Rolling Texas Hill Country limestone hills with live oak motts, Ashe juniper, and a clear creek over white limestone cobble.
Bandera County Edition set by the jurisdiction

Barndominium Builders in Bandera County, TX

Bandera County is 791 square miles of limestone canyon between the Kerr County line and the edge of Bexar, and the Census puts 21,985 of its 22,876 people outside any city. That is the appeal and it is also the problem. Chapter 233 of the Local Government Code is the entire authority a Texas county holds over structures, and it carries no general building-code subchapter, so there is no county plan review of a house out here. What there is instead is a fifty-dollar Development Permit the septic application will not move without, a ten-acre minimum on any newly created lot served by a well, and ground that is limestone within a foot of the surface across roughly half the county. The order of operations is not the one a city buyer expects. Address first, then the Development Permit, then the site evaluation that decides whether the tract works at all.

Bandera County at a glance

County
Bandera County
Population
22,876
Where we build
Bandera, Kerr County, Bexar County, Gillespie County

ZIPs 78003, 78055, 78063, 78883, 78884, 78885

Site visits
Site walks booked county-wide, Bandera included
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Building conditions in Bandera County

What actually changes from one Texas jurisdiction to the next: who issues the permit, whether the residential code is enforced there at all, what the structure has to be engineered to, and what the ground is like. These are the numbers your drawings have to satisfy.

Build conditions for Bandera County , Texas . BUILD CONDITIONS BANDERA COUNTY, TXBandera CountyEDITION PER JURISDI…ADOPTED RESIDENTIAL CODEEDITION PER JURISDI…This jurisdiction publishes no design wind speed. It is settled in writing with the authority overyour parcel before the frame is ordered.ZONING ·10 acres on a private well, 5 acres…Texas counties have no general zoning power, and Local GovernmentCode Sec. 233.153(d)(2) confirms that even an opted-in county may…WHO ISSUES THE PERMITBandera County Engineer, Permits and…1212 Hackberry Street, Second Floor, P.O. Box 3275, Bandera, TX78003. County Engineer Dieter Werner, (830) 796-3175; the Permits…
Build conditions for Bandera County, drawn from the sourced facts on this page. Every figure above is cited in the quick-facts panel below, with its source and vintage.
A new lot on a well has to be ten acres
Article Eight of the county's subdivision regulations sets the minimum size of a subdivision lot served by an individual water well and an individual septic system at ten acres, with 200 feet of road frontage, and the ten acres must be held exclusive of any floodway crossing the lot. On a public water supply with a septic system it is five acres. The state floor is one acre on a well. The rule bites when a new lot is created, not on lots inside a plat already approved and recorded, which is why the older small tracts around Medina Lake, Lakehills and Pipe Creek exist at all.

Bandera County Subdivision and Land Development Regulations, Article Eight Sec. 8.1.1 to 8.1.3, adopted 21 April 2005 with revisions through 27 October 2022; and 30 TAC Sec. 285.4(a)(1)

The septic permit will not move without a Development Permit
Bandera County issues a Development Permit for new construction, and both of its septic applications list, under planning materials required, a Development Permit number carrying the County Engineer's signature. The residential permit is $50 and the commercial one is $400. The application must have a 911 address already assigned to proceed, and if it is issued for an RV and a permanent structure later replaces the RV, a new Development Permit is required. It is not a code review: no plans are examined against a building code and no county building inspector attends.

Bandera County Development Permit Application, revised 8 January 2025; Bandera County Single Family Residential OSSF Permit Application, effective 6 July 2022; and the Bandera County Regulatory and Permitting Fees schedule, revised February 2024

Limestone within a foot of the surface across half the county
The USDA soil survey of Bandera County maps 510,259 acres. The single largest map unit, at 98,950 acres, is Eckrant-Rock outcrop complex on 15 to 60 percent slopes, where the Eckrant soil meets lithic limestone at about 11 inches and nearly a third of the unit is bare rock. Add the two other Eckrant units and the Tarrant-Doss association and roughly half the county sits on soil whose dominant component meets bedrock within seven to eleven inches. Only about five percent of the county is the shrink-swell clay that drives foundation design in North and Central Texas.

