What 547 new-home permits reveal.

How to use these numbers

Benchmarks, not a promised schedule.

The source contains 547 recent Kirkland BSF “Single Family” permits labeled “Class: New,” applied from Aug 2024 through Aug 2026. This is a new-home cohort, not a count of every Kirkland building permit. Issuance timing uses the 315 rows with both application and issuance dates.

The dataset checks for newly filed projects daily, refreshes existing project details on a rolling monthly schedule, and rebuilds this analysis every Sunday. Inspection and status detail may therefore lag the public record by up to about a month.

Initial intake + assignment runs from the application date to the first published V1 assignment. V1 through V4 city turnaround then uses the earliest published assignment and final dated response within each completed pre-issuance version. The between-round handoff runs from that response to the next version's assignment. It combines design-team work with Kirkland's re-intake and assignment step because a dependable revision-received timestamp is not public. Durations are calendar days; Kirkland publishes separate business-day goals on the official permit review-times page.

Round-outcome percentages use only permits that eventually issued, have complete activity data, and contain contiguous completed versions from V1 through their last pre-issuance round. This mature cohort avoids counting an open correction package as if it had already cleared review.

The median is the best single baseline because a few very fast and very slow permits can pull the average. Project categories, status changes, department review activity, inspections, other parcel permit records, and parcel context are refreshed from the underlying public records as they become available.

Construction measures use substantive dated inspections after issuance and exclude canceled, scheduled, preconstruction, job-conference, and job-start rows. Issuance-to-final timing includes only permits already finaled, so recent or unusually long active builds are not represented in that completed-project duration.

Custom and spec builder comparisons include only builders with a reviewed label and recalculate with each weekly snapshot. Builder names are missing on 121 permits and may reflect contractors, development partners, or normalized public labels. Builder comparisons are descriptive only: project complexity, intake timing, grouped developments, and small samples can drive the differences.

Build Eastside provides this benchmark analysis for free under its Terms of Use.

Practical interpretation

What homeowners should watch.

In Review is not one queue. Kirkland can assign Building, Fire, Planning, Public Works, and Urban Forestry reviews, and the permit moves at the pace of the unresolved review.

Corrections shift the next action. In the public activity record, “Corrections Needed” means the applicant or design team must respond; “Under Review” means the city has the current action.

Ready to Issue is not the same as issued. Outstanding fees and licensed contractor information can remain. Build Eastside checks both before recommending the next step.

Post-issuance revisions are their own workflow. Kirkland may restart version labels at V1 after issuance, so they should not be confused with the original first review.