Pulaski County Statewide code, local enforcement optional
Barndominium Builders in Pulaski County, AR
Pulaski County has 404,611 people, more than any other county in Arkansas, and 14.8 percent of its land in farms — the smallest share of any county on this site. It also has the strangest land-use posture in the state: the county created a planning board in the 1970s, adopted countywide subdivision, road, floodplain, stormwater and addressing ordinances, and then adopted zoning, a zoning map, a land use plan and a building permit for exactly one place, the Lake Maumelle watershed on the far west side. Everywhere else in the unincorporated county there is no building department and no building permit for a house, so this page sets out what actually binds you, what the watershed rules do if your land is inside it, and which neighbouring county to buy in if what you want is acreage.
Pulaski County at a glance
- County
- Pulaski County
- Population
- 404,611
- ZIP codes
- 72002, 72076, 72103, 72113, 72118, 72120, 72135, 72142, 72183, 72206, 72210, 72223
- Site visits
- Pulaski County sits in the middle of the Central Arkansas belt we work every week, and so do the three counties this page points you toward — Lonoke, Perry and Grant are all in the same metro.
Building conditions in Pulaski County
The State's code reaches every parcel in Arkansas, including rural and unincorporated land. What is not everywhere is the office that checks it: a city or county is authorised to set up a building department, not required to, and a great deal of rural Arkansas never has. So the first question on any parcel is not what the code says — that part travels — but whether anyone here issues a permit, inspects the work, or publishes the design criteria your drawings still have to satisfy. Where nobody does, the obligation does not go away. It just moves to the appraiser, the insurer, your lender and whoever buys the place from you.
https://assets.speakcdn.com/assets/2954/Zoning-Ordinance-8-26-14.pdf
https://library.municode.com/ar/pulaski_county/codes/code_of_ordinances?nodeId=CH7FLHADAPRCO
https://assets.speakcdn.com/assets/2954/driveway-permit-application-june-2016.pdf
https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/AgCensus/2022/Full_Report/Volume_1,_Chapter_2_County_Level/Arkansas/
Also worth knowing before you build in Pulaski County
- In the watershed you get 15,000 square feet of hard surface as of right — and the track to your shop counts against it
- The Lake Maumelle Watershed Zoning Code defines Exemption Square Footage at section 10.2 as 'Up to fifteen thousand (15,000) square feet of new impervious surfaces constructed on a Tract after the Date of Adoption and a Driveway of a length necessary to provide access to the primary residential or business building that is no more than 15 feet wide,' and then adds the sentence that decides a house-plus-shop layout: 'Access roads between the primary building and accessory structures shall not be considered Driveways and are subject to the Exemption Square Footage limitations.' Section 1.4.B makes that 15,000 square feet permitted as a matter of right, without a Site Evaluation Tool demonstration, without engineered stormwater controls and without setting aside open space. It is a transferable property right that survives a sale, can be split between parcels at subdivision or family exclusion, must be declared at filing, and must be recorded in the Bill of Assurance or with the Circuit Clerk. A tract or family exclusion receiving at least 3,000 square feet of it also receives an exempted driveway. Once it is used up, the full code applies.
- The county's building permit issues itself, and it is a stormwater form
- Section 4.7.A.2 of the Lake Maumelle Watershed Zoning Code reads: 'Upon filing a Registration Form, a Building Permit is deemed to be issued if the Registration Form is submitted for construction of impervious surfaces identified in 4.7.A.1.a and 4.7.A.1.b above.' The form confirms what it is measuring. Pulaski County's Registration/Building Permit application asks for the square footage of new impervious surfaces and existing, the Exemption Square Footage existing, used and remaining, the Site Evaluation Tool coefficients for phosphorus, total suspended solids and total organic carbon, and the mitigation acreage required in High Slope and Low Slope Protected Forest. It asks for no plans, names no code edition, schedules no inspection and issues no certificate of occupancy, and it carries a notice that the permit does not void or override existing covenants and restrictions. Even in the one place Pulaski County issues a building permit, what it is regulating is runoff into a drinking-water reservoir, not the building.