USDA-NRCS Soil Data Access, soil survey area TX019 Bandera County, map unit acreage with component slope and depth to lithic bedrock, queried 1 September 2026

Ten acres buys you nothing on septic here
The belief that ten acres exempts a house from the septic rules is wrong statewide, and in Bandera County it is foreclosed in the county's own order. Its list of rules stricter than the state's runs to two items, and the first is that all on-site sewage facilities in Bandera County are required to be licensed by the Licensing Authority regardless of lot size or acreage. The second lets a seller or transferor apply for a re-inspection of an existing system before a sale.

Order Adopting Rules of Bandera County, Texas for On-Site Sewage Facilities, Sec. 10(a) and 10(b), passed and approved 14 June 2007

An undersized lot may never be slept in
Where a subdivision would produce a lot below the county's acreage minimums, Commissioners' Court may approve it only on the condition that the lot be used exclusively for commercial purposes, with a notice recorded so the restriction runs with the land and a restriction on the face of the plat. The order defines residential purposes in the broadest possible terms, reaching the act of lodging, sleeping, living, abiding or dwelling for a single night or more, inside or outside a structure of any type, regardless of whether there is or is not a charge for it. A house, a guest cabin and a short-term let are all foreclosed on such a lot.

Bandera County Subdivision and Land Development Regulations, Article Eight Sec. 8.1.5

Your well is registered, not permitted, if the acreage works
The Bandera County River Authority and Groundwater District requires every well in the county to be registered or permitted before drilling. A domestic or livestock well incapable of producing more than 25,000 gallons a day, on a tract with no existing working well, is exempt and merely registered, but the acreage test moves with the date the tract was platted: no lot size requirement before 1 September 2002, five acres or more from then to 31 August 2022, and ten acres or more on or after 1 September 2022. Anything else is permitted, at $1,500 against $500 for a registration.

Bandera County River Authority and Groundwater District, Well Permitting and Registration rules; and its FY 2025 Fee Schedule effective 23 October 2023

Also worth knowing before you build in Bandera County

The county and the groundwater district reached ten acres separately
Two different authorities under two different instruments arrived at the same number. The county's subdivision regulations require ten acres for a new lot served by a well and a septic system, and the groundwater district requires ten acres for a domestic well on a tract platted on or after 1 September 2022 to stay exempt from permitting. The county's regulations explain why: the State of Texas has declared Bandera County a Priority Groundwater Management Area, and the county records that it was the first county in Texas to exercise the authority granted to counties by Article 35.019 of the Texas Water Code.

Bandera County Subdivision and Land Development Regulations, Findings Sec. 1.1.1(l) and 1.1.1(m) and Article Eight Sec. 8.1.1; BCRAGD Well Permitting and Registration rules

Fractured rock changes which septic system is even allowed
There is no percolation test in Texas. Soil is classified by texture, and the county's own technical packet reprints the state criteria: a slope over 30 percent or a complex slope makes the area unsuitable for a standard subsurface absorption system, and so does a restrictive horizon within 24 inches below the bottom of the excavation. On fractured rock an absorptive drainfield on a septic tank is unsuitable outright; what the table allows is secondary treatment with disinfection and pressure distribution. That is why the county's fee schedule splits at $210 for a non-aerobic system and $400 for an aerobic one.

Bandera County OSSF Technical Information Packet reproducing 30 TAC Sec. 285.91(5) Table V and Sec. 285.91(13) Table XIII; Bandera County Regulatory and Permitting Fees, revised February 2024

No Water Pollution Abatement Plan on a Bandera tract
TCEQ's Edwards Aquifer Protection Program regulates the recharge, transition and contributing zones under Chapter 213 of Title 30, and its guidance on construction over the recharge zone names Williamson, Travis, Hays, Comal, Bexar, Medina, Uvalde and Kinney counties. Bandera is not among them. TCEQ's own Chapter 213 zone mapping places no recharge zone and no transition zone anywhere in the county, only a narrow band of contributing zone along the southern county line. Neighbouring Medina and Bexar carry all three, which is why the answer changes as you drive south.

TCEQ Edwards Aquifer Protection Program and RG-011; TCEQ Chapter 213 regulated zone mapping service, Public/EdwardsAquifer, intersected with the Census Bureau county boundary for FIPS 48019 on 1 September 2026

Floodplain rules exist where building codes do not
Bandera County adopted its Flood Damage Prevention Court Order on 9 April 2020, citing Section 16.315 of the Texas Water Code, and it applies to all areas of special flood hazard in the unincorporated county. It adopts the FEMA Flood Insurance Study for Bandera County revised 15 May 2020. New residential construction must have its lowest floor elevated to or above the base flood elevation, with no added freeboard, certified to the Floodplain Administrator by a registered professional engineer, architect or land surveyor. Inside a floodway, a no-rise letter sealed by a licensed professional engineer is required.

