We are shocked at what it cost us, but we actually got a building permit issued to us today. When our architect was getting close to being ready to submit our first round of plans, I was told to go to a City of Seattle website and pay a fee for a permit number. So I did. The fee was modest, just a few hundred dollars. That was painless I thought. Later I found out that that first few hundred dollars was just a fee to get in line to apply for a permit. It was a fee to be allowed to apply at a later time. After a good deal of back and forth between the City and our architect, the actual plans, the final and complete set, were submitted. The day they were I was given a very short window of time to go back to the same City website and pay for the permit. That time it was thousands of dollars. I foolishly thought that was it. Surely a permit can’t cost more than the two fees we’ve paid already. Well, yes, yes it can cost more. About a month passed. We were notified today that all the corrections and revisions to the plans had been approved and the permit was ready “to be picked up.” It sounds as if I’m being invited to go down to City hall where a nice counter person is going to hand me a very official looking permit. Nope. Back to the City website again and – I couldn’t believe this – a few more thousand dollars to “pick it up” online. And no one hands you anything. You just get an email with a .pdf in it and you print out your own damn permit. But you don’t get that email with the .pdf until AFTER you pay the third fee. Total cost of a permit from the City of Seattle to build our house: $6,202.