New York City Department of Buildings
- Phone
- (212) 566-5000
- Hours
- In-person and drop-off customer service 8:30am to 4:00pm; phone lines 8:30am to 4:30pm, Monday through Friday
New York
New York City, NY permit fees and requirements
New York City prices an alteration on the cost of the work:
a minimum filing fee that covers the first $5,000 of cost in a one-, two- or three-family dwelling or the first $3,000 anywhere else, then $2.60, $10.30 or $17.75 for each further $1,000 or fraction of it. The base is the Alteration Type you file — $170 for an ALT1 in a house, $130 for an ALT2, ALT3 or LAA — and the rate is the building's size. A new building that keeps nothing is priced on floor area instead, at $0.06, $0.26 or $0.45 a square foot. Electrical work is priced by the Department's own rule: $40 to file, $0 for the first ten units and $0.25 for each one after.
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 New York City permit fee with our Building Permit Fee Calculator.
| Permit | Category | Last reviewed |
|---|---|---|
| New York City building permit cost | structural | 2026-09-25 |
| New York City electrical permit cost | electrical | 2026-09-25 |
| New York City plumbing permit cost | plumbing | 2026-09-25 |
Local context
What is specific to New York City
One agency, one table, one portal. The Department of Buildings issues the building, electrical and plumbing permits this site prices, takes every filing through DOB NOW: Build, and prints its phone number and its five borough offices on its own contact page. What it does not print is a fee schedule of its own: the building and plumbing figures are a table inside the Administrative Code — Table 28-112.2, thirty-nine rows long — and the electrical figures are a rule the code hands them to, 1 RCNY §101-03, because §28-112.2.2 says electrical fees are "in accordance with department rules". Two instruments, two dates: the table's amounts were printed by Local Law 77 of 2023 and have not moved since, and the rule's electrical amounts have not moved since the rule itself took effect on 1 July 2008.
The table's most expensive word is not the rate, it is the *row*. An alteration is priced by where the building sits in three pairs of brackets — under seven stories and 100,000 square feet or not, an R-2 building where half the units are publicly affordable or not — and by which of four Alteration Types is filed, and a reader who has only a cost has not finished the question. The same $100,000 renovation is $377.00 in a row house filed as an ALT2 and $2,011.75 in a ten-storey building filed as an ALT1, because the second pair of brackets charges $17.75 per $1,000 where the first charges $2.60. Every number on this site therefore carries the row it came from.
Two things a New Yorker expects to find are not here, and their absence is a fact about the City rather than a gap in the research. There is no plan review percentage, no technology fee and no state or county surcharge anywhere in New York City's text — the searches for those phrases come back empty, which is the opposite of every other jurisdiction in this dataset. And plumbing has no fee schedule at all: a plumbing job is filed as an alteration, or — where a Licensed Master Plumber files minor work without plans — as a Limited Alteration Application, whose fee chart DOB publishes as a price list that reproduces the table's own rows line for line. That chart is the check this jurisdiction was able to make and no other one could: the Department and the code agreeing, in public, on arithmetic.
Valuation
How valuation is determined here
The basis is the cost of the work, as the City defines it rather than as a reader might: §28-112.3 requires an estimate of the cost of construction with the application, and says the cost "shall include the total value of work proposed, including but not limited to materials, equipment and labor, with reasonable allowances for profit and overhead". DOB can reject the estimate as understated, and it — not the applicant — sets "the initial, amended and final building permit valuation". A final statement of the actual cost is filed before sign-off.
That figure is then rounded by the table itself, in whole thousands: the fee is the minimum filing fee for the first $5,000 or $3,000 of cost, plus the row's rate for each further $1,000 or fraction of one, so a $5,001 job and a $6,000 job pay the same increment above the base. The two exceptions are both area-based: a new building that keeps no existing element is priced on total floor area with a per-structure minimum, and the table's earthwork, demolition and sign rows measure frontage, stories or surface instead. Nothing here derives a cost from a square-foot rate or a floor area from a valuation, because the City publishes neither conversion.
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 New York City's own building, electrical and plumbing permit fees. They are not a project cost, and they exclude:
- Everything another agency charges. FDNY permits sprinklers, standpipes and alarm systems; DEP, DOT and the Finance Department each charge for their own approvals. §28-112.5 says in terms that paying DOB's fee "shall not relieve the applicant or holder of the permit from the payment of other fees that are prescribed by law".
- The other 30-odd rows of Table 28-112.2: renewal at $130 per work type, amendments at the greater of $130 or the added scope, reinstatement, the accessory garage at $130, foundation and earthwork at $10 for each 2,000 square feet (minimum $130), demolition at frontage x stories x $2.60 (minimum $260), curb cuts at $3 or $6 a linear foot, the sign rows, sidewalk sheds, scaffolds, construction fences and temporary structures. Published, transcribed in the research record, not attached to a page.
- Parts fees beyond the ones priced here. 1 RCNY §101-03 also charges service entrance cables and feeder conductors at $15 to $75 a set, panels at $15 to $75, signs at $40 in shop and $65 to $115 on site, elevators at $125 plus $83 for each further ten floors, and $12 for wiring or rewiring boiler controls — each priced per item by a rating no input on this site collects.
- The $5,000 cap on electrical parts fees. The adopted rule still prints that the total additional fee "shall not exceed five thousand dollars"; DOB's own pending rulemaking says Local Law 128 of 2024 repealed the cap and proposes to delete the wording. It is an aggregate cap on a permit, which a per-rule maximum cannot express, so this model applies none — a job whose parts fees pass $5,000 needs DOB's own calculation.
