Every Seattle Permit Has an Expiration Date
A Seattle project carries two approvals, and each runs on its own clock. The land use permit and the building permit expire on different schedules, and two dates change what an approval is worth: December 31, 2026 for Master Use Permits, and May 3, 2027 for the state code. If you hold an approval or are waiting on one, the time left on it is part of what you are holding.
General education, not legal, zoning, or code advice. Every property is different. Verify current regulations with the City of Seattle and licensed professionals before making decisions.
Edition 2 of How Seattle Gets Built, Aegir Olsen’s monthly newsletter, also published on LinkedIn on November 3, 2026.
The stalled lot and the aging approval
Most Seattle neighborhoods have one: a fenced lot, a land use sign gone gray, a permit in a plastic sleeve, and no crew.
The usual assumption is that the City is the holdup. Often it is not. When Council debated a permit extension in 2025, the City counted more than 3,000 project addresses that could qualify.
What neighbors cannot see is that the approval on that fence is aging. Every Seattle permit runs on a clock, and two of those clocks change in the next six months.
Land use permit: the December 31, 2026 cutoff
The land use permit, the Master Use Permit, settles what can go on the lot. SDCI’s renewals page describes a three-year life, renewable once to five. That page leaves out a change Council made in December 2023. Ordinance 126979 gives Master Use Permits approved for issuance before the end of 2026 a flat six-year term and drops the year-three renewal, per a summary by the land use firm HCMP. Variances, shoreline permits, temporary and intermittent uses, transitional encampments and subdivisions are excluded.
So the date to know is December 31, 2026. A land use approval that SDCI approves for issuance by December 31 gets six years. One approved after that date falls back to the three-year life, with renewal to five, unless Council moves the date. The same SDCI page names the way out: once you apply for a building permit, “the MUP assumes the life of the building permit.”
Building permit: 18 months and the May 3, 2027 code date
The building permit is the second clock. SDCI says construction permits typically expire 18 months after issue. Renewal is not automatic. If you renew more than 18 months after a new edition of the building code takes effect, the work has to be substantially underway, and SDCI has to find that the permit complies, or can be modified to comply, with the current code. Applications have their own limit: SDCI cancels applications not issued within 12 months unless extended, and no extension runs past 24 months from the original application.
That code clause is why May 3, 2027 matters. It is the effective date the State Building Code Council has set for the 2024 codes, with final adoption targeted for October 16 on the building codes and November 20 on energy, per the Council’s schedule at the time of writing. The new code changes what gets drawn. A permit that has to be renewed well after that date may be held to it.
Review time against permit life
Earning the approval is the slow part. For SDCI’s Middle Housing category the City’s goal is 60 days. Its published 75th percentile is 117. Those are days the application sits with the City, from intake to issuance. SDCI says the total an applicant experiences runs roughly twice that, because corrections go back and forth. The page dates its goals October 1, 2025 and puts no date on the current figures, so read them as a baseline, not as this year’s experience.
In August, the Mayor announced Executive Order 2026-4. It creates a Residential Permitting Interdepartmental Team to make timelines shorter and more predictable, and a Housing Production Task Force due to deliver 2027 recommendations by February. It sets no numeric target for review times.
Put the two together. On the City’s own rule of thumb, a Middle Housing approval takes about eight months to earn, and the building permit can lapse 18 months after it is issued.
An approved permit is an asset with a shelf life. Anyone pricing a permitted lot, owner or buyer, is pricing the time left on it. Five years of land use approval and five months are not the same site, even with identical drawings. When the clock runs out, the cost is not the filing fee. It is another round of review, a redesign to whatever code is current, and carrying the land while both happen.
What to confirm this month
If you hold an approval on a lot, or have one in review, look up the issue and expiration dates in the Seattle Services Portal this month. If a land use decision is close, December 31 is worth a question to your assigned planner. Whether a code change reaches a specific permit is a question for your architect and SDCI.
Also ask your architect and civil engineer how a renewal or a new application would touch the scope on the approved drawings, including water, sewer, storm drainage, power and gas service connections and any right of way (ROW) work.
If you live next to a stalled lot, the permit number on the sign is public. Search it in the same portal and you will see its status and its dates.
The date to know
December 31, 2026.
Next month: the part of a new home nobody photographs. Sewer, water, stormwater and power, and what it takes to connect a lot to the city.
Olsen Anderson is a Seattle homebuilder and developer, not a law firm or permitting consultant. Regulations change. Confirm current requirements with the City of Seattle, SDCI, and your own advisors.
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