Pre-approved plans can speed up housing without compromising health and safety

Housing affordability has renewed interest in removing unnecessary barriers to homebuilding. While much of the discussion has centered on land use and zoning regulations such as minimum lot sizes and floor area ratio limits, permitting itself often imposes unnecessary costs through bureaucratic duplication.

Builders frequently submit plans that differ little from previously approved projects, yet they are often required to navigate another round of technical review. This repeated analysis consumes time, delays projects, and raises housing costs without obvious public benefit.

In an era of persistent housing shortages, that kind of bureaucratic duplication deserves closer scrutiny. Pre-approved building plans have emerged as one reform aimed at reducing that unnecessary duplication. Pre-approved plans are typically created by local governments, sometimes with input from architects, builders, or other housing professionals.

The designs are then reviewed by the relevant municipal officials for compliance with applicable building codes and other requirements. Once approved, they can be reused by applicants for qualifying projects without repeating the plan-level review.

At their core, pre-approved building plans are a tool for separating what can be reviewed once from what must be reviewed for every individual project. These programs allow municipalities to review residential designs in advance and approve plans that comply with applicable building codes and local requirements.

Builders and homeowners can then use those approved designs for future projects, subject to site-specific reviews such as zoning, setbacks, and utility requirements. The goal is not to weaken oversight. Pre-approved plans reduce unnecessary duplication by allowing regulators to review common designs once before they are submitted for individual projects.

As I discussed in my previous post, the permitting process itself can function as a hidden tax on housing. Delays and repeated reviews increase carrying costs associated with financing, labor, and materials, thereby making housing more expensive to build.

Pre-approved building plans address this problem by reducing one source of permitting friction: repetitive review. These programs allow common designs to be reviewed once and reused for future projects instead of repeating the same technical analysis for every application. By shifting review from individual applications to reusable designs, pre-approved plans create clearer expectations for builders while allowing permitting officials to focus on site-specific issues.

The evidence suggests this approach can produce meaningful results. Researchers Seva Rodnyansky and Dennis Su from The Pew Charitable Trusts found in their recent report that pre-approved plans can reduce development costs by roughly 1 to 2 percent, which results in savings ranging from several thousand dollars to tens of thousands of dollars per unit depending on local housing markets and project types.

These benefits may be particularly valuable for smaller-scale infill development, which involves building new homes on vacant or underused lots in already developed neighborhoods. This can include accessory dwelling units, duplexes, and other forms of missing-middle housing, which generally refers to building types that fall between detached single-family homes and mid-rise apartment buildings.

Such projects can be especially sensitive to regulatory costs because they typically involve fewer units, meaning that fixed costs associated with permitting and compliance are spread across fewer homes and make up a larger share of the cost of each unit.

Because smaller projects often have less capacity to absorb regulatory costs and delays, permitting complexity can create an advantage for large developers with the resources to navigate lengthy approval processes. Pre-approved plans can lower that barrier by giving homeowners and smaller builders access to designs that have satisfied an important regulatory requirement.

Larger projects often require individualized review because of factors such as infrastructure needs, site constraints, and financing considerations, which is why pre-approved plans are not a silver bullet for housing affordability.

Nevertheless, early evidence suggests they can contribute to new housing production, as The Pew Charitable Trusts’ report illustrates. In South Bend, Indiana, housing units built through the city’s pre-approved plan program accounted for roughly 7 percent of all new units permitted over a three-year period. Similar programs in Seattle, Washington; Claremore, Oklahoma; Hawaii County, Hawaii; and Jackson, Michigan have also produced measurable shares of local housing construction.

Housing shortages did not develop overnight, and no single permitting reform will eliminate them. But expanding housing supply requires addressing the many obstacles that make construction slower and more expensive than it needs to be. Pre-approved plans offer a targeted approach by making smaller-scale development easier to complete.

As the debate over housing affordability continues, policymakers should examine other ways to streamline permitting, improve regulatory predictability, and remove barriers that prevent needed housing from being built.