Palm Beach County is booming. Just take a drive down US-1 or glance at the cranes lining the skyline from Boca to West Palm. People are moving here in record numbers, and demand for new homes – especially custom ones – is off the charts.
But here’s what most people don’t see: behind all the glamour of groundbreakings and grand openings, there’s a growing problem that’s quietly throttling construction timelines and driving up costs – a broken permitting process.
As a custom home builder with decades of experience in South Florida, I can tell you this isn’t just a builder’s headache – it’s a homeowner’s problem, too.
Permitting Gridlock: A Local Challenge with Real Costs
In theory, the permitting process ensures safety, compliance, and proper land use. In practice, in many of our municipalities, it’s become a bottleneck that’s slowing down projects by months – or even longer.
Here’s what we’re seeing right now:
- Extended Wait Times: What used to take 30 to 45 days is now taking 90, 120, or more. Some cities have online systems, others don’t. Some have staff shortages, others have turnover. The inconsistency is staggering.
- Unclear Standards: In some municipalities, you can submit the same set of plans and get a completely different list of corrections depending on who reviews it. That unpredictability creates costly delays.
- Redundant Reviews: You fix what they asked for – then they come back with new issues. It’s a game of administrative whack-a-mole.
For homeowners, this means your dream home may be sitting in a digital queue for months before a single shovel hits the ground. For builders, it means juggling schedules, holding subcontractors, and managing frustrated clients – all while trying to keep projects on time and on budget.
Why It Matters to You
If you’re building – or even considering building – a custom home in Palm Beach County, here’s the insider truth: permitting is now a major part of your timeline. We plan for it. We buffer for it. We do everything we can to move it forward. But there’s only so much we can control when the system itself is overloaded.
This isn’t about pointing fingers – it’s about raising awareness. Our county is growing, and that growth deserves a permitting process that’s efficient, transparent, and tech-forward. The solution isn’t to skip safety checks. It’s to modernize systems, staff departments adequately, and streamline approvals so that homeowners, developers, and city officials are all working from the same playbook.
What You Can Do
If you’re a future homeowner:
- Ask questions early. Know your city’s permitting timeline before you buy a lot or commit to a build schedule.
- Hire local. Builders who know the ins and outs of each municipality (like we do at Stuart & Shelby) can often navigate the process more effectively.
- Be patient – but informed. We’ll always tell you the truth about where things stand and advocate on your behalf.
And if you’re a local official reading this – we’d love to work with you to make things better. We want to build here. People want to live here. Let’s make the process as strong as the product we’re all proud of.
Palm Beach County is one of the most desirable places to live in the country. We owe it to our future residents – and to the generations shaping this place – to build not just beautiful homes, but a better path to getting them done.
Chuck Halberg is Founder & President of Stuart & Shelby Home Builders, which provides custom construction services for residential clients throughout Palm Beach and Martin Counties.