- Pulaski County sets setbacks and a minimum lot size on land it does not zone
- Section 6.6 of the Pulaski County Subdivision and Development Code, as amended 29 September 2022 by Ordinance 22-OR-35, states that 'Setbacks on un-platted property shall be the same as those set forth for residential and non-residential buildings in Chapter 4 of this code.' The Chapter 4 table gives single-family residential 25 feet front, 25 feet rear (not required on corner lots), 8 feet interior side and 25 feet exterior side on a corner lot; every other use gets 40 feet front, 25 feet rear plus one foot for each foot of building height over 20 feet, and 10 feet interior side plus half a foot per foot of height over 20 feet. Section 4.2.C.6 adds that accessory buildings must meet all lot setbacks, and section 6.5 requires a development proposed to sit across lot lines to be platted or re-platted into a single parcel first. Section 4.2.C.1 then scales minimum lot size to servicing: 6,000 square feet on public water and sewer, 20,000 square feet on public water with an individual septic system, and one acre where a private well is used with an individual septic system. Section 4.2.C.2.c bars any lot more than four times as deep as it is wide, or averaging less than a hundred feet deep. Arkansas itself sets no minimum lot size for a conventional septic system, so on a Pulaski County split it is the county's one acre that binds, not the state's.
- The Family Exclusion is how most rural Pulaski County homesites get created
- Section 1.11 of the Subdivision and Development Code waives the code's subdivision requirements for a split transferred to an immediate family member where no new public roads are required. Immediate family is defined as parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters, children including stepchildren, grandchildren, and the spouse of the owner. The Planning Board grants the exclusion on an application containing the instrument showing the legal description before transfer, a survey certifying that every proposed lot has access to an existing public road and that no new public roads will be built, proof that the proposed lots are adequate in size to meet Arkansas Department of Health requirements for septic service, and birth certificates, adoption records or other official records proving the relationship. A notarised statement from all parties is required, the exclusion is recorded in the Circuit Clerk's deed records, and it expires the moment a lot is transferred to anyone outside the listed family — at which point the lot must be platted to the code's final plat requirements. If a lot of the proposed split would be landlocked, an ingress and egress easement must be granted and shown on the survey.
- The city rings are gone, and the county's published fee schedule still prices them
- Act 314 of 2025 repealed A.C.A. 14-56-413 outright and abolished municipal extraterritorial planning jurisdiction across Arkansas, along with 14-17-208(i), 14-38-101(b)(1)(B), 14-40-208, 14-56-417(c), 14-56-422(5)(B) and 17-28-305(b)(3), the provision that had let a city extend electrical permit and inspection jurisdiction into the same ring. Little Rock's Board of Directors passed a compliance ordinance on 2 September 2025, unanimously recommended by its Planning Commission on 14 August 2025, whose section 1 provides that the city 'shall no longer assert, exercise, or enforce extraterritorial jurisdiction or control in any unincorporated areas of Pulaski County', and whose section 6 provides that the city may keep preparing plans covering land outside its limits 'solely for informational, advisory, and intergovernmental coordination purposes' and that such documents 'shall have no force of law'. The county's own paperwork has not caught up: Planning Fees and Schedules Ordinance 82-OR-29 still sets an extraterritorial plat review fee at 33 percent of the ordinary fee and a site plan review base fee of $33.00 in the extraterritorial jurisdictions of municipalities against $100.00 in the unincorporated county, Subdivision and Development Code section 6.7 still says extraterritorial development is subject to the municipality's regulations, and the Lake Maumelle Watershed Zoning Code section 1.4.B still applies itself inside an ETJ 'as set forth in Arkansas Code Annotated 14-56-413'.
