Every March the phone starts ringing with some version of the same sentence: "We'd like to build this summer."
Nine times out of ten, what that actually means is we want to be using it this summer — not break ground in July, but be sitting on the deck in August. It is the most reasonable thing in the world to want. It is also, by March, usually a request about next year rather than this one.
Worth separating the two right at the start, because they are very different deadlines. Starting construction this summer and finishing in time to enjoy this summer are separated by the entire build. Drawings and permits are the subject of this article and they run three and a half to six months; construction is a conversation with your builder, and a new home or a substantial addition is rarely a single season's work. If the goal is a summer you can actually use, count backwards from the summer after the one you are picturing.
The permit side of that is not slow because anyone is dragging their feet. Because a permit set for a new home or a full addition is a three-stage process with a fixed floor under it, and two of those three stages are not negotiable no matter how motivated everybody is. Here is the actual arithmetic, so you can plan around it instead of discovering it.
The three stages, and what each one really costs
The stage durations below are our own benchmarks from projects in this region, not regulatory figures or a province-wide standard. Your municipality, your site and your project will move them.
Stage one: design and permit drawings — six to ten weeks in our experience. This is the part people picture when they imagine "getting drawings done," and it is bigger than it looks. A permit set is not a floor plan. It is concepts, then floor plans, elevations, building sections, construction details, foundation and Part 9 structural design, electrical and plumbing layouts, HVAC design on a conditioned build, and a site plan. On our files a typical new home runs 55 to 75 hours of drafting and code work. An addition often runs longer per square foot than a new build, because an addition starts by measuring and modelling a building that already exists — and existing buildings are never quite what the original drawings say they are.
Stage two: your review and revisions — two to three weeks, typically. The stage every schedule forgets. You will want changes. You should want changes: a window moved on paper costs nothing, and a window moved on site costs a framing crew half a day. Budgeting real time here is not a delay, it is the cheapest insurance in the project.
Stage three: municipal permit review — six to twelve weeks in this region. The stage neither of us controls, and the one that surprises people most, because the number in the regulations is much smaller than the number on the calendar.
Why "ten business days" is true and still not what you experience
Under Ontario's Building Code Act and Division C of the Building Code, a municipality must issue a permit for a house — or refuse it in writing, with reasons — within ten business days. That is a real statutory obligation, not a service-level aspiration.
The catch is in when the clock starts. The ten days run from the point at which the application is deemed complete, which has a specific meaning: the right form and schedules, the plans and specifications the municipality requires, the documents needed to review against applicable law, and the fees, all present. And if the chief building official determines that an application is not complete and notifies the applicant within two days, the prescribed time period does not apply at all.
So an incomplete submission does not start a slow clock. It starts no clock. The file goes back for more information, and the ten days begin only when it returns in order. One round of that is common. Two is not unusual on a complicated site.
Add the review itself, any applicable-law approvals that have to clear first — conservation authority, septic approval, a minor variance, shoreline and setback review on a waterfront lot — and six to twelve weeks from first submission to permit in hand is what we typically see in this region. The ten-day figure is accurate. It simply measures a different thing than the one you are trying to plan around.
This, incidentally, is the strongest argument for having drawings prepared properly rather than cheaply. A complete, well-assembled application is the single biggest lever you have on the one stage you otherwise cannot influence.
Timelines by project type
Not every project carries the same runway. Rough figures from our own project history in Parry Sound, Muskoka and Haliburton — first conversation to permit in hand, not a province-wide benchmark:
- New home or cottage — 14 to 25 weeks. The full sequence above, every stage at the long end if the site is difficult.
- Full addition — 14 to 24 weeks. Similar to a new build, and sometimes longer at the drawing stage because the existing structure has to be measured, modelled and verified before anything new can be designed onto it.
- Garage, deck or large accessory structure — 8 to 14 weeks. Shorter drawing time, same municipal review.
- Bunkie — 6 to 12 weeks, and sometimes considerably less, depending on size, plumbing and setbacks. We wrote about where the thresholds fall in Bunkie Permit Rules in Ontario.
- Interior renovation with no structural change may need no permit at all, though "structural" alone is not the full test — work that touches plumbing, electrical, egress, fire separations or other life-safety systems generally does require one — see Do I Need a Building Permit for My Cottage in Ontario?
Waterfront work sits at the long end of whatever category it falls into. Conservation authority review, shoreline setbacks and site-specific rock conditions all add calendar. If you are building near the water, read Shoreline Setbacks, MNR Rules, and Lakefront Design in Ontario before you fix a date. If you are building on rock, foundation options on Canadian Shield bedrock will shape both your budget and your schedule.
When to call, by the month you want to break ground
Work the dates backwards and the answer stops being vague:
- Breaking ground in May — start drawings between mid-November and late January.
- Breaking ground in June or July — start between January and March.
- Breaking ground in August or September — start between March and May, and accept that you are closing in through the fall.
- Breaking ground next spring, calling in March — realistically you are framing in August.
None of those is a wrong answer. A summer start with a fall close-in is a perfectly good way to build a house. The mistake is arriving at it by accident in March, rather than choosing it deliberately in November.
The quiet advantage of a winter application
There is a second reason the November-to-February window is the right one, and it has nothing to do with any designer’s schedule. Building departments are widely reported to be busiest from May through September, when every builder in cottage country is submitting at once, and that matches what we see. The same application filed in December sits in a much shorter queue than the one filed in June.
Nothing is expedited and nobody is doing you a favour. It is simply that volume is lower, and a file competing with fewer files moves sooner. It is the easiest few weeks you will ever save on a build, and it costs nothing but timing.
What actually makes an application complete
Since the completeness test is what governs the clock, it is worth knowing what it turns on. Broadly: the correct permit application form and schedules; drawings and specifications at the detail the municipality requires, which for a Part 9 house means structural, and usually mechanical layouts; proof of applicable-law compliance where it applies, such as conservation authority approval, septic approval, or zoning relief already obtained; and the permit fee. Miss any one and the application is not late — it is not started.
Two of those — conservation authority and zoning relief — are themselves multi-week processes with their own queues. On a waterfront or non-conforming lot they should be identified at the first conversation, not discovered at submission.
The short version
Three and a half to six months from "yes" to a shovel on a new build or a full addition. Ten statutory business days that begin only once your paperwork is genuinely complete. And a winter review queue that is meaningfully shorter than a summer one.
If you have a ground-break month in mind, the most useful thing you can do is count backwards from it now. We keep a running schedule and take projects in the order they are signed — no rush fees and no moving anyone down the list — so the honest answer to "can we still make May" is usually available in a twenty-minute phone call.
