Every parcel in the Wasatch Back lives under a zoning code, and the code decides the whole character of your purchase: how many homes, how big the lots, what animals are welcome, and what you can do with that beautiful old barn. Zoning is not a suggestion. It is the county's contract with the land.
Wasatch County
Wasatch County's key zones include A-20 agricultural, plus RA-5 and RA-1 residential-agricultural. RA-1 carries a five-acre minimum lot size with roughly 1.3 acres per unit of density.
The county's resource management plan protects tens of thousands of irrigated acres in the Heber Valley, and right-to-farm rules mean your new neighbor's haying schedule is part of the deal.
Summit County
Eastern Summit County uses AG-1 and AG-20: AG-1 allows roughly one unit per acre with a one-acre minimum lot, and AG-20 allows one unit per twenty acres with a twenty-acre minimum. There is also an Agriculture Protection zone that requires active agricultural production.
In the Snyderville Basin, density runs about one unit per twenty developable acres, and even less on critical lands. The zone tells you what the county expects this ground to stay.
Ask the planner
Zoning questions deserve a phone call to the county planner, not a guess from the internet. Can the parcel be split? What is the minimum lot size? Is the existing home legal and conforming? What is the process for a barn, an arena, or a second dwelling?
We make that call together before you offer.
The pretty parcel and the buildable parcel are not always the same parcel. Zoning is the map we use to tell them apart, and we read it before you sign.
Belladonna Bayless
Associate Broker · Land & Ranch
