REMODELING PERMITS
EAST HAMPTON, NY

East Hampton Building Permits Town and Village, Side by Side

Why Does the Permit Answer Change From Town to Town?

Because New York State wrote it that way. 19 NYCRR 1203.3(a)(1) requires every authority having jurisdiction to require building permits for work that must conform to the Codes. It then lets localities exempt eight categories, two of which matter here: “painting, wallpapering, tiling, carpeting, or other similar finish work,” and “repairs, provided that the work does not have an impact on fire and life safety.” The State mandates the permit for regulated work and merely permits the exemption. Each of Suffolk County's ten independent town building departments decides whether to take that option, and each of Suffolk's 32 incorporated villages decides again. That is why an East Hampton homeowner cannot safely borrow an answer from Islip or Southampton.

East Hampton adds a second layer. Most Long Island addresses sit under one building department. A large number of East Hampton addresses sit under one of two governments with the same name, and the difference between them shows up on a Saturday in July rather than on the application.

Is There a Summer Construction Moratorium in East Hampton?

The accurate answer turns on a distinction most sources skip: “East Hampton” is two separate governments with two different rules. The Town of East Hampton has no summer construction moratorium. The Village of East Hampton restricts construction hours seasonally, and that restriction is real. Which one applies to you depends on which side of the village line your parcel sits.

How Does Town of East Hampton Chapter 185 Actually Work?

In the Town of East Hampton, Chapter 185 works by exemption rather than by a decibel cap on your crew. The Town's general residential daytime standard of 65 dBA sits at § 185-3A(1)(a), with a nighttime standard of 50 dBA at § 185-3A(2)(a). § 185-4 is titled “Exceptions,” and § 185-4B exempts “Construction activities between 7:00 a.m. and 8:30 p.m. and the associated use of construction devices and to the noise generated thereby” from those standards. Construction carried on inside that window is carved out of the standard rather than measured against it. Construction outside that window is not exempt.

That structure matters. Because the exemption is written around hours, the compliance question for a construction crew in the Town of East Hampton is what time the tools switch on rather than how loud they are.

There is no seasonal or summer date restriction anywhere in Town Chapter 185. The 7:00 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. window is the same in July as it is in February, and it applies seven days a week.

The penalties are what make the chapter serious. Under § 185-6A, a first violation carries up to $1,000 or 15 days; a second within 18 months carries $1,000 to $2,500; a third or subsequent within 18 months carries $2,500 to $10,000. And § 185-6B provides that “if the violation is of a continuing nature, each hour during which any of these offenses occurs shall constitute an additional, separate and distinct offense.” The hourly clause is the one to read twice: a crew running a tile saw and a demolition hammer outside the exempt window accrues countable offenses by the hour.

What Are the Village of East Hampton Construction Hours?

The Village of East Hampton is where the genuine seasonal restriction lives. Village Code Chapter 196, § 196-1A(9) sets construction hours by calendar period.

Sundays and all federal holidays are prohibited year-round. § 196-1A(10) allows a hardship variance to be obtained from the Village Building Inspector, which is the only published route to working outside these hours. Penalties under § 196-3A run $250 to $1,000 for a first offense, $500 to $2,500 for a second within two years, and $2,500 to $5,000 for a third or subsequent within two years.

The same chapter reaches beyond hammers. § 196-1A(11) holds landscaping to the same hours and prohibits gas and diesel leaf blowers from May 15 through September 15. A project that ends with a lawn restoration in August runs into that on its last week.

The practical consequence is a four-hour Saturday. A Village of East Hampton kitchen or bathroom running between May 15 and September 15 gets Monday through Friday plus a noon-to-four Saturday window, and nothing on Sunday. That is the detail an out-of-area contractor is most likely to get wrong. It does not stop a project; it changes how the project lands on a calendar, and it forces a decision about which phases you put in the summer at all.

Town Versus Village: What Actually Differs

The test for which column applies is not the postal address. It is your property tax bill: village residents are billed a village tax as a separate line, and residents of the Town's unincorporated areas are not.

Do You Need a Permit to Remodel a Kitchen in East Hampton?

