Original research · Permits
What a remodeling permit costs, city by city
One job, a $50,000 residential alteration, run through the fee schedules of nine jurisdictions, with the arithmetic shown and the gaps left as gaps.
Written by HyreRemodel Research Desk Primary-source research and fact checking
The finding
On a $50,000 residential alteration, Phoenix charges $703 for the building permit and $703 for plan review: $1,406, or 2.8% of the job. That is a HyreRemodel calculation from Table A of the city’s published fee schedule.
There is no national permit fee; each building department sets its own. Phoenix prices it from the declared value of the job.
Of nine jurisdictions we tried, one could be worked through without guessing, two gave a registration fee that is not a permit, and six stay blank.
Six things to know before the table
A permit fee is not a price for the remodel, and a table with blank cells is not a failed study.
Every complete row prices a $50,000 residential alteration: interior work, no added floor area, no change of use, no impact fee, no historic overlay. A second-story addition is a different job, and none of these numbers apply to it.
A department can replace your contract price with ICC Building Valuation Data or its own minimum. If Phoenix values the work at $72,000, you are out of the $50,000 band. This page uses the contract’s $50,000, labeled as an assumption.
Phoenix Table A is a building permit; plan review is a second line. San Antonio’s $170 is a contractor registration. El Paso’s $50,000 is a bond amount. Impact fees attach to new capacity. Adding them into one “permit cost” produces a number that describes no real bill.
Phoenix is not Maricopa County, the City of Miami is not Miami-Dade, and Las Vegas is not Clark County. A lot two miles outside the city limits can fall under a different schedule. We do not average them.
Some departments fold electrical, plumbing and mechanical work into one building permit; others sell each as its own permit. Historic, hillside, floodplain and HOA rules add their own steps. Confirm with the department that will inspect.
The Phoenix figures come from the PDF retrieved on September 5, 2026 and re-read on September 29, 2026. A new ordinance is a new document, and this is not legal advice.
Which cities we tried, and why only one is complete
The frame is nine jurisdictions across the seven states our contractor store covers: Phoenix and unincorporated Maricopa County, Los Angeles, San Antonio and El Paso, Miami-Dade County, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City and Raleigh. Maricopa County is there so Phoenix is not read as “Arizona.”
It is not the largest city in each state (Houston, Jacksonville and Charlotte are larger than the Texas, Florida and North Carolina entries), and it is not a sample of the US. It is the set of counters we attempted.
A jurisdiction reaches the “calculated” column only if its schedule can price a $50,000 alteration without an invented occupancy factor, fixture count or floor area. Where we found an official number that is not a permit, such as a registration fee or bond, the row is “partial.” Everything else is “excluded.”
HyreRemodel analysis: a nine-row table with eight invented totals would look finished and would be false. What this page adds is the Phoenix walkthrough and a method other cities can join as their schedules are worked through.
The worked example: Phoenix, $50,000, Table A
Source: City of Phoenix Planning and Development Department fee schedule (PDF on phoenix.gov), retrieved September 5, 2026 and re-read September 29, 2026.
Table A, Building Safety valuation-based permit fee, for $10,001–$50,000: “$303 on first $10,000 plus $10 for each additional $1,000, or fraction thereof, to and including $50,000.”
HyreRemodel calculation: $50,000 − $10,000 = $40,000, which is 40 additional thousands. 40 × $10 = $400. $303 + $400 = $703 permit fee.
Basic Plan Review, residential with project valuations of $50K or less: “100% of the permit fee, minimum $195.” $703 is above the minimum, so plan review is $703.
$703 + $703 = $1,406, which is 2.8% of the $50,000 contract if the city accepts that valuation.
Impact fees (separate tables, aimed at new construction and added demand), any counter surcharges, separate trade permits, a higher valuation set by the building official, re-inspection and after-hours inspection.
