Maricopa County Residential Zoning and Setbacks: Rural Lots and Where the House Sits

If your land sits in unincorporated Maricopa County, outside any city, the county is your zoning authority, and its rules decide how far the house must stand from each property line. That open distance is the setback. Most of this land carries Rural or single-family Residential zoning, named for the minimum lot size. Rural-43 (43,560 square feet, about one acre) is common in places like Rio Verde, while Rural-190 covers the largest lots. The bigger the district, the deeper the yards.

What the districts require

The county's Chapter 5 development-standards table sets the lot size, yards, height, and lot coverage for each district. The Rural and single-family zones share a 35 foot height limit:

• Rural-190: 190,000 sq ft lot, front and rear yard 60 ft, side yard 30 ft, lot coverage 10%.
• Rural-70: 70,000 sq ft lot, front and rear yard 60 ft, side yard 30 ft, lot coverage 15%.
• Rural-43: 43,560 sq ft lot, front and rear yard 40 ft, side yard 20 ft, lot coverage 25%.
• R1-35: 35,000 sq ft lot, front and rear yard 40 ft, side yard 20 ft, lot coverage 30%.
• R1-18: 18,000 sq ft lot, front yard 10 ft (no less than 18 ft to a front-facing garage), side yard 10 ft, rear yard 30 ft, lot coverage 35%.

The county footnotes the front yard on smaller lots:

10' minimum but no less than 18' to the plane of the front-facing garage.

So on an R1-18 lot the house can come within 10 feet of the front line, but a garage that faces the street has to sit back 18 feet, the same idea Casa Grande and the cities use to keep a parked car off the sidewalk.

When setbacks come into play

In rural Maricopa County, setbacks and lot coverage shape the build before design starts:

• Build-on-rural-land. For example, on a Rural-43 acre, the 40 foot front and rear plus 20 foot sides carve a wide border out of the parcel, and the 25% lot coverage cap limits the combined footprint of house, garage, and outbuildings. Both tests have to pass.
• Septic and wells. County site plans also show setbacks from the septic tank and disposal field to the house, the well, and washes, on top of the property-line setbacks. This is standard on rural lots without city sewer.
• Accessory buildings. Detached structures have their own, usually smaller, side and rear setbacks, so a shop or barn can sit closer to a side line than the main house.

A setback miss on the site plan is a common reason a rural plan gets corrected, so the county checks each yard before the permit issues.

What this means for you

Confirm your exact zoning district before you buy or design, because Rural-43 and Rural-70 sit on similar large lots but the front and rear yards differ by 20 feet. Plan the footprint against the lot-coverage cap early, since 25% on a Rural-43 acre still ties the buildable area to the parcel. Lay out septic, well, and structure setbacks together, because on rural land those distances interact and can move the house. We map the property-line yards, coverage cap, and septic setbacks on day one of a rural build, because together they decide where the house can go.

This entry pairs with the rest of the unincorporated-county module. For a Rio Verde build, start with what you need to build on rural land in Rio Verde, Arizona . The codes your plans are checked against are in Maricopa County Adopted Building Codes , the filing steps are in Maricopa County Residential Building Permit Requirements , and the on-site water and waste rules are in Maricopa County Septic and Well Requirements . For the full sequence, see the steps to building a custom home in Arizona .

Source

The district lot sizes, setbacks, height limit, and lot-coverage caps are published by Maricopa County in Chapter 5 of the Zoning Ordinance: View the Maricopa County Zoning Ordinance (PDF) on maricopa.gov . The county's zoning hub is at Maricopa County Zoning Ordinance .

This page is general information, not a zoning determination. Setbacks change with overlays, hillside rules, and ordinance amendments, so confirm your parcel's district and standards with Maricopa County Planning and Development before you design.