Buildings, Safety Engineering, and Environmental Department (BSEED)
- Phone
- (313) 224-3202
Michigan
Detroit, MI permit fees and requirements
Detroit prices construction permits three different ways inside one 51-page fee schedule.
The building permit is a nine-band ladder on the project's own cost — $271.43 flat at $2,000 or less, then each band's printed Base plus a rate per $1,000 "or fraction thereof" over the threshold. The electrical permit is a $66 Part A base fee plus $20 a circuit, $1.17 or $1.46 a fixture, and one of eight service bands chosen by amperage and voltage class. The plumbing permit is a $73 non-refundable application fee plus $44 per listed item and $146 per building drain or sewer. Plan review is charged as a percentage on top and is named on every page, never summed into a total.
Permit costs we have worked out
Each page shows the fee components, the formula the jurisdiction uses, and a worked example you can follow by hand.
Estimate your potential Detroit permit fee with our Building Permit Fee Calculator.
| Permit | Category | Last reviewed |
|---|---|---|
| Detroit building permit cost | structural | 2026-09-25 |
| Detroit electrical permit cost | electrical | 2026-09-25 |
| Detroit plumbing permit cost | plumbing | 2026-09-25 |
Local context
What is specific to Detroit
One department, one portal, a very long document. The Buildings, Safety Engineering, and Environmental Department (BSEED) issues building permits, demolition permits and every trade permit from the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center, 2 Woodward Ave, Suite 408 (general customer service (313) 224-3202; application help (313) 224-3179). Applications run through Accela at permits.detroitmi.gov, with plans uploaded to ProjectDox — the City's "ePLANS" workflow — across a seven-step process. The City publishes its turnaround times: 5 days for residential building permits, 20 for commercial, and 1, 2 and 1 days for the mechanical, electrical and plumbing trade permits.
The fee schedule is one 51-page PDF, and extraction is the hard part. Its header reads "EFFECTIVE, JANUARY 1, 2024" and "Modified 7/18/2025", and every figure on this site comes from that document read in `pdftotext -table` mode — the first two modes mis-pair labels with amounts in this file, pushing the fee column away from the rows it belongs to. The Building Permit Fees page links it as the current download, which is how it was told from the older schedules still sitting on the domain: a 2009 general fee schedule still prints a 30% refund deduction where the current document says 35%.
Plan review is charged three ways and none of the three is in a total here. "A fee is charged for Electrical, Mechanical and Plumbing plan review. This fee must be prepaid when a plan review is required" — each trade is 7% "of Bldg. Permit Fee". Building, structural and zoning review is a deposit of 35% of the building permit fee, and two sentences later the same paragraph calls it "The deposit of 30% Building Permit fee is adjustable towards the full fee when a final building permit is procured". Revised plans are $158 for the first three sheets and $53 each after, per discipline. A cross-permit percentage whose base a stand-alone trade permit does not have, a deposit stated two ways, and a sheet count this site does not collect: named with their amounts, charged as none of them.
Valuation
How valuation is determined here
Project cost, in the schedule's own words. "The following general building permit fees are based on the project cost (design and construction cost) estimated using the square foot cost table copy attached" — so the basis is money the reader declares, and the band is chosen by it. That square-foot cost table is named as attached and appears in no page of the PDF, nor linked from any City page read on 2026-09-25: the basis is unambiguous, the City's own estimator is unpublished, and this site says so rather than reproducing a table it has not seen.
Every rate row rounds up. "Per $1,000 or fraction thereof over $N" prints on all eight rate rows, so the cost above a band's threshold is rounded up to a whole $1,000 before the rate applies: $2,000.01 pays the $271.43 base plus one full $34.09 step — $305.52 — not 34 cents of a step. The first band is the floor stated as a row ("$2,000 or less — Flat — $271.43"), so a $500 repair permit is $271.43 with no minimum applied to any other row.
The bands do not chain, so they are not chained here. Each band's printed Base is close to what the band below produces at its top, minus a seam: $271.43 + 23 × $34.09 = $1,055.50 against the printed $1,055.57 (7¢), widening to $26.67 at $50,000,000. Every band is modelled with its own printed Base and its own printed rate.
Demolition is a different basis entirely — cubic volume, not money: $143 without a basement and $249 with one up to 30,000 cubic feet, then the Detroit Demolition Wrecking Fee's ladder and $8,858 with explosives. The ladder refuses work_type = demolition for that reason rather than pricing a wrecking job from a construction valuation.
Who to contact
The office that issues the permit, with the details we have verified. Confirm current hours before travelling.
What these fees do not include
The list is not a disclaimer: on a new house the fees left out can outweigh the permit fee several times over. Every entry here is stated on the permit page as well.
Not included in our estimates
These figures are Detroit's building, electrical and plumbing permit fees from the schedule in force. They are not a total project cost, and they exclude:
- Plan review, all three of its published forms — 7% of the building permit fee per trade (electrical, mechanical, plumbing, prepaid), the building/structural/zoning deposit at 35% (called 30% two sentences later), and $158 for the first three sheets plus $53 per sheet for revised plans. Each is named with its amount and the reason it is not summed.
- Refunds and their deductions — 35% of the building permit fee, 25% of any permit capped at $100 — plus the 10% delinquent service charge and the $35 returned-check fee.
- Demolition and wrecking, priced on cubic volume in its own section of the schedule.