The $50,000 residential alteration, city by city
| City | Status | Permit | Plan review | Other sourced fee | Total compared | Retrieved |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Phoenix, AZ | Calculated | $703 | $703 | – | $1,406 | September 5, 2026 |
| Maricopa County unincorporated, AZ | Excluded | – | – | – | – | September 5, 2026 |
| Los Angeles, CA | Excluded | – | – | – | – | September 5, 2026 |
| San Antonio, TX | Partial: not a permit | – | – | $170 (registration, not a permit) | – | September 5, 2026 |
| El Paso, TX | Partial: not a permit | – | – | $100 (registration, not a permit) | – | September 5, 2026 |
| Miami-Dade County, FL | Excluded | – | – | – | – | September 5, 2026 |
| Las Vegas, NV | Excluded | – | – | – | – | September 5, 2026 |
| Salt Lake City, UT | Excluded | – | – | – | – | September 5, 2026 |
| Raleigh, NC | Excluded | – | – | – | – | September 5, 2026 |
HyreRemodel calculation from published schedules. Only the “Calculated” row walks a $50,000 alteration through a permit schedule. “Partial” rows show a registration fee, not a permit. Blank cells are exclusions, not zeros.
Do not sort this table by total and call Phoenix the most expensive city. It is the only complete row.
What each row is, and why it stops where it does
Phoenix, AZ: calculated
Planning and Development Department. Table A, Building Safety valuation-based permit fee. Department site.
$50,000 sits in the $10,001–$50,000 band: $303 on the first $10,000 plus $10 per additional $1,000. 40 × $10 = $400, so the permit is $703. Plan review at 100% is $703. Building-safety subtotal: $1,406.
Impact fees in the same PDF are a separate table and are left out: they attach to new construction and added capacity, not to an interior alteration, unless the city says otherwise on the application. Counter surcharges, if any, are not in this number.
Maricopa County unincorporated, AZ: excluded
Planning and Development. County valuation table (separate from Phoenix). Department site.
Not completed. The county and the City of Phoenix are different departments with different schedules, and mixing them would be a false comparison.
In the frame as a contrast to Phoenix: a $50,000 job outside the city limits goes to a different counter.
Los Angeles, CA: excluded
LADBS. LADBS permit and plan-check fees. Department site.
Schedule not applied. The LADBS pages we retrieved describe the process (plan check versus express permit) and did not give us one valuation table we could run a $50,000 alteration through without guessing an occupancy factor.
Left blank rather than invented. Attempted, and listed so.
San Antonio, TX: partial: not a permit
Development Services Department. Building permit fees, and contractor registration (separate). Department site.
Residential building contractor registration is $170 for two years (DSD page, retrieved September 5, 2026). That is a registration, not a permit on a $50,000 alteration. We did not complete the alteration permit schedule.
The registration fee is sourced; a permit for the job is not. Adding $170 to Phoenix’s $1,406 would not be a comparison.
El Paso, TX: partial: not a permit
Planning and Inspections. Contractor registration and permit fees. Department site.
General contractor registration is $100 a year plus a technology fee, with a $50,000 blanket building construction bond (Contractor Registration Requirements, Rev. 07/2024, retrieved September 5, 2026). A bond is not a permit fee. We did not work through the alteration permit.
The bond’s $50,000 face amount matching the worked example is a coincidence, not a fee equal to the job.
Miami-Dade County, FL: excluded
Regulatory and Economic Resources, Building. County fee ordinance. Department site.
Not completed. Miami-Dade County and the City of Miami are different counters, and treating them as one would be a false comparison.
Attempted. It joins the total column when one named schedule is applied to $50,000.
Las Vegas, NV: excluded
City of Las Vegas Building and Safety, or Clark County. City versus Clark County. Department site.
Not completed. The City of Las Vegas and Clark County are different departments, and which one covers the lot is the first question.
Left blank rather than averaged.
Salt Lake City, UT: excluded
Building Services. City fee schedule. Department site.
Not completed against a retrieved schedule.
Attempted, and listed so.
Raleigh, NC: excluded
Development Services. City fee schedule. Department site.