- Electrical renewals, Post Approval Amendments and after-hours variances — $130, $130, and $130 to $650 plus $80 a day — which are fees for later acts rather than for the permit being priced.
- Plan review, energy code compliance review, licence and examination fees, special inspection and facade inspection schedules, and every other line in 1 RCNY §101-03 that is not the electrical rows or the records management fee.
- The exemptions in §28-112.1 — a religious, charitable or educational owner using the property exclusively for that purpose, and emergency work for a City agency — which are not modelled as an input, so a permitted fee for such a project would be shown here even though the City waives it.
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.
- Municipal codeCityPrimary source
Read 2026-09-25 from the codifier's consolidated rule text. §28-112.2.2 of the Administrative Code sends electrical permit fees here, and this section prints them: $40 for the initial application, $0 for the first ten units and $.25 over, service switches at $8 to $375 by ampere band, service entrance cables at $15 to $75, panels at $15 to $75, signs at $40 to $115, elevators at $125 and $83, boiler controls at $12, minor work at $15 — and the records management fee of $45 or $165 for applications for new buildings and alterations. The section's promulgation details, downloaded from nyc.gov, show the electrical and records figures only in the original rule effective 1 July 2008; the section was last amended effective 13 August 2026 for sidewalk-shed provisions, and a pending DOB-219 rulemaking would amend the electrical rows.
- City websiteCityPrimary source
Read 2026-09-25 for the operational answers the rule does not give: electrical permits are valid for a maximum of 12 months and every renewal costs $130; a Post Approval Amendment costs $130; an After-Hours Variance is $130 to $650 plus $80 a day; the filing status moves to complete only when the job has passed inspection and "all the fees (including parts fees) are paid"; and Electrical Plan Review is required where the scope installs service equipment, transformers, UPS systems, generators, other power sources or energy-storage systems. It is also where the 50% payment rule is seen in practice — the Department says payments are made directly in DOB NOW: Build.
- Fee schedule (PDF)CityPrimary source
Read 2026-09-25: the page, and the two PDFs it links — /assets/buildings/pdf/laa_fee_chart_1-2-3_family.pdf and /assets/buildings/pdf/laa_fee_chart_other.pdf, both stamped JUNE 2018. The charts are a price list for rows 11 and 12 of Table 28-112.2 and they reproduce the table's own arithmetic line by line: $130.00 for a 1-2-3 family job to $5,000, then steps of exactly $2.60; $195.00 for any other building to $3,000, then steps of exactly $10.30. Four lines of each chart are asserted against the model's own output in the tests, which is the strongest check this jurisdiction has — the Department printing the table's formula as a list. The June 2018 stamp is when Local Law 56 of 2016's rates were programmed, not when the formula changed.
- City websiteCityPrimary source
Read 2026-09-25 with its sibling page on limited plumbing alterations. The Department states that the LAA "is used for plumbing work, fire suppression piping replacement and repairs, and oil burner installations that do not include construction work", that Licensed Master Plumbers, Licensed Master Fire Suppression Piping Contractors and Licensed Oil Burner Installers file it in DOB NOW: Build, and that one category and one work type may be filed per application. The plumbing page carries the Category 1 limits — $35,000 per building including appliance and labour in any 12-month period, five or fewer new fixtures or connections — and Category 2's work list, which has no cost limit. This is what makes the plumbing page's claim checkable: DOB's own price list and the City's fee table are the same arithmetic.
- OrdinanceCityPrimary source
Read 2026-09-25 as the City Clerk's PDF: passed 21 November 2024, returned unsigned 23 December 2024, and by §29 effective one year after it became law — the codifier records that as 21 December 2025, so it is in force on this pass's verification date. It rewrote §28-112.2's payment paragraph, added §28-112.2.1 (non-electrical work: 50% and not less than $130 where a certificate of occupancy changes, 100% otherwise) and §28-112.2.2 (electrical work: fees "in accordance with department rules", 50% and not less than $130 at filing), and added row 15.1 to the table. It moved no amount in the table, and it repealed the chapter of Title 27 that carried the electrical fee cap the rule still prints.
- OrdinanceCityPrimary source
Read 2026-09-25 as the City Clerk's own 184-page PDF: a local law "passed by the Council on May 11, 2023 and returned unsigned by the Mayor on June 13, 2023". Section 14 reprints Table 28-112.2 in full, and the table's own arithmetic was extracted twice — with pdftotext's -layout and -raw modes — because a page break splits a row's Alteration Types from their minimum fees and only one of the two extractions pairs them correctly. This is the instrument that put $2.60, $10.30 and $17.75 per $1,000 on the pages, and the codifier dates its effect to 11 June 2023.
- Municipal codeCityPrimary source
Read 2026-09-25 as the codifier's consolidated text of the section and its 39-row table, with the amendment history it prints at the foot: "Am. L.L. 2016/056, 5/10/2016, eff. 6/9/2016; Am. L.L. 2021/126, 11/7/2021, eff. 11/7/2022; Am. L.L. 2023/077, 6/11/2023, eff. 6/11/2023; Am. L.L. 2024/128, 12/21/2024, eff. 12/21/2025". §28-112.2 sends permits for "new buildings, structures, mechanical, and plumbing, and electrical systems or alterations" to this table and to §§28-112.2.1 and 28-112.2.2; the table's alteration rows 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15 are where every building and plumbing figure on this site comes from, and row 15.1 sends electrical work to department rules.