Town Code § 102-7A(1) requires a permit for the “erection, construction, enlargement, removal, improvement, transportation or demolition of any building or structure.” That is the whole published trigger. The Town of East Hampton publishes no kitchen-specific trigger list and no itemized list of exempt work, so there is no published sentence telling you which side of the line new cabinets, a countertop or a tile backsplash fall on. We will not approximate one from another town's sheet, because a neighbouring town's exemption has no force here.

What can be said without inventing anything: the word “improvement” in § 102-7A(1) is broad, and the scopes plainly caught are the ones that change the building. A gas line run to a range that never had one, a sink relocated so the drain and vent have to be re-run, an island added with plumbing in it, and the wall between the kitchen and the dining room coming down all sit on the permit side of any reading. For a like-for-like refit that moves nothing, the determination belongs to the Building Department. Call 631-324-4145 with your actual scope.

Do You Need a Permit to Remodel a Bathroom in East Hampton?

The same § 102-7A(1) language governs, and the same absence applies: no published bathroom trigger list and no itemized exempt-work list. A bathroom concentrates more plumbing into less floor area than any other room, so the scopes that clearly qualify as improvement arrive faster. Moving a toilet, adding a second sink, or replacing a tub with a curbless shower all mean new soil, waste or vent piping.

Adding a bathroom rather than renovating one reaches past the Town entirely. Under Suffolk County Sanitary Code Article 6, administered by the Suffolk County Department of Health Services Office of Wastewater Management, the expansion trigger is bedrooms rather than bathroom count, and a separate trigger catches any addition requiring the addition or modification of the sewage disposal facilities regardless of bedroom count. The East End is almost entirely unsewered, which makes that the most consequential question on an East Hampton addition; the detail sits on our Suffolk County bathroom remodeling page. Article 6 is amended periodically; confirm current requirements with SCDHS.

What Does East Hampton Publish, and What Does It Not?

The table below separates what the Town states in writing from what it does not, as of July 2026.

How Do You File, and When Can You Reach Anybody?

The Building Department is at 300 Pantigo Place, Suite 110, East Hampton, NY 11937, telephone 631-324-4145, open Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

The scheduling fact underneath that one matters more. Building inspectors are at the counter and on the phone Monday through Friday from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. only, a limitation the Town describes as temporary “until two new office assistants are hired.” The office being open until 3:30 does not mean an inspector will take your scope question at 2:00. Determinations get made in a two-hour morning window, and planning around it is the difference between one call and a week of missed connections.

Filing is digital and mandatory. The Town states that “ALL Building Department applications must be submitted digitally through our Digital Portal OpenGov,” a requirement in force since May 19, 2025. Payment is digital too: “NO PAYMENTS WILL BE ACCEPTED AT THE COUNTER. PAYMENTS CAN BE MADE ONLINE BY CREDIT CARD (2.99% + .99), OR E-CHECK ($2.25 FLAT).”

On fees themselves, we do not have a figure to give you. The Town does not publish a building permit fee schedule that we could retrieve as of July 2026, and the only published amounts are the two payment surcharges above. We are not going to borrow another town's numbers and present them as East Hampton's. Call the Building Department at 631-324-4145 before you budget.

How Long Does an East Hampton Permit Take?

The Town of East Hampton publishes no permit turnaround time, and neither does any other Long Island jurisdiction we examined. A contractor quoting a guaranteed number of weeks for an East Hampton permit is inventing it.

East Hampton's review queue has, unusually, been reported on directly. The East Hampton Star reported on February 5, 2026 that a single-family permit applied for on February 27, 2025 was still unapproved roughly a year later, and that a FOIL request for pending-application counts “has gone unanswered.” The report quoted Town Councilman Tom Flight saying that “313 ‘new records’ were created in the department via the OpenGov system in January and 558 permits were issued,” and quoted builder Larry Kane saying that “in the last couple of months, I think it's gone from dysfunctional to not functional.” The same coverage put the department's 2025 year-to-date figures at more than 1,200 permits issued, more than 2,800 inspections performed and $3.6 million in permit revenue.

Those are attributed, dated statements from a single February 2026 report, and we publish them as that rather than as a current measurement. What a homeowner should take from them is scheduling reality rather than a verdict: file as early as the scope allows, do not order long-lead materials against an assumed approval date, and treat review time as the one variable in an East Hampton project that money does not compress. If the project is meant to be finished before a summer season, the permit is the first thing to move.