- The county code has no zoning chapter and no building chapter, and its only dimensional rule dates from 1977
- The Pulaski County Municipal Code, codified through Ordinance No. 25-OR-16 passed 24 April 2025 and published as Supplement 20, runs to seventeen chapters and six appendices: general provisions, administration, animals and fowl, courts, elections, fire prevention and protection, flood hazard, garbage, health and sanitation, housing, licences, motor vehicles, offences, planning, roads and bridges, sheriff and taxation, with appendices for cable franchises, personnel policy, purchasing policy, the Master Road Plan, the Subdivision and Development Code and the Stormwater Management and Drainage Manual. There is no zoning chapter and no building code chapter in it. Chapter 14, Planning, contains one substantive land rule and it dates from 1977: section 14-1 requires any commercial construction in the county outside the corporate limits of any incorporated town or city that abuts residential property to have a plat prepared by a certified registered engineer approved by the county planning board and filed with the circuit clerk, and provides that no structure may be located closer than forty feet to a residential property line. 'Construction' is defined as the laying of a foundation, the planning board may waive the requirement, and non-compliance is a misdemeanour.
- The watershed's 36-foot height cap does not apply to a house, a barn, or the shop beside either
- Section 3.3.B.1 of the Lake Maumelle Watershed Zoning Code sets a maximum building height of 36 feet 'for any use other than single-family detached residential or agricultural', and section 3.3.B.2 then provides that the cap 'does not apply to a structure that is Accessory to a single-family detached dwelling or to an Accessory that is part of an agricultural use'. Height is measured from finished grade at any point along the lowest ground floor to the highest point where the vertical walls meet the roof, so the roof itself sits outside the measurement, and chimneys, cupolas, steeples, bell towers, parapet walls up to 42 inches and gables terminating at or below the ridge are all excluded. The stated purpose of the cap is to protect public health and safety and to mitigate the impact of development on the visual character of the watershed, including forests and ridgelines. In the only part of Pulaski County that has zoning, a tall pole-barn shop beside a house is expressly what the height rule leaves alone — though section 5.1.B still requires a principal structure to exist, or its permit to issue at the same time, before an accessory structure is allowed.
- Fifty-foot stream buffers exist in the watershed, but only a discretionary approval switches them on
- Section 3.8.C.1 of the Lake Maumelle Watershed Zoning Code sets a minimum stream corridor of 50 feet on each side of the stream, measured from the normal stream waterline or the edge of the active channel. Section 3.8.B.1 then says the section applies only to a rezoning, Conditional Use Permit, Site Plan or subdivision plat action, and that 'while landowners are encouraged to provide stream buffers, and other federal, state and local laws and regulations may restrict the activities that may be conducted in or near streams, this Code does not impose any restriction related to stream buffers unless the development requires rezoning, a Conditional Use Permit, Site Plan review, or subdivision plat action'. Subdivision plats subject to a Family Exclusion are exempt, and a building standing at the date of adoption may remain in a buffer later established. Inside a buffer the corridor is to remain undisturbed except for forest, grassland, dams or impoundments approved by the Corps of Engineers or the Arkansas Natural Resources Commission, and roads where there is no feasible alternative access, the road is at the narrowest width the Master Road Plan allows, and the work complies with Section 404 of the Clean Water Act. The approving body may reduce the buffer for unreasonable economic hardship arising from topography, lot size or configuration, or on sound scientific evidence of no greater impact.
- The county's enforcement levers are your address and your flood insurance
- Section 7.4.A of the Lake Maumelle Watershed Zoning Code provides that 'Pulaski County may withhold addressing or the extension of utility services to any parcel or building created or constructed in violation of these regulations, until the violation is corrected'. Section 7.4.B makes a violation a county ordinance offence punishable on conviction by a fine of at least $100.00 and no more than $500.00, with each day a separate offence, and section 4.7.A.3 softens the first strike: where the county finds a registration form was required and not obtained, it serves notice, and if it is the owner's first failure and the completed form arrives within thirty days, the county will not pursue the section 7.4 penalties. Countywide, the floodplain administrator's powers under section 7-11 of the Municipal Code are sharper still — cease and desist orders, citations, a misdemeanour charge with fines up to $500.00 per day per violation, and authority to 'request that FEMA file a 1316 Action (Denial of Flood Insurance) against non-compliant properties'. Addressing is the everyday lever, because 911 addressing under Ordinance 25-OR-46 is one of the few things the county administers across the whole unincorporated area, and a parcel without an address is a parcel a utility, a lender and an insurer all struggle with.
