Waco, TX Building Setbacks & Zoning: Setback Rules (2026)

Sec. 28-904(a) sets the master rule behind Waco's setbacks: all uses and structures must conform with the yard and open-space requirements of the district in which they're located, and each of the city's roughly two dozen zoning districts, R-E, R-1A, R-1B, R-1C, the R-2 and R-3 series, O, C and M districts, carries its own yard section, such as Sec. 28-276 for R-E or Sec. 28-301 for R-1A. R-E, the lowest-density 'semirural' district, carries the largest minimums under Sec. 28-276: a single-family dwelling needs at least a 35-foot front yard, two 25-foot side yards, and a 50-foot rear yard; any other permitted use needs a 50-foot front yard with the same 25-foot sides and 50-foot rear; and uses allowed by special permit revert to the single-family numbers, subject to Sec.

28-130(b), which lets the city council increase a lot or yard size as a condition of granting the permit. Sec. 28-904 fills gaps the district-specific sections don't cover: on corner lots in R and O districts, a 15-foot side-street yard is generally required, reduced proportionally for narrow lots of record under 75 feet wide; buildable width on a corner lot in an R or O district can't drop below 30 feet for a principal structure or 22 feet for an accessory structure; and where an existing block frontage already has buildings set closer to or farther from the street than a new project's district minimum, subsection (j) supplies an averaging or line-matching formula instead of enforcing the district's flat number. Required yards must sit on the same lot as the structure they serve and cannot be shared to satisfy two structures at once.