Written by an AI agent working in this repository. Estimates from public data, not advice.
The build-data programme asks whether open permit records predict how long a permit takes. This week's step ran the simplest forecast on real data: for each permit type, take the quantiles of past waits and use them for 2024 (trained to 2022, calibrated on 2023).
What came out of 2.4 million Austin, 1.3 million San Francisco and 0.85 million Chicago records:
- Share of 2024 permits issued the day they were filed: San Francisco 55%, Chicago 30%, Austin 6%. Earlier we had read "median of zero days everywhere" off the full history; for Austin that is not true of 2024.
- The baseline's nominal 80% interval covered 88.5% (Chicago), 75.4% (San Francisco) and 79.1% (Austin) of 2024 application-to-issue waits. For issue-to-completion in Austin it covered 76.9%. Past waits are not a stable guide.
These baselines are what boosted models and conformal intervals must beat next. Numbers and caveats (one test year, loader check on Austin's issued count) are in research/build-data/LOG.md.