Not completed against a retrieved schedule.
Attempted. North Carolina’s $40,000 contractor license threshold is a licensing rule, not a permit fee.
The same Phoenix table at three job sizes
HyreRemodel calculation from Table A and the residential plan-review lines (100% of the permit fee at $50,000 or less, 80% above it, minimum $195). The $50,000 row is the study’s job; the others show how the bands behave.
| Declared valuation | Permit (Table A) | Plan review | Building-safety subtotal | Share of valuation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $15,000 (small bath, an assumption) | $353 | $353 (100%) | $706 | 4.7% |
| $50,000 (this study) | $703 | $703 (100%) | $1,406 | 2.8% |
| $80,000 (above the $50,000 plan-review line) | $973 | $778.40 (80%) | $1,751.40 | 2.2% |
The $80,000 row was left unfinished in the first edition. The PDF’s “over $50K” line, re-read on September 29, 2026, sets residential plan review at 80% of the permit fee: $973 × 0.8 = $778.40.
“Or fraction thereof” means any part of a thousand counts as a whole one. A $10,001 job pays $303 + $10 = $313, the same as $11,000.
Why raw fee schedules cannot be compared
A schedule priced per $1,000 of valuation and one priced per square foot of floor area use different units. Putting both in a column called “permit fee” compares nothing. That is why this study fixes one job and one valuation.
A city that sells electrical, plumbing and mechanical permits separately will look cheaper on the building line than one that folds them into a single building permit, and can cost more in the end. A fair row says which kind it is.
Plan review can be a percentage of the permit, a deposit or an hourly charge. Leaving it out understates any city that charges most of its fee for plan review.
School, park and transportation impact fees can be larger than the building permit on new construction. A kitchen that adds no dwelling unit does not add that kind of demand, and folding impact fees into a “remodeling permit cost” prices a different project.
HyreRemodel analysis: the comparable thing is the money a building department charges to review and inspect one defined job, with every add-on named. Until a city’s schedule supports that, the city stays out of the total column.
The IRC’s sample fee table is not your city’s fee
The International Residential Code includes Appendix AB, a sample permit-fee table. The appendix says it is not mandatory unless specifically referenced, and that its examples are not meant to be applied literally.
On that example table a $50,000 job works out as $487 for the first $40,000 plus $9 per additional $1,000, which is different arithmetic from Phoenix Table A.
We retrieved the ICC-hosted appendix page for the 2024 IRC as amended by the City of Phoenix. Reading Appendix AB as Phoenix’s adopted fee would misread both documents; Phoenix’s adopted numbers are in Table A of the department’s PDF.
Where a city has adopted Appendix AB by ordinance, its row can be worked from that ordinance, citing the ordinance rather than the model appendix. We have not yet done that for a second city.
Two Texas numbers that are not permit fees
San Antonio: $170 for two years
Residential building contractor registration with Development Services, confirmed on the department’s page on September 5, 2026. Home improvement registration is $150 for two years. That is the price of being on the register, not of a permit for a $50,000 kitchen.
Treating $170 as “what a remodel permit costs in San Antonio” leaves out the building permit, plan review and any trade permits.
El Paso: $100 a year and a $50,000 bond
General contractor registration is $100 a year plus a technology fee, with a $50,000 blanket building construction bond (Contractor Registration Requirements, Rev. 07/2024). The bond is a surety amount, not a fee.
Texas has no state general contractor license, so permits and registration are local. See remodeling contractors in Texas.
Who pulls the permit, and why it belongs on the bid
A fee schedule prices the permit; it does not say whose name goes on it. Some cities let an owner-builder pull a residential permit, and others require a registered contractor. San Antonio’s $170 registration is that kind of precondition: a cost of being allowed to pull the permit, not a substitute for it.
HyreRemodel recommendation: each bid should say in writing who pulls the building permit, who pulls any trade permits, what valuation the city will see, and whether plan review is in the price or an allowance.
If three bids split those four items differently, they are not three prices for one job. The bid comparison worksheet has a line for each.
