Blog
What building in LA really takes.
This went out to our newsletter list in September 2026. The figures below were current as of September 10, 2026; the pages they point to are kept up to date.
Last month we shared a planning tool built on Palisades permit records. The question that came back most often was a fair one: what about the rest of the Westside?
So we ran the same analysis across every neighborhood we build in. The result is a new page, the LA Reality Check, showing the real median time from permit submission to issuance in 19 Westside and Valley ZIP codes, computed from City of Los Angeles building-permit records.
Not estimated. Not an industry average. What the public record says actually happened over the last twelve months.
Where you build changes your timeline by two months
Same city. Same department. Same plan-check process. The median wait still ranges from 52 days to 114 days depending on the ZIP code.
- Venice — 114 days
- Beverly Hills Post Office — 109 days
- Bel Air & Beverly Glen — 90 days
- Mar Vista — 90 days
- Pacific Palisades — 89 days
- Encino Hills — 83 days
- Westchester — 78 days
- Brentwood — 74 days
- Marina del Rey — 74 days
- Westwood — 72 days
- Encino — 64 days
- Woodland Hills — 62 days
Median days from permit submission to issuance, trailing 12 months. Twelve of the 19 neighborhoods on the page. As of September 10, 2026.
A custom home in Venice waits about 40 days longer for its permit than the same home in Brentwood. That is six weeks of carrying costs that no one budgets for, because almost no one knows it is there.
The permit clock is set by the city, not by the builder. But knowing the real median for your neighborhood is how you tell an honest schedule from a sales pitch, including ours.
Santa Monica and Culver City, honestly
Both cities run their own permit departments and publish no open data. We compile their numbers by hand from each city's public portal, but those portals do not publish issuance dates, so a true median is not yet computable.
What we can measure is how many permits have actually cleared. Of residential permits filed six or more months ago, Santa Monica has issued 55% and Culver City 64%.
We would rather publish a partial number and say why than publish a confident one we cannot support. Beverly Hills, Malibu and Manhattan Beach release even less; as that changes, they go on the page too.
The Palisades rebuild, one month on
The tracker we shared last month updates daily. Here is where the recovery stood, with the change since our August note:
- 1,853 applications submitted, up 70
- 1,266 permits issued, up 43
- 1,091 homes under construction, up 55
- 42 homes completed, up 7
The median wait from submission to permit is now 98 days, essentially unchanged from August. Construction starts continue to outpace new applications, which is what a recovery moving from paperwork into the field looks like.
Forty-two homes now have a certificate of occupancy. That is still a small enough group that we would not draw a firm construction-duration figure from it yet, since the earliest finishers are, by definition, the fastest ones. We will keep reporting it as the sample grows.
Where we're currently building
Our crews are working in five Palisades neighborhoods: Marquez Knolls, Upper Marquez Knolls, El Medio Heights, Friends Streets and Sunset Mesa.
If your project is near one of our active sites, let us know. Nearby projects can create efficiencies in supervision, staging, labor, and deliveries, and we account for those efficiencies when developing our pricing.
Send us your plans
Whether you are an architect pricing a project, a designer defining the scope, or an owner trying to determine whether the budget is realistic, we are happy to review what you have.
Send us schematic drawings, design-development plans, construction documents, or a complete bid set. We will provide a straightforward assessment and tell you candidly if the scope and budget do not align. Even when a project is not the right fit for us, our goal is to provide useful and honest feedback.
Send a Dropbox, Google Drive, or WeTransfer link to [email protected]. There is no portal, form, or account to create. You can also contact us here.