The right-of-way is the strip of land the public holds for the street, the sidewalk, the drainage and usually the utilities. Your property line is where that strip ends and your lot begins. On most Houston-area streets the two are not marked on the ground at all, and the gap between the curb and your line is often wider than people expect.
That gap matters for three reasons. A setback is measured from the property line, so measuring from the wrong edge moves the whole house. Anything you build or plant on the public side of the line is there on sufferance. And the city, the county or the state, depending on who owns the street, can make you remove it.
Two edges, and neither one is the curb
Three lines run along the front of most lots, and people tend to treat them as one:
- The edge of the pavement or the back of the curb, which is what you see from the car.
- The right-of-way line, which is the outer edge of the public strip. On a lot in a platted subdivision it is normally also your front property line.
- The building line, which is a rule about where a structure may stand, set back from the property line by the plat, the deed restrictions or an ordinance.
Between the curb and the right-of-way line there is usually a sidewalk, a grass verge, and sometimes a ditch, a water meter box, a street tree or a utility pedestal. All of that sits on land you do not own, even though you probably mow it.
In a subdivision the street was drawn onto the recorded plat as a dedicated strip with a stated width. The lots start where the strip stops. If the plat says the street is 50 ft wide and the pavement is 28 ft wide, the other 22 ft is public land on either side of the pavement, shared out as verge, sidewalk and utility space. Those numbers are an illustration, not a rule: the width varies by street type and by the year the subdivision was platted, and the only place to read the real figure for a given lot is its own plat.
Illustrative cross-section, curb to front wall, on a hypothetical local street
In that example the property line is 10 ft from the curb, and the front wall is 30 ft from it. A homeowner who paces 20 ft from the curb has put the house 10 ft in front of where the setback allows it. The same arithmetic works in reverse on a street with a wide verge, where measuring from the curb gives away a room's depth. That is why a setback is measured from the property line, not from anything you can see.
How the City of Houston builds the front of a lot
Houston has no zoning, so the front building line comes from Chapter 42 of its Code of Ordinances, from the plat, and from the deed restrictions, and the deed restrictions win if they are stricter. The line also follows the street type rather than the neighbourhood. The figures below were read from the ordinance itself:
What is specific to City of Houston
- Houston has no zoning. What governs a lot is the plat, Chapter 42's building lines and — decisively — the recorded deed restrictions.
- Sec. 42-150(b) says it plainly: where deed restrictions provide a greater building line than Chapter 42, the deed restrictions control.
- The building line follows the street type, not the neighbourhood. The same house on a corner can face a 25 ft line on the thoroughfare and a 20 ft line on the local street.
- Eaves, bay windows, balconies, chimneys and cantilevered habitable area may encroach up to 30 in into a building line of 10 ft or more, provided nothing supports the encroachment from below and it clears the foundation by 9 ft.
- Reducing lot size below the minimum buys an obligation: compensating open space on a sliding scale, up to 720 sq ft per lot in a suburban area at the 1,400 sq ft floor.
Two things in that list bear on the right-of-way. First, the same house on a corner lot can face a 25 ft line on the thoroughfare side and a 20 ft line on the local street side, because a corner lot has two right-of-way lines and each one is measured separately. Second, eaves, bay windows, balconies and chimneys may project up to 30 in into a building line of 10 ft or more, and that projection is measured from the same line. None of it counts if you have the line in the wrong place.
Who owns the street decides who you ask
"The public" is not one party. Whoever owns the street owns the permission slip.
- A city street inside the City of Houston, Sugar Land, Bellaire or Pearland answers to that city.
- A county road in unincorporated Harris County answers to the Harris County Office of the County Engineer. For a single-family lot the county's real levers are floodplain, platting and driveway or culvert access, because it has no zoning and no county setback.
- A state highway or farm-to-market road answers to TxDOT, whatever city the lot is in.
This is the same question as which authority permits your lot, asked about the strip in front of the lot instead of the lot itself. A house on a county road and a house on a city street a block away can be in the same neighbourhood and answer to different offices for the front 10 ft.
