Mesa Residential Zoning and Setbacks: Where Your New Home Can Sit on the Lot

Before you draw a floor plan in Mesa, find your zoning district, because the district sets how far the house must sit from each property line. That open distance is called a setback, and it is the rule that decides where the house can go on the lot. Mesa names its single-dwelling districts RS, from RS-6 (6,000 square feet) up to RS-90 (90,000 square feet), and one table, Table 11-5-3.A.1, carries the yards for all of them.

What the districts require

Mesa's Section 11-5-3 sets the development standards for the RS districts. Every RS district caps building height at 30 feet, but the yards and coverage change as lots get bigger. The front setback below is for enclosed living space; attached garages sit farther back. Here are the published numbers:

• RS-6: 6,000 sq ft min lot, front 10 ft, interior side 5 ft each (15 ft for both), rear 20 ft, height 30 ft, lot coverage 60%.
• RS-7: 7,000 sq ft min lot, front 10 ft, interior side 5 ft each (15 ft for both), rear 20 ft, height 30 ft, lot coverage 60%.
• RS-9: 9,000 sq ft min lot, front 15 ft, interior side 7 ft each (17 ft for both), rear 25 ft, height 30 ft, lot coverage 60%.
• RS-15: 15,000 sq ft min lot, front 22 ft, interior side 7 ft each (20 ft for both), rear 30 ft, height 30 ft, lot coverage 50%.
• RS-35: 35,000 sq ft min lot, front 22 ft, interior side 10 ft each (30 ft for both), rear 30 ft, height 30 ft, lot coverage 50%.
• RS-43: 43,560 sq ft min lot, front 22 ft, interior side 10 ft each (30 ft for both), rear 30 ft, height 30 ft, lot coverage 40%.
• RS-90: 90,000 sq ft min lot, front 22 ft, interior side 20 ft each (40 ft for both), rear 30 ft, height 30 ft, lot coverage 40%.

Mesa sets the garage farther from the street than the house itself:

Garages and Carports - front and side yards: 30 [feet for RS-90 through RS-15].

So on an RS-15 lot your front porch can sit 22 feet back while the garage door must sit 30 feet back, which is the rule that keeps a garage from dominating the street. On the smaller RS-7 and RS-6 lots that garage setback drops to 20 feet.

When setbacks come into play

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

• Build-on-your-lot. For example, on an RS-43 acre lot, the 22 foot front, 30 foot rear, and 10 foot sides carve a border out of the parcel, and the 40% coverage cap limits the house-plus-garage footprint. The lot coverage cap and the setbacks are separate tests, and the house has to pass both.
• Interior side, two ways. Mesa sets both a per-side minimum and a combined minimum. On RS-90 that is 20 feet on each side and 40 feet total, so you cannot bank both into one wide side yard.
• Rear yard against an arterial. A rear yard backing an arterial street must be at least 30 feet deep, which can push the house forward on a through lot.

A setback miss on the site plan is a common reason a Mesa plan gets corrected at review, so the city confirms each yard distance before the permit issues.

What this means for you

Confirm your exact RS district before you buy or design, because the jump from RS-6 to RS-90 changes the front yard from 10 feet to 22 feet and the sides from 5 feet to 20 feet. Watch lot coverage alongside the yards, since RS-6 allows up to 60% coverage while RS-43 and RS-90 allow only 40%, which caps the house size on a big lot. Mesa holds the height to 30 feet across every RS district, so your roofline is capped the same whether you build on a small lot or an acre. We run the setbacks, the garage setback, and the coverage cap on the first day of a Mesa project, because they decide whether a floor plan fits or has to change.

This entry pairs with the rest of the Mesa module. The codes your plans are checked against are in Mesa Adopted Building Codes , and the filing steps are in Mesa Residential Building Permit Requirements . For the full build sequence, see the steps to building a custom home in Arizona .

Source

The per-district lot sizes, setbacks, the 30 foot height limit, and coverage caps are published by the City of Mesa in Table 11-5-3 of the Zoning Ordinance: view the RS district standards on municode.com . The city's code hub is at Mesa Development Codes, Ordinances, Regulations and Standards .

This page is general information, not a zoning determination. Setbacks and coverage change with overlays, the RSL small-lot standards, and amendments, so confirm your lot's district and standards with Mesa Development Services before you design.