Quick answer
Fences can usually be built directly on the property line in rear and side yards. Almost everything else needs a setback: sheds commonly 3 to 10 feet from side and rear lines, decks 3 to 10 feet on the sides and 5 to 25 feet at the rear, detached garages 3 to 5 feet, and patio covers the same distances as your house. Front yards are the strictest everywhere. Your city's zoning code sets the exact numbers, and they apply even when no building permit is required.
Every fence, shed, and deck project eventually runs into the same question: how close to the neighbor's line can this actually go? The size thresholds get all the attention, but setbacks are the half of the rules that never goes away. A project can be fully exempt from a building permit and still be ordered moved because it sits 2 feet from a line where zoning requires 5.
That is because setbacks come from zoning, not from the building code. A building permit checks how you build. Zoning checks where. The permit exemption for a small shed or a low deck waives the first review, never the second. Keep that distinction in mind for everything below.
The typical setbacks, project by project
These are the common bands across US cities, not your city's exact numbers. Every one of them is set locally, and the project guides linked here break the rules down state by state.
| Project | Typical side and rear setback | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| Fence | Often none, the line itself is allowed | Height limits drop to 3 to 4 feet in front yards |
| Shed | 3 to 10 feet | Many cities allow sheds in rear yards only |
| Deck | 3 to 10 feet side, 5 to 25 feet rear | Attached decks can inherit the house's larger setbacks |
| Garage | 3 to 5 feet for detached | Attached garages follow the house: 5 to 15 feet side, 20 to 40 feet rear |
| Patio | Minimal while uncovered and at grade | Add a cover and it follows building setbacks, commonly 5 to 10 feet side |
Front yards are their own category. Houses typically sit 10 to 35 feet back from the front line, and accessory structures usually cannot go in front of the house at all. Corner lots get the strictest treatment of everyone, because two sides of the lot count as front yards.
Property line fence rules
Fences are the one project that gets to touch the line, which is exactly why they generate the most disputes.
Most cities allow a rear or side yard fence directly on the property line. Even so, the standard advice from surveyors and fence contractors is to set it 2 to 8 inches inside your line. That small margin means the fence is unambiguously yours: no encroachment claim, no shared-ownership argument, and you can maintain both faces without standing in the neighbor's yard. Front yards are different, with setbacks from the sidewalk that range from 6 inches in Denver to 18 inches in Boulder and up to 3 feet in San Francisco.
Height is regulated by yard, not by fence type: the near-universal pattern is 3 to 4 feet in front yards and 6 feet in rear and side yards, with the exact caps in the national fence guide. On corner lots, the sight triangle rule keeps everything near the intersection below roughly 3 to 3.5 feet within 10 to 45 feet of the curb, so drivers can see.
Who pays for a boundary fence is state law, and the answers genuinely differ. California presumes neighbors split the cost of a shared boundary fence equally and requires 30 days' written notice before those costs are incurred. Colorado requires 50/50 sharing for partition fences. Ohio flipped the rule in 2008: the person who wants the fence pays, with a 30-year window to collect reimbursement if the neighbor later benefits from it. Texas and Florida impose no cost-sharing at all. If a shared fence is in your plans, have the conversation before the posts go in, in writing where your state expects it.
How far from the property line can you build a shed?
The most common side and rear setbacks for sheds run 3 to 10 feet. Sacramento County and Kettering, Ohio use 3 feet. Seattle requires 5 feet from side lot lines. On top of the distance, most cities restrict sheds to the rear yard, so the same shed that is legal behind the house may be a violation beside it.
Corner lots are the trap. Because both street-facing sides are treated as front yards, shed setbacks there often jump to 10 to 25 feet, which can rule out the spot you had in mind entirely. The shed permit guide covers the state-by-state picture, and the size side of the question, how big before a permit is required, lives in our size limits post.
Decks, garages, and patio covers
Decks typically need 3 to 10 feet from side lines and 5 to 25 feet from the rear. A freestanding deck in the middle of the yard rarely has a setback problem; one tucked into a corner of the lot almost always deserves a measurement before the footings go in. The deck permit guide has the state detail.
Garages split by attachment. A detached garage usually enjoys reduced setbacks of 3 to 5 feet from side and rear lines, and lots with alley access often get even friendlier rules, down to zero feet on the side in Denver's rear-lot alley zones. An attached garage is part of the house, so it follows the house's setbacks: commonly 20 to 35 feet in front, 5 to 15 feet on the sides, and 20 to 40 feet at the rear. Details in the garage permit guide.
Patios are the quiet one. Uncovered concrete or pavers at grade often have minimal setback requirements, as little as 18 inches in Bend, Oregon, and Sonoma, California exempts uncovered patios 6 inches or less above grade from setbacks entirely. Add a roof or cover and the structure typically inherits building setbacks, commonly 5 to 10 feet on the sides. Cities also cap impervious coverage, the share of your lot covered by hard surfaces, so a big patio can be limited by math even when the setbacks work. The patio permit guide explains both.
Corner lots and easements
Two situations catch people who measured everything else correctly.
Corner lots count two sides as front yards, which raises setbacks and adds the sight triangle rule near the intersection. If your lot has two street frontages, assume the friendly rear-yard numbers apply to only one or two sides of your property.
Easements are recorded strips of your lot, usually for utilities or drainage, where you cannot build even though you own the land. They do not show up by eyeballing the yard, only on the plat or a survey. They are also a leading cause of real-world rejections: of the three real correction notices we have published, two were easement problems, a garage placed over a 7.5 foot utility easement in Columbus and a fence crossing a drainage easement in Houston. Both stories, and how they were fixed, are in our approval rate breakdown. Corner, flag, and easement-heavy lots have their own guide in site plans for unusual lots.
What happens if you build too close
Caught on paper, a setback problem is cheap: the reviewer marks the site plan, you shift the structure a few feet in the drawing, and the application continues. That is the good version, and it is one of the quiet arguments for going through review even on borderline projects. What a correction notice looks like, and how to respond, is covered in what to do when your application is rejected.
Caught after construction, the options are all worse: apply for a variance from the zoning board, which is a slow process with no guaranteed approval, move the structure, or remove it. Cities find setback violations the unglamorous way, through neighbor complaints and aerial imagery comparisons, and a fence or shed dispute with the people next door is exactly how complaints start.
How to find your property line and prove your setbacks
The honest hierarchy, from free to definitive:
- Your deed and the recorded plat describe the legal boundary and any easements. Free, from your county recorder if you do not have copies.
- County GIS parcel maps show approximate lines over aerial imagery. Good for a first look, but GIS boundaries are not survey-accurate, and satellite tools like Google Maps cannot show legal property lines at all.
- Survey pins, iron rods at your lot corners, mark the real line if they have not been disturbed.
- A boundary survey ($300 to $800 for most residential lots) is the only answer that settles a dispute or safely supports building right at the line.
For the permit application itself, your city usually does not ask for a new survey. It asks for a site plan: your lot drawn to scale with the structure placed on it and the distances to every line written down. That drawing is where setbacks get proven, and it is the exact document we prepare. A permit-ready site plan drawn from county GIS records and satellite imagery starts at $89, arrives in 24 to 48 hours with free revisions until your building department accepts, and 98% are accepted on first submission. If your boundary is disputed or unrecorded, get the survey first, then send it to us and we draft the site plan on top of it.
If your structure sits comfortably far from every line and your city accepts hand-drawn plans, you can also draw the site plan yourself in an afternoon and run it against the Pre-Submission Checklist before it goes to the counter. The trade is the same as always: the afternoon is free, but a drawing with mismeasured setbacks is the most common way this particular topic turns into a correction notice.