Understanding permits for new development

Chris

23 Sep 2025 — 1 min read

As part of our series to predict permitting, we zoom in on new construction.

A crucial part of predicting is to understand the DOB permitting process: It starts with a filing. If approved, a single filing allows pulling possibly many permits, each with their own issuance and expiration date.

For each new project, we first want to ask how long construction will go on until residents can move in. And for this, building size is crucial: In the chart below, we show the full completion time, from filing issuance to certificate of occupancy. The median completion time is 4 years for small buildings, but more than 6 years for large buildings above 100 units.

So once we know how long construction is expected to take, we can also look at permits over time: In the beginning, there's heavy use of construction fences and plumbing. Towards later stages, mechanical systems and general construction become a bigger part of the total.

City of Yes and Transit-Oriented Development: 23,000 lots got bigger

On December 5, 2024, the NYC city council passed the City of Yes (COY) rezoning plan, the largest zoning change in many decades, which aims to create 80,000 new units over the next decade. This rezoning changed so much that many ideas got completely lost in the press coverage.

The City Tracker Data model

City Tracker is an API-first company. In this post, we cover key technical features of our API. Endpoints in production (status 10/29/2025): * tax_lots * permits In progress: * filings * companies These API endpoints are as consistent as possible: Each of them returns a list of results satisfying filter criteria

Understanding our permit prediction

Our goal is to help you find good jobs that are about to come up. Essentially, this is a problem of prediction. And to do that well, we must first understand how the process works, especially for new construction. Here, we provide a non-technical overview of our approach, with technical

There's one key metric predicting NYC development

We know where new residential development is happening. But it turns out that this, usually, isn't what you want to know. What you really need is to know where new development will happen. Otherwise, you're just chasing the past. At CityTracker, we've developed a

Read more

City of Yes and Transit-Oriented Development: 23,000 lots got bigger

The City Tracker Data model

Understanding our permit prediction

There's one key metric predicting NYC development