Yakima County, WA Home Business: Zoning & Home Occupation Permits (2026)

18's home business section splits businesses into two tiers. Minor home businesses cover service-character work such as a one-chair beauty salon, one-table licensed massage therapy, catering, or mail-order sales, and must be run only by family members living in the dwelling. Major home businesses can add small-scale retail, mail-order storage, and, outside Urban Growth Areas and the RT and RS zones, small-scale manufacturing, assembly, or repair; the Reviewing Official can authorize up to two non-resident employees to help run a major operation. Both tiers must stay inside the house: a minor home business is confined to the dwelling unit and/or attached garage, and the floor area devoted to it cannot exceed 30% of the home and garage.

A major home business can also use a detached garage or accessory structure, but the 30% cap still applies to the combined floor area, and any accessory structure has to stay visually secondary to the main house. Minor home businesses limited to home-office work, such as an accountant, tax preparer, or business administrator, skip Type 1 Review entirely if they meet the standards in subsection (2); every other home business needs that review before it opens. Outdoor storage, displayed goods, and outward commercial appearance are barred outright, with narrow exceptions for one commercial vehicle at a minor home business or one commercial vehicle plus employee parking at a major one.

Subsection (4) then names more than 20 uses that can never qualify as a home business regardless of size, including kennels and veterinary clinics, motor vehicle or boat repair and body shops, towing services, restaurants and taverns, and boarding houses; a further list bars cabinet-making, machine shops, upholstering, and gun sales inside Urban Growth Areas, RT, and RS zones. Approval runs with the applicant, not the property, so a change of ownership triggers a new review.