How long a building permit really takes

The honest answer

Months. Frequently many months. Anyone giving you a confident number without seeing your title, your survey and your plot's designation is guessing.

The reason is that the permit is the last step of a sequence, not the first. By the time a file is submitted, four other things have already had to be true, and each of them can take longer than the submission itself.

These are ranges from ordinary practice, offered so you can plan. They are not statutory service standards and your project will differ.

The five things that actually cause delay

1. An unresolved cadastral position. Unfinished inheritance, undivided shares among heirs who are abroad, or a registered area that does not match the plot. This is the most common and the most under-anticipated. See Κτηματολόγιο.
2. Earlier unauthorised work. A previous owner's extension, enclosed terrace or converted store. It must be regularised before a new application proceeds. See legalisation.
3. A scheme designed before the settlement controls were checked. In a designated settlement, elevations outside the permitted envelope get sent back, and everything downstream changes with them. See Council of Architecture.
4. Archaeological requirements. Where excavation is involved, what the Ephorate requires — and finds — governs the programme. See archaeological approval.
5. An incomplete file. The only one entirely within your professionals' control, and it still happens.

What shortens it

• Do the checks first. Title, cadastral, designation and archaeological sensitivity, before design. This is a few weeks of work that routinely saves months.
• Resolve legalisation early, in parallel with design where possible rather than sequentially.
• Test elevations against the settlement controls as you design, not at the end.
• Decide quickly. Client decision speed is a genuine variable and it is entirely yours.
• Engage the archaeological position before freezing the foundation design. Otherwise you design twice.
• Submit a complete file. Obvious, and still the most common avoidable cause of back-and-forth.

Planning a programme around it

The practical scheduling advice, given that the permit timing is partly outside your control:

1. Do not book a contractor against an unissued permit. Book against the permit being issued, with the start date confirmed after.
2. Do not order long-lead materials before the permit, unless the item is unaffected by any possible design change.
3. Assume the works will run in the closed season after the permit, not immediately. If the permit issues in May, the realistic start is October.
4. Build the approval time into your purchase decision. If you buy in March expecting to be in by the following summer, the permit alone may make that impossible.
5. Keep a decision log. Where a delay is caused by a decision waiting on you, that is worth knowing rather than attributing to the process.

What you can start before the permit

Not everything has to wait, and using the approval period well is what separates a well-run project from a stalled one.

• Ground investigation and trial pits, which the structural design needs anyway.
• Detailed survey and opening up, on a property you already own.
• Finish selection and long-lead identification, so that ordering can happen the day the permit issues.
• Contractor selection and pricing, so the programme is ready.
• Maintenance and non-permitted work, where it genuinely falls outside permit requirements — we will tell you honestly which items those are.

What happens once the permit is issued

The permit is not the end of the administrative work, and two things surprise owners.

• A supervising engineer is appointed and has a statutory role. They confirm during construction that the work follows the approved design. Their inspections — particularly reinforcement before pours — have to be programmed in rather than fitted around a concrete delivery. See structural engineering.
• Permits carry validity periods and conditions. Starting late, or letting works lapse for a long period, can create a problem. Your engineer will set out the specific position for your file.
• Changes need a revision. Anything departing from what was approved requires one, which takes time. Changes within the approved envelope are simpler. This is why front-loading design decisions matters so much.
• Completion has its own steps — sign-off, documentation, service connections and, where relevant, the ΠΕΑ.

The practical planning point: the construction programme starts when the permit issues, and that is not a date you can commit to a contractor in advance. Book the contractor against the permit, not against the calendar.

A worked example of how the time disappears

A composite of situations we see repeatedly, with no single real project behind it.

An owner buys a caldera-side property in March intending to renovate over the following winter. The survey in April finds a terrace that a previous owner enclosed without permission. Legalisation starts in May and resolves in the autumn. Meanwhile the design cannot be finalised, because the enclosed terrace is part of the proposed layout — so design restarts in October and reaches permit-ready in January. The property is in a designated settlement, so the scheme goes to review in February and is sent back over the proportion of a new opening. Resubmission is in April. The permit issues in the summer, which is the one season nobody can build in a settlement core.

Works start the following November: twenty months after purchase, with nobody having behaved badly. Every step took an ordinary amount of time. The one decision that would have changed it was checking the permit history in March instead of April, and starting legalisation before design rather than alongside it.