision approvals continue to be one of the biggest bottlenecks for homeownership. Delays in preliminary and final plats directly delay opportunities for families to purchase a home.
- There is wide variation among jurisdictions. Some cities and counties are demonstrating that efficient permit review is achievable, while others continue to experience substantial delays. This shows that many delays are driven by local process and implementation, not statutory requirements alone.
- Process improvements can make a meaningful difference. Jurisdictions investing in permit streamlining, consolidated review, and administrative improvements are beginning to demonstrate better outcomes, reinforcing that regulatory reform can reduce delays without compromising health and safety.
- The next step is removing unnecessary layers of review. While reporting is important, Washington jurisdictions must continue modernizing subdivision laws, expanding administrative approvals, encouraging concurrent review, and reducing duplicative permit processes so more homes can reach the market sooner. Continued efforts to require clear and objective development standards and ensure timely completeness determinations will also be essential to delivering more housing opportunities for Washington families.
View Annual Permitting Performance Report 2025
Understanding the Data
While SB 5290 reporting is an important accountability tool, it measures statutory review performance rather than the entire housing permitting process. As policymakers evaluate the report's findings, it is important to understand both what the data measures, and what it does not.
The report reveals several important themes:
- The data shows progress, but comparisons should be interpreted carefully. The reported improvement in preliminary plat review times is encouraging, but the 2025 data is not directly comparable to the 2024 baseline. Changes in the statutory review period, the removal of atypical legacy projects from the baseline, and differing local review timelines all influence year-to-year comparisons.
- "Stop-the-clock" data does not capture every permitting delay. SB 5290 measures time based on when jurisdictions pause and restart the statutory review clock. It does not reflect delays resulting from disagreements over subjective code interpretation, unnecessary additional review cycles, or requests for technical revisions that could often be addressed through conditions of approval. From an applicant's perspective, these are real delays even though they are not reflected in the reported timelines.
- Some delays occur before the clock ever starts. The report begins measuring time once an application is deemed complete. It does not capture situations where jurisdictions spend weeks or months conducting substantive review before issuing a determination of completeness. Recent legislation (HB 2418) helps reinforce that completeness reviews should be procedural and checklist-based, improving consistency across jurisdictions.
- Concurrent review remains an important opportunity for reform. Permit review timelines can appear compliant while projects still experience lengthy delays if construction permits cannot be reviewed concurrently with subdivision applications. Expanding concurrent review would shorten overall project timelines without reducing regulatory oversight.
For additional background or information on Senate Bill 5290, its requirements for local governments and best practices to streamline the local permitting process, see MBAKS Streamlining Local Permitting Processes Issue Brief.
Why This Matters
Efficient, on-time permitting is one of the most effective tools local governments have to reduce costs and increase supply. Every month of delay means more families are priced out of homeownership. Better permitting isn't just about helping homebuilders. It's about creating more housing opportunities, improving affordability, and ensuring everyone has a place to call home.
Ultimately, the goal isn’t simply to improve statutory review metrics. It is to shorten the total time it takes to move housing projects from application to construction and get more homes on the market.
For every $1,000 increase in the cost of the median-priced new home, 982 households are priced out of the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue market area.
Source: https://www.nahb.org/news-and-economics/housing-economics/housings-economic-impact/households-priced-out-by-higher-house-prices-and-interest-rates
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