Montgomery Planning briefed the Planning, Housing and Parks Committee on Oct. 27, 2025 about a reframed "development tracker" and the reasons why many approved housing projects remain unbuilt.

Lisa Gaffoni, planning supervisor with Montgomery Planning, told the committee the pipeline "as of September 2025" "consists of 246 development projects totaling around 27,000 unbuilt units," and that about 13,000 of those units have received all planning approvals and are positioned to advance toward permitting.

The analysis combined a developer questionnaire and in-depth interviews. Alex Pemberton, real estate research planner, said the team cleaned 47 responses to 32 valid project data points representing roughly 11,000 unbuilt units (43% of the September 2025 pipeline) and conducted 16 detailed interviews. "Very few projects pencil out given existing interest rates, valuations, construction costs, and rents," Pemberton said, summarizing consistent interview themes.

Why it matters: staff said the tracker’s headline unit count can be misleading because approvals occur at different stages. A preliminary-plan approval can cover thousands of units while site plans typically represent smaller phases; multifamily projects often register progress only when an entire building is complete. Planning staff warned that the tracker previously implied a linear path to construction and recommended renaming and reframing the tool as a "development tracker" that communicates project readiness and likelihood of completion.

Key findings and evidence

- Totals and subsets: staff reported roughly 27,000 approved-but-unbuilt units in the tracker and said about 13,000 of those units are in projects that have completed all required planning approvals as of September 2025.

- Sample and impediments: 32 cleaned survey responses comprised the qualitative sample that informed staff recommendations; Pemberton said the top impediments ranked by respondents were market- and finance-related (feasibility and construction costs), local policy and technical issues, and project-level problems such as design changes and financing.

- Regional building-permit context: housing planner Bhavna Vermonian told the committee Montgomery County issued far fewer multifamily building permits in 2025 to date (54 multifamily units reported) compared with neighboring jurisdictions (Fairfax County issued about 1,700 multifamily permits in the same period), suggesting a sharper recent decline in multifamily permitting locally.

Staff recommendations

Planning staff offered a mix of data, process and policy recommendations intended to improve transparency and increase the share of projects that reach construction:

- Rebrand the "pipeline" as a "development tracker" and publish clearer, more frequent materials (one-pagers, an interactive dashboard) that communicate readiness and limitations of the data.

- Improve data collection and cross-agency coordination: link planning tracker entries to Department of Permitting Services (DPS) building-permit records, use aerial imagery to verify build-outs, and create regular check-ins with regulatory planners and field inspectors.

- Streamline regulatory steps and expand expedited review programs; staff suggested revisiting size criteria and considering adding 4% LIHTC projects to mixed-income expedited pathways.

- Address permit-processing delays at DPS through process review and potential resource shifts.

- Create a development-approval specialist position in planning to maintain up-to-date contacts, coordinate across agencies and help "unstick" projects after planning approvals (staff said the role would be primarily navigational rather than regulatory).

- Use targeted financial tools more broadly (pilots, TIFs) and explore cushioning the impact of impact taxes for projects that can progress quickly.

- Recalibrate the county's rent-stabilization exemption: staff recommended replacing a rolling-date exemption with a fixed cutoff and proposed exempting projects built after 2002 to increase investor certainty.

What committee members pressed on

Committee members repeatedly flagged permitting delays as a major bottleneck. The chair pressed staff for a clear time cutoff to label projects as "stalled"; staff responded that a single time threshold is unreliable because projects can remain on the tracker for many years and move forward when market conditions change. Staff said some projects have persisted on the tracker 10–17 years and later reached construction.

Members also urged that a development-approval specialist should not become a substitute for broader process reform: one member said the ideal outcome is to "fix the bureaucracy," not to add staff to navigate it. Staff replied the specialist would be practical near-term support while the county pursues wider permitting and process improvements.

Evidence/where this came from

The presentation and numbers cited in this story come from Montgomery Planning staff briefings and slides delivered to the Planning, Housing and Parks Committee on Oct. 27, 2025. Direct quotations in this article are taken from the staff presentation and the committee interchange recorded in the meeting transcript.