The Owner-Builder Opt-Out: What It Lets You Skip, and What It Does Not

Arizona gives counties the option to exempt rural or unclassified zoned areas from the building code they adopt. Cochise County has taken that option, and the result is the Owner-Builder Amendment — a route to building your own home on rural land with limited inspections, or with no plan review and no building inspections at all.

It is real, it is genuinely unusual by national standards, and it is one of the main reasons people move here to build. It is also more constrained than the internet suggests, and the constraints are the part worth reading carefully.

Where the authority comes from

Two separate pieces, and they are often conflated.

The county code exemption comes from A.R.S. § 11-861(A), which lets a board of supervisors authorise that areas zoned rural or unclassified may be exempt from the building code it adopts. Cochise County exercised that through a local amendment. This is a county program under state authority — not a statewide right.

The contractor licensing exemption is A.R.S. § 32-1121(A)(5), which lets an owner build on their own property without a contractor's licence, provided the structure is intended for occupancy solely by the owner and not for sale or rent.

That second one has a clause with real teeth. Proof of sale, rent, or offering for sale or rent within one year after completion or issuance of a certificate of occupancy is prima facie evidence that the project was undertaken for the purpose of sale or rent. Which is to say: build it and flip it inside twelve months and the burden is on you.

The two options

The amendment offers a choice:

1. Full construction plan review, with limited inspections only — mechanical, electrical, plumbing and fire prevention.
2. No plan review and no building inspections at all.

Option 1 produces a conditioned Certificate of Occupancy, which confirms that minimum life-safety elements were reviewed but explicitly does not certify full code compliance. Option 2 does not produce one.

That distinction matters more later than it does during construction — see the resale section below.

Who is eligible, and this is where people fall out

This is the single most consequential thing on this page for anyone shopping for land, because a great deal of the cheapest land in this county fails it.

Roughly 90 percent of unincorporated Cochise County is zoned Rural, in districts from RU-36 down to RU-2. But the platted 1960s and 1970s subdivision lots around Sunsites and Pearce are frequently one to two acres — listing data for the Arizona Sun Sites tracts shows an average parcel size around 1.4 acres.

A 1.4-acre lot is below the four-acre floor. If your plan was to buy a cheap lot and build without inspections, check the zoning district and the acreage before you buy, not after. This is not a thing you can appeal your way out of.

Five-year limit. An individual owner-builder can use the program once every five years across all their property in unincorporated Cochise County. It does not apply to accessory structures or additions on the same property.

The affidavit. You affirm that the property is intended for your sole occupancy and will not be offered for sale or rent within one year of completion, per the statute above.

What it does not waive — read this list twice

The amendment is specific that the exemptions do not waive state or county building codes, fire-district codes and regulations regarding smoke detectors, or health regulations regarding wastewater treatment systems. In practice:

• Zoning still applies in full. Setbacks, use, density, height. All of it.
• Floodplain approvals still apply. If any part of your parcel is in a designated floodplain, a Floodplain Use Permit is required for man-made changes to the property — including grading and fill, and required even where no building permit is needed.
• Septic permits and inspections still apply. Soil and site evaluation by a certified evaluator, permit, inspection. No exemption whatsoever. And a composting toilet does not get you out of it — kitchen drain water is not classed as greywater in Arizona, so you need a system regardless.
• Well permitting still applies. Notice of Intention to Drill with ADWR, licensed driller, construction standards, completion report, county setback verification on parcels of five acres or less.
• Statewide plumbing and fire-safety provisions still apply, including smoke detectors.
• Right-of-way permits still apply for driveway access and culverts off a county road.
• A final inspection is required under all options. This surprises people who read "no inspections" and stopped there.

So the accurate summary is not "build without permits." It is: the structural plan review and structural inspections can be waived; nothing about water, waste, access, zoning, flood or fire is waived.

It gets recorded against your property

The amendment requires that a notice that a permit has been issued is recorded with the County Recorder by the Planning Department.

That is deliberate and it is fair — a future buyer is entitled to know that a house was built without full plan review. But understand what it means for you: the fact that you used the opt-out is a matter of public record attached to the property, permanently.

The resale and financing question

This is the consequence people most often think about too late.

A conventional mortgage lender wants a home built to code with the documentation to show it. A house built under Option 2 — no plan review, no inspections, no certificate of occupancy — is a harder financing proposition, which narrows your buyer pool to cash buyers or specialty lenders. A house built under Option 1 at least has a conditioned Certificate of Occupancy, which is not full code certification but is considerably better than nothing.

Insurance is the same story in a smaller way.

If you genuinely intend to live in what you build for twenty years, this may not weigh much. If there is any chance you sell inside ten, Option 1 is worth the extra process. The gap between the two options is small during construction and large at closing.

Codes changed in 2026

Worth knowing if you are planning now: the Cochise County Board of Supervisors adopted the 2024 IBC, 2024 IRC, 2023 NEC and 2024 International Swimming Pool and Spa Code, retaining the 2012 IECC, effective 1 September 2026 — replacing the previously adopted 2015-era codes.

A significant amount of material on the county website and across the internet still describes the older codes. If you are reading a checklist, check its date. And if your project straddles the changeover, ask Development Services which code your submission falls under.

What this means for the site work

Here is the part that is our end of it, and it is the part the opt-out changes least.

Waiving structural inspections does not waive physics. The pad still has to be compacted properly or the foundation cracks. Drainage still has to move water away from the building, and 57 percent of the year's rain still arrives between July and September. The septic still has to pass a soil evaluation, which means the caliche depth still matters. The driveway still has to carry a concrete truck.

If anything the opt-out raises the stakes on the ground work, because there is no inspector who will catch a bad pad before you build on it. The people who do well with this program are the ones who spend the money they saved on inspections doing the earthworks properly.

Verify the current terms

This article describes the program as published by the county. Fees, forms and administrative requirements change, and the amendment's own documentation is not always current on every page of the county website. Before you commit to a plan built around the opt-out, call Development Services on 520-432-9300 and get the current requirements from the people who administer it.

That call is free. Discovering after closing that your parcel is one acre short is not.