Getting listed

What a National Register nomination costs and how long it takes

John HarrisonUpdated October 2026

There is no government fee to nominate a property to the National Register. The costs are the work: research, writing, photography and maps, which you can do yourself or pay a consultant to do. Published figures from state offices and preparers run from a few thousand dollars for a simple house to considerably more for a district, and the process typically takes about a year.

Everything below is as of October 2026. Where a number appears, it comes from the office or firm named; state offices generally refuse to quote prices, and we have not invented any.

What is free

The National Park Service, which keeps the Register, says plainly on its FAQ page that the National Register will never ask for money or fees, and it warns of a scam letter telling owners they must pay to remain listed. The state offices we reviewed (New York, North Carolina, Virginia, Texas, Georgia, California) describe no filing fee for a nomination. SHPO staff review, the state review board meeting and the federal review are all free to the applicant.

What costs money

Consultant fees. This is the main expense if you do not write the nomination yourself. State offices will not price it for you. North Carolina’s office says staff cannot quote fees, that fees vary with the consultant and the complexity of the nomination, and that an owner can expect to pay a professional historian, architectural historian or archaeologist for the equivalent of 40 to 80 hours of time. Ohio’s guidance says to expect a consultant to cost what you would pay other professionals for an equivalent amount of time.

One published price list, from the Blue Grass Trust for Historic Preservation in Fayette County, Kentucky, gives a sense of scale: an eligibility assessment billed at 75 to 125 dollars an hour depending on distance, a full nomination at 6,000 to 8,000 dollars for a residential or nonprofit property and 8,000 to 10,000 dollars for an income-producing one, and a 2,000 dollar charge for the final listing submission. That is one organization’s rate card in one market, not a national benchmark. Oklahoma’s SHPO, announcing a small grant program in February 2023, used 3,500 dollars as its working estimate for a consultant-prepared nomination and warned that the real fee could exceed the required 1,400 dollar match.

Photography. The NPS photo policy requires TIFF images of at least two megapixels, named and logged in a set format. A capable phone or camera is enough, so the cost is mostly time, unless you hire a photographer for a large district.

Research. Deed searches, newspaper archives, Sanborn maps and historic photographs are mostly free at county offices and libraries, but copies, travel and database subscriptions add up. For a Criterion B nomination, tracing a person’s productive years can take longer than describing the building.

Maps. A USGS quadrangle and, for districts, a sketch map keyed to the photographs. California now requires digital maps in decimal degrees. Drawing an accurate district map with every parcel classified is a real cost item.

Presentation and travel. Georgia expects the sponsor to give a 10-to-15-minute presentation at the review board. Texas and New York welcome owners at the meeting but do not require attendance.

How long each stage takes

Timelines are driven by two fixed things, the owner-notification window and the board calendar, plus one variable, how long the writing and revisions take.

End to end, North Carolina’s FAQ says about a year from first draft to listing. New York says a year or two, longer for complex projects. Georgia’s page says the final step can take 18 to 24 months, though staff generally finish in under a year. The NPS’s own page says the state stage typically takes a minimum of 90 days.

Two scheduling points save time. First, missing a board deadline costs you a whole cycle: in Georgia, with two meetings a year, that can mean six months. Second, Texas’s office notes that staff cannot set aside one nomination to work on another that arrived after the deadline, so a late draft does not jump the queue.

Why districts are different

A single-property nomination describes one building and notifies one owner. A district nomination has to:

• draw a defensible boundary and justify it;
• inventory every resource inside it and classify each as contributing or non-contributing, with a sketch map keyed to the photographs;
• write a history of the whole area rather than one building;
• notify every private owner in the 30-to-75-day window (or publish a newspaper notice where there are more than 50), and track objections, because a majority of owners objecting stops the listing.

The scale varies enormously. The Lake George Avenue Historic District in Ticonderoga, New York, covers about three acres with 20 contributing and 5 non-contributing buildings. The Cragsmoor Historic District in Ulster County runs to about 362 acres with 210 contributing and 63 non-contributing resources. The Boydton Historic District in Virginia takes in a county seat’s courthouse square, commercial blocks and surrounding houses. Each of those required a full inventory, and the larger ones required public meetings as well as mail.

Because of that workload, North Carolina’s office requires that district nominations be prepared by a preservation professional, and California asks district sponsors to contact its staff before submitting anything. Nationally, 18,565 of the 100,866 listings in the NPS’s current list are districts, so this is a common path, but it is rarely a do-it-yourself one.

Doing it yourself versus hiring

Bulletin 16A says anyone may prepare a nomination, and many owners do. New York’s office says hiring a good consultant can expedite the process and that staff cannot make major revisions for you; North Carolina’s says it will not forward substandard nominations. The honest trade-off: writing it yourself saves the fee and costs calendar time, and a weak draft can cost a board cycle or two. Our guide to hiring a nomination consultant covers how to choose one, and how to nominate a property walks through the steps if you go it alone.

Paying for it

A few sources of help exist. Some SHPOs pass through federal Historic Preservation Fund money as small nomination grants; Oklahoma’s 2023 round capped grants at 2,100 dollars with a 1,400 dollar nonfederal match and required grantees to hire a qualified consultant through a competitive selection. Certified Local Governments sometimes fund district nominations. Owners of income-producing buildings often treat the nomination as the first step toward the federal rehabilitation tax credit, which can dwarf the nomination cost. Ask your SHPO what is available this year; the list changes, and the National Register program itself does not make grants. If you are not sure whether the property is already listed, check the address lookup first; a contributing building in a listed district already has the status a nomination would give it.

General information, not legal or tax advice. Researched from the sources above and drafted with AI assistance; published under the editor's name, corrections welcome. See the editorial policy.