If you’ve ever built a new house, you know that one of the major challenges of construction is navigating all the local rules and regulations that can impact a building’s design. If a plan doesn’t pass muster, projects are often sent back to the proverbial drawing board.
Last year, Maine lawmakers initially passed legislation to create housing plans that are preapproved, but ultimately the program was not funded. Now, a new report is highlighting how such plans cut time and costs for developers, boosting much-needed supply.
The report from Pew Charitable Trusts, a nonpartisan research organization, found that preapproved plans reduce builders’ development costs by roughly 1-2%, or $5-10,000 per unit.
A preapproved plan is a reusable set of design specifications and blueprints that has already been approved by a municipality, and are available to builders for a small fee or no cost.
“So instead of starting from scratch, a home builder or a homeowner who wants to put an addition or build another house on their property can use these plans to skip much of the design review process and move quickly to construction,” said Seva Rodnyansky, research manager for the Pew Housing Policy Initiative and lead researcher on the report.
He said developers save money when they don’t have to hire an architect and spend time drawing up the plans, and then get further savings from the faster approval process with municipalities.
“Slow permitting or approval processes can often delay or block housing, which adds a lot of cost because time is money and so preapproved plans can speed things up by reducing the need for various discretionary review processes,” Rodnyansky said.
He said that estimates suggest that every month of delays in a permitting process can raise construction costs by 1-3%. In Seattle, for example, that’s estimated to increase prices by $30,000 per unit.
Rodnyansky said that cities that invested in the preapproval process have seen real success. Over three years, South Bend, Indiana, reported more than 200 new units used preapproved plans, roughly 7% of all new units permitted.
“In some places broader housing reforms have been more touchy and more politically sensitive, whereas, from what we found on preapproved plans, they’re pretty popular,” Rodnyansky said. “They have not been embroiled in political issues. They’re not controversial, people like them.”
The report notes that preapproved plans are not a substitute for broader housing reforms. But Rodnyansky said the plans can be a key tool for municipalities, and can help cut down on red tape.
“No one policy is going to solve the whole shortage, but it’s about removing more consistent bottlenecks in the system,” he said. “And so things like preapproved plans are practical, scalable ways to speed up production, especially when you pair them with broader reforms like zoning or permitting changes.”
Maine lawmakers considered a state effort to make preapproved plans more accessible last year, passing a bill directing the Maine Office of Community Affairs to work with a consultant to produce at least 40 preapproved building plans.
But the Legislature did not fund the program, leaving it with an uncertain future. Samantha Horn, director of the Maine Office of Community Affairs, said despite that, the office is exploring options for preapproved plans, and examining how other states have acted.
In the meantime, some municipalities in Maine have already adopted preapproved plans, including Bangor.
David Warren, spokesperson for the city, said Bangor offers eight different plans at no cost. The plans have been available for about a year, but as of March no developer has yet utilized them.
“The city hopes that by offering preapproved plans, and introducing other measures, it helps ease that process to some degree,” Warren said.
