Here is the short answer: yes. Garages are the most consistently permitted backyard project there is, attached garages everywhere and detached ones nearly everywhere, and the application gets the strictest site-plan review of any project we draw. If a shed plan gets a glance, a garage plan gets a ruler.
Why garages get the strictest review
A garage concentrates everything a reviewer is paid to worry about: a large footprint on a permanent slab, vehicles and fuel, usually electrical service, and often a new connection to the street. The garage permit guide covers when permits apply state by state, and the answer is almost always. What the site plan settles is the zoning half of the review, and for garages that half has more checks than any other backyard structure:
- Setbacks from the garage walls to the side and rear property lines, measured against your zone's accessory-structure numbers
- Separation from the house: build within about 3 feet of the home or a lot line and the code starts requiring fire-rated walls, so the reviewer measures this gap first
- Footprint and placement, to scale, with square footage, since height and framing belong on the building plans while the site plan proves the location
- Driveway and access: a new or widened driveway or curb cut often needs its own approval, and the reviewer looks for it on this drawing
- Lot coverage with the new garage included, plus easements the structure must stay out of
Miss any of these and the application does not fail, it stalls, which for most people is worse: a correction notice, a revision, and another trip through the queue.
The correction notice garages actually get
The most instructive garage correction we have handled is one of the three real cases in our approval-rate breakdown: a detached garage in a Columbus, Ohio suburb, flagged because the plan needed labeled distances from the garage to the side and rear lines, and because a 7.5 foot utility easement ran along the rear lot line on the recorded plat. Nothing about the garage itself was wrong. The drawing just had to show the setback dimensions and the easement, and it was accepted on resubmission with no further comments.
That is the pattern with garages: corrections are about what the drawing shows, not what you are building. Easements of record are the sharpest version of it, because they exist on paper at the county and nowhere visible in your yard.
Attached and detached read differently
A detached garage is reviewed like a serious accessory structure, and the site plan is the centerpiece: placement, setbacks, separation, coverage, access. An attached garage rides inside a fuller plan set, with fire separation and structure on the building plans, but the site plan still opens the review by showing where the addition sits, what it does to your setbacks and coverage, and how cars reach it. Either way, there is no garage application without one.
Getting the drawing
The drafted route: garage site plans run $89 to $259, delivered in 24 to 48 hours, drawn to scale from county GIS records and satellite imagery with the setbacks dimensioned from the garage corners, the house separation measured, the driveway shown, and easements of record included, plus free revisions until your department accepts it.
Drawing it yourself is possible if your city accepts hand-drawn plans, but be aware that garages are the hardest DIY candidate of the five common projects, simply because the reviewer checks more things on this drawing than on any other. If you take that path, work through the six-step walkthrough and gate it with the Pre-Submission Checklist before it goes to the counter, and pull your subdivision plat so recorded easements make it onto the page.
Before you submit
Ask your building department about the local extras garages attract: alley-access rules, corner-lot driveway restrictions, and height limits for accessory structures in your zone. Your state's page in the garage permit guide lists the big ones. For the drawing side, the complete guide to site plans for permits covers every element above in more depth.