Who Is Allowed to Do the Work?

Our own carpenters and project managers run your job start to finish. Electrical and plumbing are performed by licensed Nassau and Suffolk trade contractors we've worked with for years — we schedule them, we coordinate the inspections, and we're accountable for the result. Greene Group Construction holds Suffolk County HIC #HI-72958 and Nassau County HIC #EF-65498. Suffolk County Code Chapter 563 requires that Suffolk number to appear in all advertising.

On top of the county licence, secondary sourcing suggests that the Town of East Hampton may require its own home improvement licence. We have not verified that from the Town's own published material, so we state it as unconfirmed rather than as fact. Ask the Building Department at 631-324-4145 whether a Town licence is required for your contractor before you sign, and ask your contractor to show you what they hold.

What Happens at the End of the Job?

Town Code § 102-14B provides that an altered building may not be occupied “for more than 30 days after the completion of the alteration or work unless a certificate of occupancy shall have been issued.” Read the clock carefully: it runs from completion of the work, not from the date the permit issued. A kitchen you started using the week the tile was grouted sits inside that window.

Open permits and missing certificates surface later, usually during a sale, a refinance or an insurance claim, when a title search or an adjuster asks for the certificate that closes out the file. Schedule the final inspection and the certificate as project steps with dates on them.

What If Your Address Is Inside a Village?

Then the Town is not your building department. The Village of East Hampton is separately incorporated and runs its own code, which is where Chapter 196 and the seasonal hours above come from. The Village of Sag Harbor straddles the Southampton and East Hampton town lines, and its Building Department at 55 Main Street issues building permits, electrical work applications, demolition permits and certificates of occupancy or compliance under its own rules. Sag Harbor's guidance flags that applications are commonly delayed by missing workers' compensation certificates, missing construction costs and missing energy or wind-resistance details, and states that “ACORD forms are neither accepted nor required in any instance.” Confirm which government covers your parcel, and confirm current provisions with the Town or Village before scheduling.

What Does the Work Itself Cost, and Who Handles It?

Permit fees are a small line inside a much larger number. Our published planning ranges run from about $12,000 for a surface bathroom refresh to $250,000 and above for high-end custom kitchen work; the detail sits in our Long Island kitchen remodel cost guide and our bathroom remodel cost guide. For the rest of the East End, see Hamptons kitchen renovation and Hamptons bathroom renovation, or start at kitchen remodeling and bathroom remodeling.

Permit questions turn urgent in one scenario out here. A seasonally closed house discovers a failed supply line or a leaking shower pan late, and by then the damage has moved past the finishes into the subfloor, the joists and the ceiling below. Greene Group Construction runs water damage restoration and insurance claims support as real service lines, so mitigation, documentation and the rebuild sit under one contract. Structural work runs through our general contracting division, and debris leaves with our own junk removal and cleanout crews. Our office at 18 Park Circle in Quogue is on the East End, which is the plain reason to hire locally out here: not sentiment, proximity to the counter.

East Hampton Remodeling Permit FAQ

Is there a summer construction moratorium in East Hampton?
The Town of East Hampton has no summer construction moratorium, but the Village of East Hampton has a genuine seasonal restriction on working hours. In the Town, Chapter 185 sets a general residential daytime standard of 65 dBA and exempts construction activity carried on between 7:00 a.m. and 8:30 p.m. from that standard, seven days a week. In the Village, Chapter 196 § 196-1A(9) permits construction Monday through Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. year-round, and between May 15 and September 15 permits Saturday work only from noon to 4:00 p.m.; Sundays and all federal holidays are prohibited year-round. Same name, two different governments — confirm which one covers your parcel before you build a summer schedule.

Can a crew work on a Saturday in July in the Village of East Hampton?
Between May 15 and September 15, Village of East Hampton Code § 196-1A(9) permits construction on Saturdays only from noon to 4:00 p.m. Monday through Friday hours are 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., and Sundays and all federal holidays are prohibited year-round. § 196-1A(10) allows a hardship variance to be obtained from the Village Building Inspector. Penalties under § 196-3A run $250 to $1,000 for a first offense, $500 to $2,500 for a second within two years, and $2,500 to $5,000 for a third or subsequent within two years. The Town of East Hampton has no equivalent Saturday restriction.