- The county first drew a countywide zoning map in 1954 and has still not adopted one
- The Pulaski County Land Use Study and Plan, adopted by the Quorum Court on 27 May 2025 and published in final form in July 2025, records that in 1954 the Pulaski County Planning Board prepared a proposed zoning map dividing the unincorporated county into Forestry, Agriculture, Industrial, Commercial, Residential one-family and Residential multi-family districts, that an Arkansas Gazette article of 27 June 1954 anticipated a public hearing that July, and that 'the plan was never adopted'. The 2025 plan itself is a guide, not a regulation: it describes itself as 'an official policy statement directing how growth and development should occur' that 'should help guide land use and infrastructure related decisions of both the Planning Board and the Quorum Court well into the next 20 years'. Its Rural Residential category recommends a density of 0.5 unit per acre or less with a two-acre minimum lot on water and septic, and Low Density Residential 0.5 to 3 units per acre. Those are recommendations. Through the Quorum Court's August 2026 meeting the county still had no countywide zoning ordinance, and its recent land-use legislating has been use-by-use — an ordinance regulating high-intensity digital infrastructure in the unincorporated county was placed on first reading on 25 August 2026.
- One county, three different foundation problems
- Pulaski County straddles a physiographic boundary and the ground changes with it. A USDA-NRCS Soil Data Access query returns a bedrock restriction within 152 cm under 31.8 percent of the Pulaski survey area — the Ouachita edge running through the western and southwestern county toward Pinnacle Mountain, where footing and utility trenches hit rock. A fragipan sits under 12.7 percent, perching water above itself in late winter and spring. Vertisols cover 5.9 percent and soils with a linear extensibility of 6 or more in the upper metre cover 23.3 percent, concentrated in the Arkansas River backswamp on the eastern side, where the Perry series alone accounts for 31,613 acres. The NRCS Official Series Description for Perry, a very-fine smectitic thermic Chromic Epiaquert first described in Perry County, Arkansas in 1920, puts average clay content in the 10 to 40 inch control section at 60 to 85 percent, names montmorillonite as the dominant clay mineral, records permeability as very slow, and states that 'Perry soils are flooded for short periods nearly every year unless protected by levees'. A wide, light, slab-dominated building is the worst shape for that clay, and the fix is a site-specific geotechnical answer, not a county-wide one.
- Outside the watershed, the septic permit is the construction permit
- The Arkansas State Board of Health's Rules Pertaining to Onsite Wastewater Systems, effective 5 September 2024 and promulgated under A.C.A. 14-236-101 et seq., require the permit application to be submitted and approved prior to construction of a building or residence. The landowner hires a Designated Representative — under section 2.9 a registered professional engineer, registered land surveyor, licensed master plumber or registered sanitarian who has passed an ADH examination — who completes Part I of the application, and the Authorized Agent, an ADH Environmental Health Specialist assigned to the county, gives final approval. Two soil pits are required, one in the primary and one in the secondary absorption area, dug to four feet and left open for the Authorized Agent. ADH's published plan review fee runs $30, $45, $90, $120 or $150 by structure size, and garages, carports and porches are excluded from the square footage that sets it — which matters when a large share of a barndominium's footprint is shop bay. The system may not be used until the Permit for Operation issues, and the permit lapses if construction has not begun within a year.
