Permits: the real timeline in Santa Clara County
Over the counter, plan check, and the two comments everyone gets. Week by week, for San Jose and the towns around it.
Permits are the part of a project nobody can see and everybody waits for. Here is how it actually goes in San Jose and the surrounding cities, from our last two years of submittals, so you can plan around it rather than be surprised by it.
Two kinds of permit
Over the counter. Kitchen and bath remodels inside the existing walls, water heaters, panel upgrades, re-roofs, window replacements in the same openings. Submitted online, issued in 1 to 5 working days. No drawings beyond a sketch and a scope.
Plan check. Anything that moves a wall, adds floor area or changes the structure: additions, ADUs, wall removals, second stories, new homes. Full drawings, structural calculations and an energy report go in; a plan checker reviews them against the building, zoning and fire codes and sends back comments. This is where the weeks go.
Plan check, week by week
| Step | San Jose | Campbell, Los Gatos, Saratoga |
|---|---|---|
| Intake and completeness check | 1 – 2 wks | 1 wk |
| First plan-check comments | 4 – 6 wks | 3 – 5 wks |
| Our response | 1 wk | 1 wk |
| Second round | 2 – 3 wks | 2 wks |
| Issue | 1 wk | 1 wk |
Call it 9 to 13 weeks in San Jose for a typical addition with two rounds, and 8 to 10 in the smaller cities. An ADU is quicker on paper because state law gives the city 60 days to respond; in practice it is 6 to 9 weeks. A new custom home is 12 to 20.
The two comments everyone gets
After enough submittals you can predict the first letter. Two comments show up on almost every addition in the county:
- Energy compliance. The Title 24 report has to match the drawings exactly: window sizes, insulation values, the HVAC model. Change a window during design and forget to rerun the report, and it comes back. We rerun it the day before we submit.
- Structural detail at the tie-in. Where the new foundation meets the old, and where the new roof meets the old, the checker wants a detail, not a note. Engineers often leave it generic. We ask for both details drawn before the first submittal.
Submitting with those two already handled is the difference between two rounds and one. One round saves 3 to 4 weeks.
The permit fee is small. The cost of a slow permit is everything waiting behind it.
What slows a permit down
- Drawings submitted before the structural calculations are finished (the checker will not start).
- A property line or easement that does not match the county record. We pull the record on the first visit.
- Historic districts. Parts of Rose Garden, Naglee Park and downtown Willow Glen add a design review of 4 to 8 weeks.
- Trees. A protected tree within the work area adds an arborist report and, sometimes, a separate permit.
- Owner-submitted permits. Comments go to you, you forward them to the engineer, the engineer forwards them to the contractor. Each hop is a week.
Inspections during the build
A permit is not one approval, it is a sequence of inspections: foundation, framing, rough electrical, rough plumbing, rough mechanical, insulation, drywall, and final. In San Jose an inspection is booked online for the next working day or the one after. We book each one before the trade leaves the site, so nothing waits for an inspector who was not called.
What we do with all this
We submit in our name, complete, with the energy report and the tie-in details already in. We answer the comments ourselves, usually within the week. And the permit weeks are on the schedule in your contract, not hidden in the gap between signing and starting.