- The rest of the electrical section: rough inspections ($59), electrical units by nameplate HP/kW ($29–$254), interruptible service, panel boards and transfer switches, hardwired cooking equipment, feeders, underfloor headers, motion picture apparatus, sign connections, neon tubing and residential smoke alarms — and all of Part B, the $176/hour repairs and special inspections, service reconnects, fire alarm systems, EV charging, telecommunications cabling and renewable energy.
- The rest of the plumbing section: the $53 "Manhole, Catch Basin" row whose relationship to the $146 row is not stated, medical gas ($176/hour), water distribution ($66) and water service ($88), and the hourly inspection and survey rows.
- The whole mechanical block — pressure vessels, power and process piping, hazardous gases, boilers, gas-fired equipment, fire suppression, refrigeration.
- Change of Use ($249), revised permits ($187 minimum plus the difference between the new and old fee), sign permits, zoning and site plan review ($210 / $466), certificates of occupancy ($147), temporary certificates ($520), permit extensions ($227), "fail to obtain permit" and "fail to gain access" charges, property maintenance, dangerous buildings and vacant property, and Parts A–C of the schedule (the licence and examination catalogue).
- Water and sewer permits (Water & Sewerage Department) and right-of-way permits (Department of Public Works) — other authorities' charges.
- The square-foot cost table the City estimates project cost from: named as attached, published nowhere this pass could reach.
Official sources for this jurisdiction
The documents these figures are transcribed from. Where a source contradicts itself we keep both readings and say so on the permit page.
- Fee schedule (PDF)CityPrimary source
BSEED Fee Schedule, effective January 1, 2024, modified July 18, 2025 (51 pages)
Read 2026-09-25 in three pdftotext modes: -layout pushes the fee-amount column into its own stream of numbers with no row to belong to, plain mode separates every label from every amount, and -table pairs them correctly — every figure this site charges is the -table pairing. Parts A–C (licences, certificates, service fees), the building/residential block with the nine-band ladder and the REFUNDS deduction, F: PLAN REVIEW, then the ELECTRICAL, PLUMBING and mechanical trade sections, then property maintenance and the administrative tail. The document page (S2) links this file as the current download; a 2009 "GENERAL FEE SCHEDULE" still on the domain was read only to confirm it is not the linked document — its refund sentence still says 30% where the current one says 35%.
- City websiteCityPrimary source
Building Permit Fees — City of Detroit
Read 2026-09-25 (HTTP 200). The document page that links the fee schedule as "Download the latest list of fees for permits", which is how the schedule in force was told from the older schedules still on the domain. Publishes no amount of its own.
- City websiteCityPrimary source
Building Permits — City of Detroit
Read 2026-09-25 (HTTP 200). The seven-step process, the Accela/ProjectDox submission rules, the licence rule per permit type (residential contractors need a Builder's License and City registration; the page states "No license required" for commercial building permits), sealed plans, and the published turnaround times: 5 days residential, 20 days commercial. Also where the City points readers at the Water & Sewerage Department and the Department of Public Works for the permits BSEED does not issue.
- City websiteCityPrimary source
Buildings, Safety Engineering, and Environmental Department — City of Detroit
Read 2026-09-25 (HTTP 200). The department's own description of what it issues ("Apply for a Building Permit / Apply for a Electrical, Plumbing or Mechanical Permit"), the division map, and the links to the permit portal (https://permits.detroitmi.gov) and the fee schedule this site charges from.
- City websiteCityPrimary source
Construction Inspection — BSEED
Read 2026-09-25 (HTTP 200). The six trade teams with their supervisors and phone numbers, the Certificate of Occupancy / Certificate of Acceptance procedure (72-hour turnaround), inspection scheduling, and the fire-alarm permitting update quoted on this site's electrical page: "No separate building permit is required solely for fire alarm systems when a Fire Marshal permit has been issued … Trade permits (electrical, mechanical, etc.) are still required for applicable installation work."
- City websiteCityPrimary source
Construction — City of Detroit
Read 2026-09-25 (HTTP 200). Submittal requirements in the City's own words — sealed drawings by a Michigan-registered architect or engineer, three sets plus calculations and specifications, site plan, geotechnical report — the codes in force, the trade division phone numbers, and the ten facts about certificates of occupancy. No amount on this site comes from this page.
- City websiteCityPrimary source
Read 2026-09-25 (HTTP 200). What plan review is here — "verification of compliance to City of Detroit Zoning Ordinance, Michigan Building Code, Michigan Residential Code, Michigan Rehabilitation Code, Michigan Electrical Code, Michigan Mechanical Code, Michigan Plumbing Code, International Fuel Gas Code, City Elevator Code and Boiler Code" — plus the ePLANS workflow, the plan checklists and the Pre-Plan Consultation. Defines the scope of the percentage charges this site names but does not sum.
- City websiteCityPrimary source
Trade Permits — City of Detroit
Read 2026-09-25 (HTTP 200). The permit-type matrix for mechanical, electrical, plumbing, elevator, fire alarm, generators and boilers: when a trade permit is needed, the licence each one requires ("City of Detroit licensed Electrician/Plumbing Contractor/Mechanical Contractor"), what an owner must bring to file (deed plus photo ID), and the published turnarounds — 1 day mechanical, 2 days electrical, 1 day plumbing.