Bandera County Flood Damage Prevention Court Order, Articles 1, 3 and 5, adopted 9 April 2020; Bandera County Development Permit Application, revised 8 January 2025

The driveway culvert has a floor, and the road grade has a ceiling
The county's road standards allow no pipe smaller than 18 inches in diameter, or comparable flow, for a driveway crossing, with the size recommended by the County Engineer or designed by a professional engineer and a right of appeal to Commissioners' Court. Subdivision road grades must conform to the terrain and may not exceed six percent on an arterial or twelve percent on a collector or local road. Low water crossings, culverts and bridges are designed on a 25-year frequency by a registered professional engineer experienced in hydrology, signed and sealed.

Bandera County Subdivision and Land Development Regulations, Appendix B Road Standards Sec. 5.0, 6.0 and 7.0 and Table 4, road standards adopted 28 December 2000

A Bandera address is usually not the City of Bandera
The city's own permitting page states that its jurisdiction for permitting ends at the city limit line apart from sign permits, that Bandera addresses extend beyond the city limits into the county, and that anyone in the county but outside the city should contact the Bandera County Engineer's Office at (830) 460-8183. Inside the limits the city says it adopted the 2018 International Building Codes and the 2017 National Electric Code, amended in 2023, and requires every contractor to register with it. The city holds 891 of the county's 22,876 people.

City of Bandera permitting pages, banderatx.gov; U.S. Census Bureau sub-county population estimates sub-est2025

The address comes first and it is free
Rural Addressing asks for the GPS coordinates of the point where the driveway, existing or proposed, meets the road, plus the Property ID from the Bandera County Appraisal District and the legal description. There is no fee, and the address is emailed in roughly seven to ten business days. It must then be displayed in three-inch or larger reflective numbers, and Road and Bridge sells a sign for $22 one-sided or $25 two-sided. Nothing downstream moves until the address exists, because the Development Permit application requires one.

Bandera County Rural Addressing, Procedures for Requesting a New 911 Address; Bandera County Development Permit Application, revised 8 January 2025

Groundwater availability is certified before a plat is approved
If groundwater is to be the water supply for a subdivision, the county requires a certification of groundwater availability prepared by a Texas licensed professional engineer or licensed professional geoscientist. The county then delivers it to the Bandera County River Authority and Groundwater District for review and recommendations, and states that it relies on those recommendations before granting final plat approval. The plat itself moves in stages that must be heard at separate Commissioners' Court meetings, consecutive and not concurrent.

Bandera County Subdivision and Land Development Regulations, Article Four Sec. 4.1 to 4.2.5 and Article Three Sec. 3.1.4, with 30 TAC Ch. 230 and Local Government Code Sec. 232.0031

Climate zone 2B, and it does not depend on the edition
Bandera County is climate zone 2B on the pre-2021 map and on the 2021 and 2024 map alike, one of only fourteen Texas counties in that band, which runs along the middle Rio Grande and the western Hill Country. It is not one of the eight Texas counties whose assignment moved between editions, so the insulation target does not change with whichever code edition reaches the parcel.

DOE/PNNL-33270 climate zone assignments cross-checked against the published IRC county tables for the 2018 and 2024 editions

A licensed plumber is required even where nothing else is
The rural exemption in the Texas plumbing licence law expressly excludes plumbing performed in conjunction with new construction, so a licensed plumber is required on a new build even on land with no building permit and no inspector. Alongside it, a builder working outside the limits of any municipality must certify that the house complies with the state energy code and keep that certification for three years. Texas houses run on the energy chapter of the International Residential Code as it existed on 1 May 2015.

Texas Occupations Code Sec. 1301.052; Texas Health and Safety Code Secs. 388.003(a) and 388.004

An excavator grading a compacted building pad on a cleared lot, with survey stakes and a drainage swale visible.
Below the slab

The expensive surprises are in the ground, not the building

What moves a Texas budget is usually below grade, and it is soil rather than rock: shrink-swell clay. The Blackland Prairie and the Gulf Coast clays move enough between a wet season and a dry one to drive the foundation design across the state's largest markets, which is why several DFW cities require an engineer's seal on the foundation of every new house. Those are the same conditions that decide whether a septic field passes its soil and site evaluation, so the grading plan, the foundation and the drainfield get resolved together rather than one at a time. We price the dirt before we price the building.