https://assets.speakcdn.com/assets/2954/Zoning-Ordinance-8-26-14.pdf
https://assets.speakcdn.com/assets/2954/PUCO-WATERSHED-BUILDING-PERMIT-7_25_17.pdf
https://assets.speakcdn.com/assets/2954/Subdivision-Regulations-9-29-22-1.pdf
https://assets.speakcdn.com/assets/2954/Subdivision-Regulations-9-29-22-1.pdf
https://library.municode.com/ar/pulaski_county/codes/code_of_ordinances?nodeId=CH14PL
https://assets.speakcdn.com/assets/2954/Zoning-Ordinance-8-26-14.pdf
https://assets.speakcdn.com/assets/2954/Zoning-Ordinance-8-26-14.pdf
https://assets.speakcdn.com/assets/2954/Zoning-Ordinance-8-26-14.pdf
https://assets.speakcdn.com/assets/2954/puco_flu_study_and_plan_final_71425_w_appendices_small.pdf
https://healthy.arkansas.gov/wp-content/uploads/Onsite_Wastewater_Rule.pdf
Below the slab
The expensive surprises are in the ground, not the building
What moves an Arkansas budget is usually below grade, and the state hands you a different problem depending on where you stand. In the Delta the issue is shrink-swell clay that moves with the season, and it is the reason a wide, light building with a big slab and a big door opening is the shape most at risk. Along the Fall Line there is a second, separate clay belt with nothing to do with the Delta at all. Up in the Ozarks the question inverts: what matters is not what the slab sits in but what is under it, because that limestone is full of solution cavities and the collapses arrive with no prior indication at the surface. And on Crowley's Ridge, where Jonesboro and Paragould sit, it is fine wind-blown loess that stands up in a vertical cut and then erodes out from under whatever you put on it. The same ground decides your wastewater system, which is the gate that most often moves a rural build's schedule — and it is soils that decide it, not the size of the house. So the site work, the foundation and the wastewater get resolved together rather than one at a time. We price the dirt before we price the building.
What we build in Pulaski County
All nine services are available in Pulaski County. What a build costs depends far more on the parcel than on square footage, so we price against your land rather than publishing a rate card.
Custom Barndominium Plans
Barndominium floor plans, elevations and engineered documents drawn to your parcel — and to the design numbers your Arkansas jurisdiction publishes.
Barndominium Kits
Engineered barndominium shell packages for Arkansas land, drawn to a named jurisdiction's criteria rather than to a national vendor's generic spec.
Turnkey Barndominium Builds
Land through handover under one contract, and a straight answer on what actually gates a barndominium build on rural Arkansas land.
What a build looks like
Three stages every Pulaski County project passes through, from a raw parcel to a finished home. Site work first, because that is where the budget is decided.
The parcel
Zoning, setbacks, flood zone and utility access get checked before anything is drawn.
Pad and permit
Clearing, grading and a compacted pad, while the submittal works through whichever office issues the permit where you are building.
Frame to finish
Shell erected and dried in, then systems, insulation and interior finish through to CO.
Those are the rules where you are building in Pulaski County. Tell us what you want to build and we will draw it to them.
Where we build around Pulaski County
Pulaski 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.
Keep reading
The questions that usually come next once you know what Pulaski County allows.
Barndominium Cost Guide
Sourced per-square-foot ranges by tier and by size, with a calculator built on the same figures.
Read itThe Arkansas Building Code
The code applies statewide, including unincorporated land — but a jurisdiction is only authorized to establish a building department, so on rural residential land there is often no counter at all.
Read itBuying Land in Arkansas
Where acreage is actually purchasable in homesite sizes, and what percolation, slope and the onsite wastewater rule do to a parcel before anything is designed.
Read itNearby areas we build in
Others we cover nearby. One may be a county, another a city inside it — and since March 2025 the soft edge between them is gone, because the cities' extraterritorial jurisdiction was abolished outright and that land reverted to the counties. So the office that issues the permit, the fees it charges, the zoning and whether anyone publishes design criteria at all can differ from one card to the next, and the boundary that decides it may have moved recently.
Building in Pulaski County: common questions
9 questions we get asked most often about building in Pulaski County. If yours is not on the list, ask it directly.
Who issues a building permit for a house in unincorporated Pulaski County?
Outside the Lake Maumelle watershed, nobody does. Pulaski County has no building department and no building official. Its codified Municipal Code, published as Supplement 20 and codified through Ordinance 25-OR-16 of 24 April 2025, runs to seventeen chapters and six appendices and contains no zoning chapter and no building code chapter. The Planning and Development Department's own staff list carries a Plans Review Coordinator, a 911 Addressing Coordinator, a GIS Mapping Technician and a Lake Maumelle Watershed Inspector — no building inspector. That is not an oversight in Arkansas; it is how the statute is built. A county judge may create a planning board with the quorum court's approval under A.C.A. 14-17-203(a), and only then may the court adopt zoning, which 14-17-209(c) says is enforced through denial of building permits. Pulaski created its planning board decades ago and has adopted zoning for one watershed. So no county plan review, no framing inspection and no certificate of occupancy on a rural Pulaski County house. What you will meet instead is a short list of real permits: the Arkansas Department of Health's onsite wastewater permit, which has to be approved before construction of the building begins; a Road and Bridge driveway permit at $40.00 per culvert if you are cutting a new access; a floodplain development permit if the parcel is in a mapped special flood hazard area; and a subdivision or family exclusion filing if the lot has to be created. Inside a city — Little Rock, North Little Rock, Sherwood, Jacksonville, Maumelle — the answer is completely different, because each of those runs its own building department.