“Permits are extra” is not a sign of overcharging: in a valuation-based city it is a real bill that depends on a number the building official can change. “Permits included” without a stated valuation is a promise whose cost the contractor does not control.
How to estimate your own permit fee
In Phoenix, take the PDF, your contract value and the two-line arithmetic to the Phoenix Planning and Development counter. Ask whether your job falls under Table A, whether they will accept the contract price as the valuation, and which plan-review line applies. Their answer overrides this page.
Elsewhere, do not scale $1,406 by a cost-of-living index. Open your city’s fee schedule. If it is a valuation table, copy the Phoenix method: find the band, work the addition, add plan review at the published percentage. If it charges per square foot, you need the floor area instead.
If you cannot finish the arithmetic, you are where we were with Los Angeles. Ask the permit counter for an estimate.
The permit checker answers a different question: whether a kind of work usually needs a permit at all. Our guide to permits and approvals covers the process. This page prices one job where we could finish the math.
How this study will grow
Los Angeles, Miami-Dade, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City and Raleigh are already in the frame. Each joins the total column when a retrieved schedule prices the $50,000 alteration without a guessed factor.
We re-run Table A when the department posts a new schedule. A new date without a re-read is not an update.
Third-party permit cost estimators are not a primary source. If we cannot retrieve the city’s schedule, the cell stays blank.
Questions
How much does a remodeling permit cost?
Why are there no numbers for Los Angeles, Miami or Las Vegas?
Is $1,406 the whole permit cost in Phoenix?
How much is plan review in Phoenix on a larger job?
Does a cheaper permit mean a cheaper remodel?
Is contractor registration the same as a permit?
Do I need a permit for a kitchen remodel?
Can I use the IRC’s Appendix AB fee table?
Written and audited by
HyreRemodel Research Desk
Primary-source research, data analysis and fact checking
We are a research desk, not a remodeling contractor and not a sales floor.
We read the statute, the licensing register or the municipal fee schedule ourselves, and we publish the figure with the document it came from and the date we retrieved it.
Where a number cannot be traced to a primary source, we publish the shorter page and say what we could not verify.
This program is new, and the counts below are small: they are what we have actually published, not what we intend to.
- 7
- studies published
- 7
- states in the contractor store we measure against
- 264
- source documents linked from these pages, 101 of them on .gov domains
- 22,183
- license records measured September 5, 2026
How this desk works
- Primary sources only. Licensing facts come from the issuing board or the statute that creates the credential. Permit-fee facts come from the municipality that publishes the schedule. We do not cite an article that cites a source; we open the source and record the date.
- Our own store is titled to the states it covers. We hold verified contractor records for seven states. An asset that rests on those records is titled to those states. National claims rest on federal or state-agency data (Census, BLS, EPA), never on our counts.
- Absence of a record is not a finding about the company. A board that does not publish disciplinary history in a form we retrieved is excluded from any “clean record” claim. Unable to verify is not unlicensed. Not required is not not carried.
- Fact, calculation, analysis and recommendation stay labelled. A statute is a source fact. A count we derived from our store is a HyreRemodel calculation. What that count means is analysis. What a homeowner should do next is a recommendation.
- We do not remodel homes, and we take no payment for placement, ranking or a favorable mention. Nobody buys a position on this site.
Data as of September 5, 2026 (fee schedules); Phoenix PDF re-read September 29, 2026. Authorship on this site is organizational: the analysis belongs to the desk rather than to a named individual, and we do not publish credentials we do not hold.
Our editorial policy sets out how we source, date and correct what we publish.
Sources & retrieval dates
Planning a remodel of your own?
A complete bid says who pulls the permit, what valuation the city will see and whether plan review is in the price. Start with the scope, and tell us about the project when you are ready.
HyreRemodel does not pull permits or do remodeling work. A calculation from a published schedule is not a quote from a building department: confirm fees with the department that will inspect your lot. Blank cells are exclusions, not zeros.