Can I build a driveway across the right-of-way?
Yes, but the part inside the right-of-way is built to the street owner's standard and usually needs its own approval. The driveway that crosses the verge and the sidewalk is called an approach, and the owner of the street normally specifies its width, its slope and where it may meet the roadway. On a street drained by an open roadside ditch, the driveway also crosses the ditch, and the owner normally has to approve a culvert under it. We draw the approach on the site plan from the start so the grading of the lot and the grading of the approach agree.
Can I plant, fence or wall inside the right-of-way?
Often you can, but you do not own the result. Mailboxes, irrigation heads, low planting and decorative paving are common in the strip and are commonly tolerated. A wall, a fence, a column or a large tree is a different matter. Many cities require a written encroachment agreement or a revocable licence for anything permanent. The usual terms are that the structure comes out at the owner's cost whenever the street owner needs the space, with no compensation if it is damaged or removed.
Tolerance is not permission. A planter wall that has stood in the strip for 10 years has not acquired any rights, and the next utility crew or road project can treat it as an obstruction.
The right-of-way can move
The right-of-way you see today is not always the right-of-way that will exist. Streets on major thoroughfares get widened, and the plat or a separate recorded document may reserve extra width for it. Two consequences follow.
A building line on a thoroughfare may be measured from the planned edge rather than the present one. That is a reason to read the plat notes and ask the permitting office before drawing, not a reason to assume either answer.
And a rear or side strip can sit between your line and the street. In Pearland a rear yard on a thoroughfare or collector is 20 ft only if a 10 ft landscape reserve sits between the property line and the right-of-way; without it the rear yard is 30 ft. That strip is not public right-of-way and it is not your usable yard either, and it only exists if it was recorded. Easements work the same way: a line drawn on the plat that limits the land without changing who owns it.
How to find where yours ends
The property line is a legal position, set by the plat and located on the ground by a licensed surveyor. A fence, a sidewalk, a row of shrubs or the line where the neighbours stopped mowing are all poor evidence of it, and the sidewalk is the one people trust most and shouldn't.
Finding where the right-of-way ends on your lot
Find out which edge you are working with before you design, because the survey and the plat can disagree and the survey is what the permit office will compare your site plan against. A survey that shows only the lot and not what crosses its front line misses the question altogether. What a survey shows that an appraisal does not lists what to ask the surveyor to include.
A realistic concession: the right-of-way line is not always easy to prove. Older plats were drawn with less precision, monuments get lost to road work, and a platted width can differ from what was later acquired by deed. Where the paper and the ground disagree, a surveyor's opinion carries weight with the permit office, but it is still an opinion. We would rather learn that on the first site visit than at the foundation inspection.
What it means for the design
For a new custom home we draw the right-of-way line first, then the building line off it, then every easement, then the footprint. For an addition that reaches toward the street, the same order applies, and the answer is often that a front porch or a bay is possible only because of the projection allowance and not because the setback is generous. The questions people ask next are below.
Is the sidewalk part of my property?
Usually not. A public sidewalk normally sits inside the right-of-way, even though many cities make the abutting owner responsible for keeping it in repair. Where the sidewalk was built on private land by agreement, that is the exception, and it should appear as an easement on the plat or the survey.
Does the right-of-way reduce my lot size on paper?
No. The lot area on the plat is already net of the street. What the right-of-way changes is where your usable lot begins, and it decides how much land is available to build on once the building line is applied.
Who is responsible for the grass between the curb and the sidewalk?
In most places the abutting owner is expected to mow it, but responsibility for maintenance does not give you ownership or the right to build there. The street owner can dig it up for a water line, a drainage repair or a road project, and generally does not have to replace anything permanent you put in it.
What if my fence or driveway is already in the right-of-way?
Find out before you design around it. The cleanest course is to have the survey show it, then ask the street owner whether it is permitted, tolerated or in violation. If it needs an encroachment agreement, that is worth settling before a permit application, because a plan reviewer comparing your site plan with the plat may notice it first.