What is the Lake Maumelle watershed rule, and is my land in it?
Lake Maumelle is Little Rock's drinking water supply, and it is the reason the one piece of county zoning exists. The Lake Maumelle Watershed Zoning Code was adopted 23 April 2013 by Ordinance 13-OR-12 and amended 26 August 2014 by Ordinance 14-OR-37, and section 1.4.A applies it only to the part of the watershed lying in unincorporated Pulaski County, on the far west side. The county publishes the watershed's legal description as a separate ordinance and a reference zoning map, and the Planning and Development Department will tell you whether a parcel is in it. Four districts apply. Conservation covers land owned or managed by Central Arkansas Water and other public entities and caps density at one dwelling unit per fifty acres. Village covers the north-western part around Little Italy — small farms and rural homesteads in the code's own words — at up to two dwelling units or lots per acre with a 20,000 square foot minimum lot. Low Impact Planned Residential allows one dwelling unit or lot per acre, or two under a Village Density option limited to 40 percent of an applicant's land in the district. Non-Residential is the fourth. The operative currency is impervious surface rather than floor area: section 1.4.B gives each tract up to 15,000 square feet of new impervious surface as of right, plus a driveway up to fifteen feet wide, without any stormwater modelling or open space set-aside. Beyond that you are into the Site Evaluation Tool, engineered controls and forest mitigation. If your land is not in the watershed, none of this reaches you.
What does the county actually charge, and is there a building permit fee?
There is no county building permit fee, because there is no county building permit outside the watershed. The published schedules are these. Planning Fees and Schedules Ordinance 82-OR-29 covers plats and site plans: a $100.00 base fee per preliminary or final plat application in the unincorporated county plus $3.00 a unit for 5 to 40 units, $2.00 a unit for 41 to 100 and $1.00 a unit above 100, with a separate fee for each of the preliminary and final plats; $10.00 for a minor subdivision of four units or less, which includes replats and lot splits; $25.00 to extend preliminary plat approval; $10.00 to amend a Bill of Assurance; and $100.00 for site plan review. Road and Bridge charges $40.00 per culvert for a private access driveway permit and $100.00 for a commercial one. Chapter 7 of the Municipal Code prices a floodplain development permit at two cents per square foot of ground floor area for buildings, and for filling at $25.00 per lot, or $50.00 an acre where the lot exceeds an acre, plus one cent per cubic yard of fill. On the Arkansas Department of Health side, the onsite wastewater plan review fee is $30, $45, $90, $120 or $150 by structure size, with garages, carports and porches excluded from the square footage. Ordinance 82-OR-29 also still carries lines pricing work in municipal extraterritorial planning areas at 33 percent of the ordinary review fee, and those areas ceased to exist under Act 314 of 2025.
My land is in a floodplain. What does Pulaski County require?