What we build in Bandera County

All nine of our services — kits, custom plans, post-frame and steel construction, site preparation, permitting and engineering, through to turnkey builds — are available across Bandera County. What a project costs depends far more on the parcel than on square footage, so we work from your land rather than from a rate card.

See what we build

What a build looks like

Three stages every Bandera County project passes through, from a raw parcel to a finished home. Site work first, because that is where the budget is decided.

Aerial view of an undeveloped rural lot with cleared grass, a live oak and cedar elm treeline, and a pale gravel access track.
Stage one

The parcel

Zoning, setbacks, flood zone and utility access get checked before anything is drawn.

An excavator grading a compacted building pad on a cleared lot, with survey stakes and a drainage swale visible.
Stage two

Pad and permit

Clearing, grading and a compacted pad, while the submittal works through Bandera County.

A finished barndominium at dusk with warm interior lighting glowing through its large windows.
Stage three

Frame to finish

Shell erected and dried in, then systems, insulation and interior finish through to CO.

Those are the rules for Bandera County. Tell us what you want to build and we will draw it to them.

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Where we build around Bandera County

Bandera County and the rural land around it. The buildable acreage for a project this size usually sits outside the city limits, which is frequently what changes who issues your permit.

Our Bandera County service area, covering Bandera County and the surrounding rural acreage. This map marks the territory we serve, not a branch location.

Keep reading

The questions that usually come next once you know what Bandera County allows.

Barndominium Cost Guide

Sourced per-square-foot ranges by tier and by size, with a calculator built on the same figures.

Read it

Is It Legal in Texas?

Classification, zoning, the HOA gate, and why "nonresidential farm building" does not cover a home.

Read it

How Long Does It Take?

Census build-duration data, and what actually sets the permit clock where you are building.

Read it

Nearby areas we build in

Others we cover in this part of Texas. The permitting authority, the adopted design criteria and the zoning can all differ from one to the next.

Kerr County

Kerr County
Bexar County

Bexar County
Gillespie County

Gillespie County

Building in Bandera County: common questions

8 questions we get asked most often about building in Bandera County. If yours is not on the list, ask it directly.

