PermitLag

PermitLag is a web app (with optional mobile companion) that helps cities and developers quantify how permitting and inspections affect housing supply, business openings, and local job growth. It ingests permit/inspection timelines from municipal systems (or simple CSV exports), normalizes them, and produces a “delay map” by neighborhood, permit type, and department. The app estimates economic impact using transparent, configurable assumptions (e.g., carrying costs, lost rent, deferred payroll, tax revenue timing) and highlights bottlenecks like re-review loops, missing documents, and staffing constraints. It also benchmarks performance against peer cities using publicly available datasets where possible. This is a combination traditional + AI app: AI assists with document classification, reason-code extraction from notes, and anomaly detection, but the core value is clean workflow analytics and credible reporting. Expect messy data and political sensitivity; the product must be defensible and auditable.