This is where the county does regulate construction, and the standard is above the federal minimum. Chapter 7 of the Municipal Code, rebuilt by Ordinance 15-OR-23 on 29 April 2015 and updated by Ordinance 19-OR-04 in March 2019, adopts the Flood Damage Prevention Code for Pulaski County revised 7 June 2019, along with Flood Insurance Rate Maps and a Flood Insurance Study of the same date. Section 7-52(1) requires new residential construction and substantial improvements in a special flood hazard area to have the lowest floor including basement elevated at least two feet above base flood elevation, certified to the county planning board by a registered professional engineer or land surveyor. Section 7-51 requires anchoring against flotation, collapse and lateral movement, construction methods and materials resistant to flood damage, and mechanical, electrical, heating and plumbing equipment placed or designed so water cannot enter it. Section 7-52(3) governs enclosures below the lowest floor used for parking, access or storage: at least two openings totalling at least one square inch for every square foot of enclosed area, with the bottom of each opening no more than a foot above grade, or an engineer's or architect's certified design. In AO and AH shallow-flooding zones, section 7-54 requires the lowest floor a foot above the highest adjacent grade and at least as high as the depth number on the map, or two feet where none is given. Encroachment in a designated floodway is prohibited unless hydrologic and hydraulic analysis shows no increase in flood levels. Variances go to the planning board, and section 7-35(c) requires certified-letter notice to every owner within 300 feet, verified by an abstract company, plus a newspaper notice fifteen days before the hearing.
Arkansas abolished city planning rings in 2025. What changed for land just outside Little Rock?
The regulator changed, and in most of that ring it changed to nobody. Act 314 of 2025 repealed A.C.A. 14-56-413 outright, abolishing municipal extraterritorial planning jurisdiction across Arkansas, and repealed with it 14-17-208(i), which had given a city subdivision jurisdiction in adjoining unincorporated areas, 14-56-417(c), 14-56-422(5)(B), 14-38-101(b)(1)(B), 14-40-208 and 17-28-305(b)(3), the provision that had let a city extend electrical permit and inspection jurisdiction into the same ring by agreement with the county. Little Rock, as a city over 150,000, had held a three-mile ring. Its Board of Directors passed a compliance ordinance on 2 September 2025, unanimously recommended by the Planning Commission on 14 August 2025, whose section 1 provides that the city shall no longer assert, exercise or enforce extraterritorial jurisdiction or control in any unincorporated area of Pulaski County, and which strikes the extraterritorial references out of the city's planning jurisdiction, subdivision, plat vacation, lot dimension and zoning applicability provisions. A later section preserves the city's ability to keep drawing plans over land outside its limits 'solely for informational, advisory, and intergovernmental coordination purposes', with no force of law, and provides that on annexation all city planning documents, zoning classifications and development standards apply immediately. On the county side nothing new was adopted to fill the gap. The county's Land Use Study and Plan was adopted by the Quorum Court on 27 May 2025 and is a policy guide, not a regulation, and through the Quorum Court's August 2026 meeting there was still no countywide zoning ordinance.
Can I split off a homesite from family land, and how small can it be?
Yes, and Pulaski County has a specific mechanism for it. Section 1.11 of the Subdivision and Development Code waives the code's subdivision requirements for the transfer of a subdivided lot to an immediate family member where no new public roads are required for access. Immediate family means parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters, children including stepchildren, grandchildren, and the spouse of the owner. The Planning Board grants the exclusion on an application containing the instrument showing the legal description before transfer; a survey showing the boundaries and legal descriptions of the proposed lots and the existing public roads, certified by the owner that every lot has access to an existing public road and that no new public roads will be built; proof that the proposed lots are adequate in size to meet Arkansas Department of Health requirements for septic service; and birth certificates, adoption records or other official records for each transferee. All parties sign a notarised statement, the exclusion is recorded in the Circuit Clerk's deed records, and it lapses the moment a lot goes to someone outside the listed family, at which point the lot must be platted properly. On size, section 4.2.C.1 sets the county floor by servicing: 6,000 square feet on public water and sewer, 20,000 square feet on public water with an individual septic system, and one acre where a private well is used with an individual septic system. Section 4.2.C.2.c adds that no lot may be more than four times as deep as it is wide, and no lot may average less than a hundred feet deep. A normal lot split that is not a family exclusion is a minor subdivision, and the published fee for that is $10.00.
What is the ground like in Pulaski County, and what does it mean for a slab?
