When contractors hear the word “free,” most perk up. And who wouldn’t? Free is good, right? Especially when you’re staring down another week of red ink and jobsite chaos.
But there’s one place where “free” is costing contractors more than they realize: city permitting processes.
What “Free” Actually Means in Permitting
Cities often promote their permit offices as helpful, accessible, and yes, free. You can submit your own forms. You can stand in line. You can schedule an inspection. No charge.
But here’s what you’re not seeing on the invoice:
- Lost hours waiting on approvals
- Wasted labor while crews sit idle
- Redlines that push the job back days
- Missed timelines that make you look bad to the client
It’s like someone handing you a free shovel, then asking you to dig a trench across town by hand. Technically free. Practically useless.
Real-World Example: Death by Delay
You finally get the permit you’ve been waiting on for months. Concrete crew is lined up. The plan? Get those footers dug, formed, and rebar in place by end of day. You call in every favor you’ve got and trade everything but your soul to get the concrete delivery scheduled for the next morning, mid-morning. Why? Because your inspector always shows up first thing in the morning. You’ve played this game before.
You call the inspection. You go to bed happy. The job’s moving. That payday? It’s finally within reach.
Next morning, coffee in hand, laptop open, you hit the city website to see where you are in the inspection order. You even start making bets with yourself, first or second? You’re due a little good luck, right?
You click the inspector tab. Sip your coffee. And then nearly drop the cup.
You’re not first. Not second. Not even on the list.
Panic hits. You dig deeper. You check the permit number manually.
And there it is. You got reassigned to a different inspector. A stranger to your job. And you’re sitting at number 18 on a list of 20 inspections for the day.
Now you’re in full panic mode. You’re calling the inspector, who still hasn’t returned your last ten calls. You’re calling the concrete company to see if they can push delivery later in the day. They already told you no. Either take delivery or they move on and still charge you for it.
Meanwhile, your crew is standing around doing nothing. Burning payroll while staring at you like you just set their paychecks on fire. You’re watching your profit float away while your team laughs at your misery and you try to figure out how to save face.
Now you get it. Now you understand why it was so worth it to hire a private inspector. Now you understand why these so-called “free” city inspections are anything but.
“I’ll Just Handle It Myself”
Sure, you can chase the forms. You can sit at city hall. You can email back and forth with plan reviewers who act like your project is their side hobby.
But if you value your time, and your crew’s, you’re spending real money to keep playing that game.
How Smart Contractors Are Flipping the Script
The contractors winning today aren’t the ones doing it all themselves. They’re the ones using tools like Permit Rockstar to:
- Create permit packages in minutes
- Get forms notarized and eRecorded automatically
- Use private plan reviewers to get their plans approved before submitting to the city
- Schedule inspections using private inspectors that work at the contractor’s convenience, not the city’s
- Doing all of this saves these smart contractors an average of 4 weeks per project. This is not just time saving, it’s game changing. Even more, it’s life changing
In other words, they’re not just building smarter. They’re running smarter.
Free Is Expensive When It Costs You Control
You wouldn’t ask your customer to file their own warranty paperwork. Or your framer to run permits between jobs.
So why are you wasting your own billable hours chasing signatures and sitting in municipal offices?
Let the city keep its “free”. You’ve got a business to run.
Want to stop losing time and money to the “free” city process?
Schedule a demo with Permit Rockstar and see how fast your permitting process can really be.
