Harger: Phoenix issues a building permit in 6 weeks. Seattle takes 8 months. Washington needs a shot clock
Oct 15, 2026, 7:27 AM | Updated: 12:34 pm
In Phoenix, a builder who wants to put up new homes gets a permit in about six weeks. In Seattle, it takes about eight months.
Six weeks in Phoenix. Eight months in Seattle.
That comes from economists who looked at more than a million building permits in 60 cities.
And it goes a long way toward explaining what I hear from people in their 20s and 30s. They’ve done the math on buying a home around here, and plenty of them have decided it isn’t going to happen. Some are already shopping for another state. Phoenix, maybe.
The median home in Seattle sold for about $855,000 in September, according to Redfin. With today’s interest rates, that’s more than $5,000 a month in mortgage payments. And that’s assuming a first-time buyer has $128,000 sitting around for the down payment.
Washington’s housing crisis has plenty of causes, but one of them is hiding in plain sight at the permit counter. A free-market think tank has an idea for fixing it. And it’s catching on in some surprising places.
Seattle-area housing permits have fallen off a cliff
Part of the reason prices are so high is simple. We aren’t building enough.
In 2025, builders across the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue metro area pulled permits for 15,591 new homes, according to Census Bureau data. During the 2017-2019 boom, the region averaged nearly 26,000 a year.
That’s about 40% fewer homes.
Competitive Enterprise Institute wants a shot clock for housing permits
The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market think tank in Washington, D.C., has been pushing a simple idea: put housing permits on a shot clock.
If you’re a basketball fan, you know the history. Before 1954, NBA teams with a lead would just hold the ball and dribble out the clock. Games were miserable to watch. So the league added a 24-second shot clock. Scoring jumped the very next season.
CEI wants the same thing at the permit counter. Pass a law that requires government agencies “to decide on housing permit applications within a fixed period.” The rules for what gets approved don’t change. The government just has to decide on time.
The teeth can vary. Some states set soft deadlines with little enforcement. Others give builders the right to go to court. The toughest version says if the government misses the deadline, the permit is automatically approved.
CEI is realistic about the risks, too. Set the clock too tight, and permit offices may just start saying no to beat the buzzer. “A well-designed shot clock must also avoid the inverse risk: a denial by deadline,” wrote CEI’s Steve Swedberg.
Even liberals like Derek Thompson are coming on board
Author Derek Thompson recently made the same case, and he reached for the same basketball metaphor. Thompson co-wrote “Abundance,” a book about how liberals got very good at spending money and very bad at actually building things. He calls his idea “shot clock liberalism.”
Coming out of the 1960s, he argues, we passed laws and adopted habits that made it very easy to slow down government and business. He’s quick to say a lot of those laws were good. “I’m glad the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts exist,” he said. But they also made it easier to stall the projects we need, like housing. His fix: “You take the principles of liberalism, but you just do it faster.”
Some on the left may not like that, because it takes away tools neighborhood groups and activists use to slow down projects they oppose. But cutting red tape, setting deadlines for government, and letting people build is something conservatives and moderates have been saying for years. An idea that splits the left and pulls in the middle is the kind that can actually pass in a state like ours.
Texas, California, and New York already put permits on a shot clock
Thompson says it’s catching on, and he’s right.
Texas runs the toughest version. Cities get 30 days to act on a plat application, which is the map that divides land into lots. Miss the deadline, and the plat is automatically approved. California now puts a 60-day clock on certain housing approvals statewide. Georgia passed a 45-day limit on initial permit reviews.
Even New York City’s democratic socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, is in on it. His administration now prequalifies affordable housing developers to build on city-owned land. Instead of making every builder go through the full competition for every single site, the city vets developers once, up front. When a city lot opens up, it picks from that preapproved bench. The city says that cuts about eight months off choosing a builder, and paired with a faster land-use review, more than two years off the process before construction starts.
It changes the incentives, too. A builder who wants a spot on that bench has every reason to put together one thorough, serious proposal, because it pays off on site after site. And it helps the little guy. A small developer doesn’t have a staff that can crank out a brand-new application every time a lot comes up. Under this approach, they make their case once and spend the rest of their time building.
You don’t have to like Mamdani’s politics to like that math.
Remember those economists who clocked Seattle against Phoenix? They found permitting delays explain up to 43% of the gap between the fastest- and slowest-building cities in the country.
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Washington’s permit shot clock needs teeth
Washington has a start. A 2023 law, Senate Bill 5290, gives cities and counties 65 to 170 days to decide on a permit, depending on the project. If they miss the deadline, they may have to refund 10% to 20% of the review fee.
That’s a nice gesture. For a builder paying interest on land every month a project sits in a queue, a partial fee refund is pocket change. It doesn’t create urgency at the permit counter.
A real shot clock would. A few ways to give ours teeth:
Miss the deadline on a code-compliant housing project, and it’s deemed approved, just like in Texas. If the city can’t find a problem in time, the builder gets to build.
Or let the builder hire a state-certified private reviewer to finish the job. Florida already allows private inspectors.
Start the refund at 50% of the fee instead of 10%, and add another 10% for every week the city runs late. Five weeks late, and the builder gets the whole fee back.
Post every city’s and county’s average permit times on a state website, ranked from fastest to slowest. Nobody wants to be last on that list. Then tie state housing and infrastructure grants to staying off the bottom of it.
And steal Mamdani’s idea. Have cities preapprove builders and building plans, so a starter home or a fourplex that matches a plan the city already signed off on goes straight to the front of the line.
Washington Legislature could build a bipartisan shot clock caucus
Is a shot clock the only answer? No. Interest rates, construction costs, and impact fees all play a part.
And let’s be realistic about Olympia. Democrats control the governor’s office and both chambers of the Legislature, and Republicans can’t pass much of anything on their own.
A shot clock caucus doesn’t need a majority of either party. It needs enough moderate Democrats and Republicans willing to vote together, and that’s happened on housing before. In 2023, the state Senate passed the bill legalizing duplexes and fourplexes in many neighborhoods on a bipartisan 35-14 vote.
This idea has backers at a free-market think tank and inside the Democratic tent. That gives both parties cover to build it together.
The young people I talk to aren’t asking for a handout. They’re asking for a fair shot at a home in the place they call home. And part of that means building more and building faster.
Phoenix gets it done in 6 weeks. Start the clock.
Charlie Harger is the host of “Seattle’s Morning News” on KIRO Newsradio. You can read more of his stories and commentaries here. Follow Charlie on X and email him here.