It depends which side of the county you are on, and the difference is large enough that a single answer would be wrong. The county sits where the Arkansas River Valley meets the Ouachita Mountains, with the river's floodplain running through it. West and south-west, toward Pinnacle Mountain and Ferndale, the story is rock: a USDA-NRCS Soil Data Access query puts a bedrock restriction within 152 centimetres under 31.8 percent of the Pulaski survey area, so trenching and utility runs cost more than the bearing does, and the septic separation distances to bedrock — 18 inches where redoximorphic features indicate a seasonal water table of moderate duration or longer, 24 to 36 inches otherwise — start deciding where the house can go. East and south-east, toward Scott and Wrightsville, the story is clay: Vertisols cover 5.9 percent of the county and soils with a linear extensibility of 6 or more in the upper metre cover 23.3 percent, with 31,613 acres of the Perry series alone. The NRCS description of Perry puts clay content in the 10 to 40 inch control section at 60 to 85 percent, names montmorillonite as the dominant mineral, calls permeability very slow, and says Perry soils are flooded for short periods nearly every year unless protected by levees. Across 12.7 percent of the county there is a fragipan, a dense layer that perches water above itself through late winter and spring. A barndominium is the worst shape for shrink-swell clay — wide, light and slab-dominated, with a big door opening that will not tolerate a racked frame — so on the east side the geotechnical work comes before the slab design, and on the west side the excavation quote comes before the price.
Which building code applies here, and who licenses the trades?
The state code applies everywhere in Arkansas, including on unincorporated county land. The Arkansas Department of Labor and Licensing states on its Contractors Licensing Board pages that the Arkansas Building Code is adopted by the State Fire Marshal's office, that it is part of the Fire Prevention Code, and that the code applies statewide, even in rural and unincorporated areas. For a house that means the Arkansas Fire Prevention Code, 2021 Edition, Volume III — the 2021 International Residential Code with Arkansas amendments — effective 1 January 2023. What Arkansas did not do is create a counter to bring it to. The code's own administrative text says a local jurisdiction 'is authorized to establish' a building department, and the owner-application fallback to the State Fire Marshal was written into Volume II, the Building Code, not into Volume III's R105.1. So on rural Pulaski County land the technical standard exists and the plan review, the inspections and the certificate of occupancy do not. The trades are the exception, and they reach further than the building code does. The Arkansas plumbing statute makes the state plumbing code effective as minimum standards statewide, applying to all types of buildings, private or public, rural or urban. Electricians, plumbers and HVACR mechanics are licensed by the State of Arkansas wherever they work. The farm exemptions people cite do not help a barndominium: the electrical exemption reaches a 'nonresidential farm building', and the plumbing exemption reaches buildings whose primary use is agricultural and that are not connected to a public water system. Put a dwelling in the building and both fall away.
If I buy in Lonoke, Perry or Grant County instead, what changes?
The supply of land changes first. Pulaski County has 398 farms on 72,088 acres — 14.8 percent of its land, with a median farm of 35 acres, the smallest median in Arkansas — spread across 758 square miles at 533.5 people per square mile. Lonoke County to the east is 82.9 percent in farms, the highest share of any metropolitan county in the state, with a median farm of 122 acres and 99.3 people per square mile. Perry County to the west runs 18.7 people per square mile, the lowest density of any Arkansas metro county, with 76 percent forest cover. Grant County to the south is 29.7 per square mile and 97 percent forest, the highest forest share of any Arkansas county. All three are in the same Little Rock–North Little Rock–Conway metro. The ground changes too, and it changes more than the drive time does. Lonoke is Mississippi Alluvial Plain — flat, deep, soft, with essentially no bedrock and a high seasonal water table, which is a drainage and shrink-swell conversation. Perry is Ouachita Mountains, and the SSURGO shallow-bedrock share there is 70.3 percent, more than double Pulaski's, so the excavator's quote is the number that moves. Grant is West Gulf Coastal Plain timber, sandy and generally benign underfoot. The regulator changes as well, and usually in the direction of less: none of the three is a place where a county building official will meet you at the counter, so the onsite wastewater permit, the driveway permit and the floodplain rules become the whole file. Each of those counties has its own page on this site with what it actually requires.
Building in Pulaski County?
Start with the plan. Tell us what you want to build and we will draw it, then confirm which office issues the permit for your parcel, what it will let you put there, and what wind load it has to meet. That conversation costs nothing.