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Do I need a building permit for a barndominium on unincorporated land in Bandera County?
Not a building permit in the sense a city means it. Chapter 233 of the Local Government Code is the whole of a Texas county's authority over structures and it holds no general building-code subchapter, so there is no county plan review of a house and no county building inspector. What the county does require is a Development Permit, $50 for a residence, which the septic application will not move without; a permit and inspection for the on-site sewage facility on any size tract; and floodplain approval where the tract is in a special flood hazard area. None of those examines the structure against a building code. Whether the Commissioners' Court has ever adopted an order under Chapter 233 Subchapter F is worth asking the County Engineer at (830) 796-3175 directly, because even if it has, that subchapter allows no county permit, no county fee and no county inspector: the builder contracts the three required inspections privately.
Bandera is supposed to be the cheap end of the Hill Country. Can I buy five acres and build?
It depends entirely on whether the five acres already exists as a recorded lot. If it does, the county's ten-acre minimum does not resize it, and thousands of older small tracts around Medina Lake, Lakehills and Pipe Creek fall that way. If you are asking someone to carve five acres out of a larger tract for you, the answer is no: Article Eight of the county's subdivision regulations sets ten acres as the minimum for a new lot served by a well and a septic system, five acres if there is a public water supply, and the acreage must be held clear of any floodway. Then check the plat date with the groundwater district, because a tract platted on or after 1 September 2022 needs ten acres for the well to stay exempt from permitting as well. Read the title commitment for recorded restrictions at any point, because in Texas those do the work zoning does elsewhere.
Will a septic system even work on a canyon lot?
That is the question that decides whether the tract is worth an offer, and it should be answered before the offer if you can manage it. There is no percolation test in Texas. A site evaluator or professional engineer classifies the soil by texture, and the state criteria the county reprints are unforgiving here: a slope over 30 percent or a complex slope makes the area unsuitable for a standard subsurface absorption system, and so does a restrictive horizon within 24 inches below the bottom of the excavation. Roughly half of Bandera County sits on soil that meets limestone within seven to eleven inches, and more than 40 percent of it lies in soil map units whose slopes run to 30 or even 60 percent. On fractured rock a conventional drainfield on a septic tank is unsuitable outright; the route that is allowed is secondary treatment with disinfection and pressure distribution. Budget for an aerobic system and a maintenance contract until a site evaluation tells you otherwise.
Does my shop bay make the septic system bigger?
On the county's order it should not, but do not draw a plan on that assumption without one phone call. The state sizes a single-family system off the number of bedrooms or the living area of the home, whichever gives the larger figure, and the county's own technical packet reprints that table with the heading naming living area of the home. Bandera's sewage order adopts Chapter 285 whole and lists the rules it makes stricter exhaustively, and neither of the two touches how the house is measured. But the county's residential application form asks for the number of bedrooms and total square footage rather than living area, and an authorised agent is entitled to be stricter than the state. Settle it with the Designated Representative at (830) 460-8183 before the drawings are done, because on a 4,000 square foot building the difference is a whole size band of drainfield.
Do I need a permit to drill a water well?
Probably not a permit, but you do need a registration, and the difference turns on acreage and on when your tract was platted. Every well in Bandera County must be registered or permitted with the Bandera County River Authority and Groundwater District before drilling. A domestic or livestock well that cannot produce more than 25,000 gallons a day, on a tract with no existing working well, is exempt and simply registered at $500. The acreage test moves with the plat date: no lot size requirement for tracts platted before 1 September 2002, five acres or more from then until 31 August 2022, and ten acres or more on or after 1 September 2022, with the same acreage again for each additional well. Fall outside that and the well is permitted at $1,500, and permitted wells carry spacing and annual production limits. Call the district at (830) 796-7260 with your plat date before you count on a well.
Is there an Edwards Aquifer permit on my land?
Almost certainly not in Bandera County, and this is one of the few places where the answer changes sharply at a county line. TCEQ's Edwards Aquifer Protection Program regulates the recharge, transition and contributing zones under Chapter 213 of Title 30, and its guidance on construction over the recharge zone names eight counties: Williamson, Travis, Hays, Comal, Bexar, Medina, Uvalde and Kinney. Bandera is not one of them. TCEQ's own mapping of the Chapter 213 zones puts no recharge zone and no transition zone anywhere in Bandera County, only a narrow band of contributing zone along the southern county line. So a Water Pollution Abatement Plan is not part of the sequence here, where it would be on the same drive twenty miles south in Medina County. If your tract is close to the Medina or Bexar line, spend five minutes in TCEQ's Edwards Aquifer map viewer before you offer.
Can I rent it out, or run it as a short-term let?
Check the lot first, then the deed. The rule that actually bites in Bandera County is the undersized-lot restriction: where Commissioners' Court approves a lot below the acreage minimums, it may be used exclusively for commercial purposes, and the regulations define residential purposes in the broadest possible terms, reaching the act of lodging, sleeping, living, abiding or dwelling for a single night or more, whether or not anyone is charged for it. That restriction is recorded and runs with the land, so it survives the sale to you. On a compliant lot, the county's commercial track is aimed at facility types rather than at tenure: its commercial sewage application names RV parks, manufactured housing communities and apartment complexes, and a county fire code in Texas cannot reach a one- or two-family dwelling at all under Local Government Code Sec. 233.062. After that it is the recorded restrictions on your own tract that decide, which is another reason to read the title commitment before you buy.
Everyone says rural Texas has no rules. Is that right here?
It is half right, and the half that is wrong is the expensive half. There is genuinely no county residential building code by default and no county inspector for a house. But the septic permit and inspection apply on any size tract, in the county's own words regardless of lot size or acreage. A Development Permit stands upstream of the septic permit, and an assigned 911 address stands upstream of that. The county regulates its floodplain under an order adopted in 2020, requiring the lowest floor at or above base flood elevation with a certification from a registered professional engineer, architect or land surveyor. A licensed plumber is required on new construction even where nothing else is. A builder outside any municipality must certify the house against the state energy code and keep the certification for three years. Creating a lot brings in the groundwater district, a licensed engineer or geoscientist, and a ten-acre minimum. And recorded deed restrictions bind whether or not a public body is enforcing anything.

Building in Bandera County?

Start with the plan. Tell us what you want to build and we will draw it, then confirm what Bandera County will actually let you put on the parcel and what wind load it has to meet. That conversation costs nothing.

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