Stanislaus County, CA Building Setbacks & Zoning: Lot Coverage Limits (2026)

County Code § 21.24.070, "Lot coverage," sets the building footprint ceiling for the R-A district: "For aggregate building coverage, maximum of forty percent of lot area except as allowed in Section 21.24.100 of this chapter." The forty percent figure covers the combined footprint of the house, garage, barns, shops and any other buildings on the parcel, not just the primary residence, and works together with the district's other bulk limits in Chapter 21.24: a thirty-five-foot height cap (§ 21.24.040), building site areas running from eight thousand square feet on public sewer and water up to three acres in estate-residential areas (§ 21.24.060), and required yards of forty to seventy feet along the front and five feet on interior side lines (§ 21.24.080).

The statutory exception points to § 21.24.100, the county's HOME Act provision, which allows different building-site-area and coverage outcomes for parcels located wholly within a Census Bureau-designated urbanized area or urban cluster, reflecting the state-mandated allowances for accessory and multi-unit housing that California's HOME Act requires local codes to accommodate. Outside that carve-out, the forty percent cap is the operative ceiling for any unincorporated R-A parcel, whether on a large estate-residential lot or a smaller sewered lot near a city edge. The section was adopted by Ord. CS 106 § 3 (1984) and was last carried forward by Ord. CS 1408, effective December 9, 2025.