Residential reference

Single-family homes and major additions

Clark County publishes a 21-day first-review goal for a custom house and tells you plainly what that number excludes. The City of Las Vegas publishes no timeline at all and sells hourly express review instead.

Reference12 min readUpdated Aug 30, 2026

Single-family homes and major additions construction in the Las Vegas Valley — A new single-family house under framing on a graded valley lot. Illustrative photo.

The short version

Building-code occupancy: Group R-3, one- and two-family dwellings (City of Las Vegas fee tables)
Clark County first-review goal: Custom Single Family Residence 21 days; Residential Minor 14 days; revisions and all subsequent reviews 10 days (Plan Review Timelines)
Plan review fee: 65% of the building permit fee, due at submittal (BPG-182)
Soils report threshold: Required for all projects needing new foundations and for all additions of 600 sq ft or greater (BPG-182)
County transportation tax: $1,000 per single-family dwelling unit (CCC §4.22.020)
Biggest soft cost to check early: Water. A 5/8-inch meter carries a $2,371 LVVWD facilities connection charge plus a $7,998 SNWA regional connection charge (LVVWD Service Rules)

What each jurisdiction allows

The valley is five separate rulebooks. The address decides which one applies to you — not the mailing city on your envelope.

Jurisdiction	Allowed?	Key limits	Approval path	Source
Unincorporated Clark County	Single-Family Detached is a permitted principal use in RS80, RS40, RS20, RS10, RS5.2, RS3.3, RS2, AG and OS. Single-Family Attached is permitted in RS5.2, RS3.3, RS2 and RM18, and a special use in RM32 and RM50.	Table 30.02-2, minimum lot / coverage / height: RS80 80,000 sq ft, 15%, 35 ft; RS40 40,000 sq ft, 25%, 35 ft; RS20 20,000 sq ft, 50%, 35 ft; RS10 10,000 sq ft, 50%, 35 ft; RS5.2 5,200 sq ft, 35 ft; RS3.3 3,300 sq ft; RS2 2,000 sq ft with 200 sq ft open space per unit. Building separation in RS80 and RS40 is 6 ft.	Building permit plus MPE sub-permits. Grading permit before any clearing. Land use application or parcel map review letter first where required. Design Review is required for all new single-family attached construction.	Title 30 §30.03.03, Table 30.02-2, §30.06.05(B)
City of Las Vegas	R-1 Single Family Residential and the other residential districts: R-E Residence Estates, R-D Single Family Residential-Restricted, R-SL Residential Small Lot, R-CL Single Family Compact-Lot, R-TH Single Family Attached, R-2 Medium-Low Density.	R-1: minimum lot 6,500 sq ft, minimum width 60 ft (30 ft at a cul-de-sac front line if average width complies), maximum coverage 50%, one dwelling unit per lot, front 20 ft, side 5 ft, corner side 15 ft, rear 15 ft, 2 stories and 35 ft. R-2: 6,500 sq ft, 6 to 12 units/acre, front 20 ft, side 5 ft, corner side 5 ft, rear 20 ft, 10 ft between buildings.	Electronic submittal is mandatory. No published residential review timeline; express review and pre-review appointments are sold hourly.	City of Las Vegas UDC · Building & Offsite Permits
Henderson	Dwelling, Single-family Detached is permitted in RS, RM, MN and PS, and a special use in RMH — where only tiny houses are permitted, on a permanent foundation. Single-family Attached is permitted in RS-6 and RS-8 only, plus RM, RH, MR, MC and MN.	Single-family attached minimum lot area may be reduced to 2,000 sq ft in RS-8 and 1,600 sq ft in RM-10, and attached-garage setbacks may be modified administratively for curving road geometry. Parking is 2 spaces per dwelling unit, 1 for tiny houses. The full numeric density and setback tables for Henderson RS, RM and RH are n.a. — not located in the sections we could parse.	Development Services Center. Expedited review at 4x the plan review fee delivers 4 full working days.	Henderson Development Code · Expedited Review
North Las Vegas	n.a. — district standards not published in a form we could retrieve.	n.a.	Permit Application Center and Citizen Self-Service portal. Turnaround times n.a. Note that NLV requires a wet-stamped release letter from the engineer or architect of record before it will release copies of plans, consistent with NAC 623.780.	NLV Permit Application Center · NLV Building Safety

Which review category you land in, and why it matters

Clark County does not have one residential review queue, it has three, and they carry different clocks. Custom Single Family Residence gets a 21-day first-review goal. Standard Plan — the repeat production plan a builder uses across a subdivision — also gets 21 days. Residential Minor, defined as "residential that is not standard plan or custom home," gets 14 days. Revisions and every subsequent or correction review get 10 days (Plan Review Timelines). The County also publishes how it has actually performed against those goals (Statistics & Service Goals).

Filing in the wrong category is a real and common delay, because the categories carry different definitions as well as different day counts. A custom home submitted as Residential Minor does not get finished faster; it gets reclassified.

