There are too many times to count where PermitUsNow team members have answered the company’s 1.844.PERMIT.4 line and the voice on the other side says, “I am having problems getting a permit.” We ask the caller basic questions like the scope of work, location, type of use, and their City Permitting project number. The caller rattles off the scope, physical address and then indicates the use of the building. “What was this prior use of property”, we ask the caller. “It was a…

Hundreds of thousands of people in Louisiana that were in the path of Hurricane Ida have either hunkered down or traveled to a safe place as I write this article. Living along the Gulf of Mexico has its benefits from great fishing to good food, and a culture like no other, but it also has a big risk. And that risk is hurricanes. As I native and resident of Houston, Texas, I understand this natural challenge like my neighbors in Louisiana. In fact, you can still see blue tarps on…

Picture this: you sip your favorite cup of coffee, log into jurisdiction permitting e-portal to check the status of your plan reviews then you take a double-look at the screen, and then shake your head wondering why you have received multiple pages of rejection comments from Plan Reviewers. What the heck is going on and what are they doing with your project? Your project is straightforward and there’s just gotta be something wrong with the Plan Reviewers. Right? We get it and have heard…

Have you submitted a perfect construction permit set before to a jurisdiction and it goes through every departmental review racking up every imaginable rejection comment? You scratch your head, begin to fume, and next release a mouth-full of complaints to the City Plan Reviewers and then worry how much delays in permitting will cost you. With the increase in lumber prices, pressures from the lingering 2020 pandemic, long lead items, and unusually longer plan review times at jurisdictions…

Time is money so let me get right to the point on the connection between high lumber prices and building permits. It is no secret that since early 2020 lumber prices have increased to their highest point in history. High lumber prices combined with some jurisdictions taking much longer than usual in completing plan reviews and issuing permits, caused many contractors to make tough business decisions. Here are three real situations that the PermitUsNow team has heard over the last 6 months…