At least a decade ago I came across a brief mention in an article on homebuilding, of an owner-builder opt-out. This opt-out allowed you to build a house, if you intended to live in it yourself, and skip inspections. You were still required to follow the current building code, but if you wanted to build using alternative methods like straw bale, earth bag, adobe, etc., you could adapt the building code to make sense with what you were building. As long as you built as good as, or better than the existing code, the idea was that it would be fine. And since you were building the house for your own use, there was no need for the state to step in and require inspections to protect future buyers, from what could be your shoddy, un-inspected work.
As a fifth-generation Californian, I started the search for areas in my home state that allowed that type of permit. Over time I found that it was usually known as a Class K permit in California, and was exceptionally rare. Finding any information was difficult—very few counties had their code online during that time period. Additionally, the counties that did offer the Opt-Out didn’t publicize it —they offered it as a way to make land in remote areas that would otherwise be unusable, be useful, but they didn’t want to encourage the use of the permit, unless it was nearly impossible to build without it. And finally, the people in the areas where it was offered either didn’t know about it, or if they did know about it they typically had a strong desire to lie low, and hope no one noticed that it existed, because of the threat that the option might be revoked if too many people were aware of it. To most people, something seems sketchy about allowing a home to be built without requiring any inspections.
It took years for me to find obscure references to the different versions of the option, online, and figure out where it was possible in California. It was mostly available in areas so remote that there was a risk of getting snowed in for months at a time. I knew it was available in other states, but I wanted to stay in California, so I kept looking and hoping—but in 2019 I decided to expand my search to Arizona and New Mexico, and almost immediately I found Cochise County.
Cochise County offers two things that are rare—first, they offer the owner-builder opt-out and second, the minimum square footage required for any dwelling (built with full permits or with the opt-out), is only 296 square feet. It’s exceedingly rare for a county to allow you to build a house that tiny, on its own lot, as a fully permitted and legal single family residence.
To qualify for the opt-out permit, Cochise County requires that the lot be zoned RU4, and be at least four acres. Owner-builders are not exempt “from state, county building codes, or fire-district adopted fire codes and regulations regarding smoke detectors, nor does it exempt owner-builders from health regulations regarding wastewater treatment systems.” As the county explains, the owner-builder opt-out amendment “is intended to encourage the use of ingenuity and personal preferences of the owner-builder in allowing and facilitating the use of alternative building materials and methods.” (https://www.cochise.az.gov/212/Owner-Builder Amendment)
There are two mechanisms meant to keep the opt-out reserved only for owner-builders who truly intend to build a home they will live in. First, if the home is rented or sold within a year after building, the county will take that as prima facie evidence that the owner’s intention was to build for profit, and not for personal use. There is no mention online of what would happen if the county decided that was the case. Would the county impose a fine? Require the fees for a traditional permit be paid? Require extra insurance? Mandate that the house be inspected and force the owner to make any changes necessary to meet current building code? It’s not clear what would happen if the county decided the home was built for profit—but it is abundantly clear that is not the intended purpose of the opt-out permit.
The second mechanism the county has in place to make sure the opt-out is used appropriately is that you are only allowed to apply for the permit, once every five years, and you can’t use it for a second house or guest house on the same piece of property—you must be starting over on a new piece of land, building a new home for your own use, in order to qualify.
There is a Facebook group with 1.7K members who either are building with the opt-out, or plan to–in a county with only 125K people. And most of that activity has happened in the last five years. It’s a popular option, and people move from all areas of the country because they want to build using alternative methods, and it’s just easier in this state and county.
Every couple of years though the owner-builder opt-out option is threatened, and the county has meetings, and the supervisors discuss it, and the public weighs in, and eventually they decide it does more to help, than to harm, and so they leave it as is—but everyone who hopes to build with it holds their breath for a while, while that process works itself out.
A recent interesting twist is that in December of 2023, a new bill, HB 2096 was introduced in the Arizona House of Representatives, with the stated purpose of making it easier to build residences in rural areas across the entire state, and to encourage affordability. To accomplish that the bill would eliminate building permits for single family homes on rural land, if the proposed home is less than 600 square feet and a single story.
Arizona, like every other state, has its share of overly-idealistic people in the House of Representatives, who introduce bills with very little chance of passing, and I’m not sure if this particular bill falls into that category or not? Doing away with building permits, and instead requiring an affidavit, stating you are building without the intent to sell or rent the home, is definitely extreme. That said, in most places the owner-builder opt-out sounds like a crazy idea, and it is working just fine in Cochise County, so maybe it’s not an outrageous idea to extend some of the benefits of the opt-out to other rural areas across the entire state of Arizona? (https://www.azleg.gov/legtext/56leg/2r/bills/hb2096p.htm)
According to the Arizona House of Representatives site, HB2096 is still making its way through the system, with the latest update only a few days ago. So it’s still active, and if it’s eventually passed, it could end up being the start of a new way to build homes in the state of Arizona. (https://apps.azleg.gov/BillStatus/BillOverview/79876)
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