Norman, OK Home Business: Zoning & Home Occupation Permits (2026)

NCC 36-564 treats home occupations as permitted accessory uses in residential districts, designed to keep the business clearly secondary to the home's residential character, cross-referenced to the district-use table at NCC 36-101. Every home occupation has to clear the same checklist to stay legal: it must be run solely by the resident occupants, with no employees on the payroll; it cannot take up more than one room or 25 percent of the gross floor area of one floor, whichever is smaller; it cannot run mechanical equipment or generate noise, dust, odor or electrical disturbance that reaches beyond the lot on which it sits; it cannot sell or display merchandise; and it cannot store anything outside tied to the business.

Because these standards define what counts as a home occupation in the first place, the code also flags certain uses as inherently unable to stay within those limits and bars them outright as home occupations, and it separately bars marijuana establishments from qualifying as a home occupation under any circumstance, regardless of size or hours. A home occupation that meets every one of these conditions is allowed by right in a residential district, with no separate zoning permit application beyond whatever building permit the underlying construction or change of use already requires under NCC 36-568.