What are the Town of East Hampton construction hours?
Town of East Hampton Code § 185-4 is titled “Exceptions,” and § 185-4B exempts construction activities between 7:00 a.m. and 8:30 p.m., and the associated use of construction devices and the noise generated thereby, from the Town's dBA standards. Those hours run year-round and Chapter 185 contains no seasonal or summer date restriction. Construction carried on outside that window is not exempt. Under § 185-6A a first violation carries up to $1,000 or 15 days, a second within 18 months carries $1,000 to $2,500, and a third or subsequent within 18 months carries $2,500 to $10,000. § 185-6B provides that a violation of a continuing nature counts each hour as a separate and distinct offense.

Do I need a permit to remodel a kitchen in East Hampton?
Town of East Hampton Code § 102-7A(1) requires a permit for the erection, construction, enlargement, removal, improvement, transportation or demolition of any building or structure. The Town publishes no kitchen-specific trigger list and no itemized list of exempt work, so there is no published line telling you whether new cabinets or a tile backsplash fall inside the word improvement. Anything that opens a wall, moves a sink or runs new gas piping is plainly on the permit side. Call the Building Department at 631-324-4145 with your actual scope, and note that inspectors take counter and phone questions Monday through Friday from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. only.

Do I need a permit to remodel a bathroom in East Hampton?
The same § 102-7A(1) language governs, and East Hampton publishes no bathroom-specific trigger list and no itemized exempt-work list. A bathroom concentrates more plumbing into less floor area than any other room, so relocating a toilet, adding a second sink or converting a tub to a curbless shower means new soil, waste or vent piping and reads as improvement under the code. Adding a bathroom rather than renovating one can also reach the Suffolk County Department of Health Services, because Suffolk's wastewater expansion trigger is bedrooms and any work requiring modification of the sewage disposal facilities. Confirm your scope with the Building Department before demolition.

How do I file a building permit application with the Town of East Hampton?
Digitally. The Town of East Hampton states that all Building Department applications must be submitted digitally through its Digital Portal OpenGov, a requirement that took effect May 19, 2025. The Town also states that no payments will be accepted at the counter and that payments can be made online by credit card at 2.99% plus $0.99, or by e-check at a $2.25 flat fee. The Building Department is at 300 Pantigo Place, Suite 110, East Hampton, NY 11937, 631-324-4145, with the office open Monday through Friday 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

How long does an East Hampton building permit take?
The Town of East Hampton does not publish a permit turnaround time, and no Long Island jurisdiction does. There is on-the-record reporting on the queue. The East Hampton Star reported on February 5, 2026 that a single-family permit applied for on February 27, 2025 was still unapproved roughly a year later, and that a FOIL request for pending-application counts had gone unanswered. The same report quoted Councilman Tom Flight saying 313 “new records” were created in the department via the OpenGov system in January and 558 permits were issued, and builder Larry Kane saying that in the last couple of months, I think it's gone from dysfunctional to not functional. Treat review time as a scheduling variable you cannot compress and file as early as the scope allows.

What does an East Hampton building permit cost?
The Town of East Hampton does not publish a building permit fee schedule that we could retrieve as of July 2026, so we do not print a figure. What the Town does publish is the payment method and its surcharges: no payments accepted at the counter, credit card at 2.99% plus $0.99, e-check at a $2.25 flat fee. Call the Building Department at 631-324-4145 for the current amount before you budget. A contractor quoting you an East Hampton permit fee from a neighbouring town's schedule is guessing.

Do I need a certificate of occupancy after a kitchen or bathroom renovation in East Hampton?
Town of East Hampton Code § 102-14B provides that an altered building may not be occupied for more than 30 days after the completion of the alteration or work unless a certificate of occupancy shall have been issued. That is a short clock measured from completion rather than from the permit date, and it is the provision that most often surfaces later during a sale or a refinance. Ask the Building Department at 631-324-4145 what the closeout package requires for your permit before your final inspection.