Triangle building permits compared: Raleigh, Wake County, Durham, Cary and the towns

In the Triangle, the office that issues your building permit depends on exactly where the property is. The City of Raleigh, Durham's joint City-County office, Cary, Morrisville, Garner, Apex, Fuquay-Varina and Wake Forest each run their own permits, and Wake County's office covers everything outside them. They use different portals, they split trade work differently, and they move at very different speeds: in the last 12 months the typical new-home permit took 20 days from application in Wake County's office and 46 in Raleigh. This guide shows how to tell which office is yours, where each one's permit portal is and how to search it, and how the offices compare on volume, wait times and what their records show.

Which office issues your permit

Find the property on Wake County's iMAPS and check its planning jurisdiction. If it reads WC, Wake County's office issues the permit; otherwise the town or city named does. Durham is simpler: one City-County office covers both the City of Durham and the rest of Durham County. Johnston County's office covers its own jurisdiction south and east of Wake.

How much each office handles

Wake County's office files more permits than any other in the Triangle, about 1,300 a month, and more new-home permits too. Durham issues the next most new homes, then Raleigh. Cary files a lot of permits but few new homes: most of its permits are for work on existing buildings.

Trade permits: separate or part of the building permit

The offices split work differently. In Wake County's office more than half of all permits are separate electrical, plumbing or mechanical permits, and in Cary 42% are. Raleigh's records show almost none: the city asks for a residential alteration permit to include the project's plumbing, mechanical and electrical work in its scope. Durham's and Garner's published records also list few separate trade permits. For a contractor looking for HVAC or electrical work, that decides where the leads show up: as their own permits in Wake County and Cary, or inside the building permit's description in Raleigh.

How long each office takes

Durham, Johnston County and Garner don't record an application date in the records TarSignal reads, and Apex, Fuquay-Varina and Wake Forest show most permits as issued the day they were applied for, so they're left out. Cary's figures start in July 2026, when its records began to include the application date. Raleigh's slower new-home permits have been speeding up: its median was 55 days the year before.

Fees

Each office sets its own fees and changes them every fiscal year, so check the office's current schedule before you apply. From January 1, 2027 a new state fee is added to permits everywhere in North Carolina; TarSignal's permit fee calculator shows what it adds to a job.

How the numbers were counted

Volumes are permits filed (or issued, where an office records only that date) from July 1 to September 30, 2026, divided by three, for the offices whose records were complete in those months; Cary's and Garner's records grew earlier in the year, and Apex, Fuquay-Varina and Wake Forest's portals show only part of their permits, so those three get no volume figures. Separate trade permits are permits in TarSignal's electrical, plumbing and mechanical categories. Wait times are from TarSignal's permit wait-time tool: days from the application date an office records to the issue date. Office coverage and portal details are from each office's own pages, checked in October 2026.