Cave Creek Residential Zoning and Setbacks: Desert Rural Lots and Where the House Goes

Cave Creek protects its desert character with deep yards, so the setback, the open distance your home must keep from each property line, is larger here than in most Phoenix-area cities. The town's main residential zones are the Desert Rural (DR) districts, named for their minimum lot size in square feet. A DR-190 lot is over four acres; even the smallest DR district sits on nearly an acre. Those big lots come with big setbacks and tight lot-coverage limits.

What the districts require

Cave Creek's Chapter 2 sets the bulk regulations for each residential zone. The Desert Rural zones share a 25 foot, two-story height limit, but their yards and coverage step down as lots get smaller:

• DR-190 / DR-89 / DR-70: front and rear yard 60 ft, side yard 30 ft, maximum lot coverage 10%.
• DR-43: front and rear yard 40 ft, side yard 20 ft, maximum lot coverage 15%.
• R-35 (Single Residence): 35,000 sq ft lot, front and rear yard 40 ft, side yard 20 ft, lot coverage 20%.
• R-18 (Single Residence): 18,000 sq ft lot, front and rear yard 30 ft, interior side 10 ft, street side 20 ft, lot coverage 25%.

The town measures building height to the true high point, not an average:

The maximum building height is the calculated distance from original natural grade to the highest point on the roof through any section.

That wording matters on Cave Creek's sloped desert lots, where a tall roof over a low spot still counts against the 25 foot limit.

When setbacks come into play

Setbacks and coverage drive the site plan before you draw the house:

• Build-on-your-lot. For example, on a DR-43 acre, the 40 foot front and rear plus 20 foot sides carve a sizable border out of the parcel, and the 15% coverage cap limits the house-plus-garage footprint. The lot coverage limit and the setbacks are separate tests, and the house has to pass both.
• Total land disturbance. Cave Creek also caps how much of the lot you may disturb, counting driveways, septic, and graded areas on top of the building footprint. In DR-43 that is 15% coverage plus 60% disturbance, for 75% total.
• Hillside lots. Parcels in a designated hillside area face stricter disturbance limits, so the buildable pad can shrink further.

A setback miss on the site plan is a common reason a Cave Creek plan gets kicked back, so the town confirms each yard distance before the permit moves forward.

What this means for you

Confirm your DR or R district first, because a DR-70 front yard of 60 feet pushes the house far off the road, while an R-18 lot only needs 30 feet. Plan the footprint against the lot-coverage cap early, since 10% on a DR-190 lot is generous in raw square feet but still ties the house size to the parcel. Remember Cave Creek measures height from natural grade to the highest roof point, so a steep lot does not buy you extra height. We map the setbacks, coverage cap, and disturbance limit together on day one, because in Cave Creek the land rules, not just the floor plan, decide what fits.

This entry connects to the rest of the Cave Creek module. The codes your plans are reviewed against are in Cave Creek Adopted Building Codes , and the filing steps are in Cave Creek Residential Building Permit Requirements . For the full sequence, see the steps to building a custom home in Arizona .

Source

The district setbacks, height limit, and lot-coverage caps are published by the Town of Cave Creek in Chapter 2 of the Zoning Ordinance (Residential Zones), effective December 4, 2025 and amended by Ordinance O2025-13. Find the current Chapter 2 document on the town's Ordinances & Guidelines page . The town's zoning hub is at Cave Creek Planning & Zoning .

This page is general information, not a zoning determination. Setbacks, coverage, and disturbance rules change with hillside overlays and amendments, so confirm your lot's district and standards with Cave Creek Planning before you design.