Seventeen to twenty seven months. The median is nineteen.
From the first meeting to the day you unlock the door. Two thirds of that is spent before a single truck arrives, which is the part nobody expects and the part that decides everything afterwards.
The fast end and the slow end are both real houses.
Four months of design plus two of permitting plus eleven of construction is seventeen, and that is a well drawn house of moderate size on a clean lot in a fast jurisdiction. Seven plus four plus sixteen is twenty seven, and that is a big house on a difficult site in a town that reviews trees before it reviews buildings.
Nineteen is the median of the last twelve. It is not the fast end, and we would rather quote you the middle than the number that makes the meeting go well.
Size drives construction more than anything else. The Butler Chain house is 6,720 square feet and took nineteen months of construction alone. The New Broad house is 3,310 and took twelve.
| Jurisdiction | Permit clock | What makes it that way |
|---|---|---|
| Winter Park | 12 to 16 weeks | Tree review and design review both run before building review opens the file |
| City of Orlando | 10 to 14 weeks | Straightforward, and slower in the two months after a storm season |
| Orange County, unincorporated | 8 to 11 weeks | The fastest jurisdiction we build in |
| Windermere and the lakefront | 10 to 14 weeks | Plus a dock permit on a separate clock, about seven months |
| Lake Nona | 10 to 14 weeks | After 4 to 10 weeks of community architectural review, which comes first |
Nine of the last twelve finished on or before the date in the contract.
Below is every house we have handed over in the last three years, plotted against its own contract completion date. The vertical line is that date. The mark is the day the family got the keys. Three of them landed past the line, and each of those three carries its reason underneath it.
Late by seven weeks. A named storm in the framing window, seven days of stand down, two truss packages replaced
Late by five weeks. Custom steel windows nine weeks past their promised date, four weeks absorbed by resequencing
Late by six weeks. Kitchen redrawn in month ten at the owner's request, plumbing moved in a slab already poured
Nine of the last twelve finished on or before the date in the contract. Here are the three that did not, and why.
Three questions about the calendar.
Can you go faster if I pay more?
Not meaningfully, and the places where money does buy time are small. Expedited plan review saves two or three weeks in some jurisdictions. Paying to expedite a window order occasionally works. What money cannot compress is concrete curing, inspection sequencing, or the fact that a house has to be dried in before the inside of it can begin. Builders who promise a fast schedule usually deliver it by starting construction on drawings that are not finished, and then the redraw happens on your site instead of on paper.
When does the clock actually start?
We date the contract schedule from permit issue rather than from the first meeting, because everything before permit involves an architect, an engineer and a municipality rather than us. But we tell you both numbers, and the one to plan your life around is the seventeen to twenty seven months from the first meeting. If a builder quotes you eleven months, ask him what he is measuring from.
What is the longest a Castellano house has taken?
Thirty four months, finished in 2019. A large house on a lakefront lot where the soil report was wrong. We found muck at four feet across a third of the footprint, and the foundation was redesigned and repermitted while everything stopped. The family knew within eleven days of the discovery what it would cost and what it would take. It is the worst schedule we have ever run and we still put a plate on it.