What the 21 days does not include

The County is refreshingly direct about this. "Normal processing time to obtain a permit to construct a single family residence or guest house is approximately 21 calendar days not including any needed land use approvals (Current Planning) or Civil Engineering requirements," and it can grow with corrections or submittal volume (BPG-182). If your project needs a variance, a waiver, a zone change or offsite civil improvement plans, none of that time is inside the 21 days.

Additions have their own threshold. Clark County requires a geotechnical soils report for all projects that require new foundations and for all additions of 600 square feet or greater (BPG-182). That 600 sq ft line is the practical border between a small addition and an engineered one. The City of Las Vegas prices additions separately from remodels and adds a "Residential Remodel / Addition – Structural Review Add-on" line (City of Las Vegas fee tables).

Who reviews your plans, and who is allowed to draw them

Three groups look at a Clark County single-family submittal at the same time (BPG-182):

Current Planning Zoning Plans Check — land use, legality of the lot, setbacks, heights, parking, landscaping, walls and fences, lot coverage, recorded easements.
Public Works Development Review — right-of-way dedication, drainage compliance, off-site improvement requirements, traffic studies.
Building Plans Examination — IRC architectural, structural and geotechnical, NEC electrical, UPC gas piping, IECC envelope and equipment efficiency.

Because they run concurrently, you can get several correction letters at once, on unrelated subjects, and each resubmittal takes a 10-day review (Plan Review Timelines).

Who may prepare the plans

A Nevada registered professional engineer, a Nevada registered residential designer, or a licensed architect. Or a contractor licensed under NRS 624 preparing plans for its own construction activity, which NRS 623.330 permits under stated conditions and which the County recognizes explicitly. Or an owner/builder under NRS 624.031, with the plans titled without reference to preparation by anyone else. Cover sheets of each discipline must be wet stamped with an original signature (BPG-182; NRS 624).

One consequence of NAC 623.780 — drawings and specifications remain the property of the design professional of record — is that North Las Vegas requires a wet-stamped release letter from the engineer or architect before it will release copies of plans (NLV Building Safety). If you part ways with your designer mid-project, this becomes your problem quickly.

The submittal package, item by item

Everything to scale, maximum sheet size 30 by 42 inches, no pencil and no whiteout. Clark County’s list (BPG-182):

An engineered grading plan with finished floor elevation, street elevations, lot drainage, an NAVD 88 benchmark, contours, easements and dimensioned boundaries — or a parcel map grading plan or recorded subdivision grading plan from the Civil Engineering Map Room.
A building site plan, three sets, showing setbacks to all structures, easements, right-of-way, the septic or sewer tap, water meter size and tap, transformer and landscaping.
A geotechnical report, two sets, less than one year old or accompanied by current letters of applicability, covering soil conditions, fill and grading requirements, foundation and drainage design considerations, and earthquake faults and fissures.
Structural plans and calculations; foundation, floor framing and roof framing plans; architectural floor plans; elevations; cross sections.
An energy code compliance report — RESCheck or the prescriptive schedule.
Electrical plans with service and panel load calculations, and gas piping isometrics.
Factory-built fireplace documentation. Wood-burning fireplaces are prohibited except above 4,000 ft elevation or where the unit meets federal EPA standards.
Fire sprinkler plans where required.

Before issuance the County also wants water verification, sanitation verification, the Desert Conservation land disturbance and mitigation fee form, and an Air Quality dust permit if disturbed area exceeds 0.25 acre.

Special inspection, if your structure calls for it

A Quality Assurance Agency is required for scopes including concrete above 2,500 psi design strength, bolts in concrete, post-tensioning, welding, structural masonry, piling and drilled piers, shotcrete, special grading, excavation and filling, light gauge steel trusses, epoxy-set bolts and structural steel. The owner signs a QAA Agreement before permit issuance, and a QAA final report is required before final inspection (BPG-182).

Clearances are sequenced — miss one and the next inspection will not happen

This is the part that quietly costs weeks, because each item gates a specific inspection rather than the permit as a whole (BPG-182):

Grading report before any inspections.
Pad certification report before the foundation inspection, with a pad certification inspection requested after submittal.
Finished floor elevation certificate by a Nevada registered land surveyor after foundation and slab and before framing.
Drainage compliance report before final.
FEMA elevation certificate before final if the parcel is in a flood zone.
Utility clearances — water, sewer, or Health District for septic — before final.
QAA final report before final.

After final inspection the County issues the Certificate of Occupancy and the electrical tag. And keep the permit alive: an approved required inspection must be obtained within 180 days of issue or of the last approved inspection, or the permit is null and void (BPG-182).

A grading permit is not the first thing you get, it is one of the last

Under Title 30 §30.06.11(E), a grading permit cannot issue until a land use application is approved where one is required or a parcel map review letter has issued, drainage and traffic impact analyses are approved where required, a grading plan is approved, improvement plans under §30.04.08 are reviewed with an approved bond estimate, bonds are posted for required off-site improvements, and the MSHCP fee is paid. There is one relief valve: a developer who enters a County grading agreement can get the permit ahead of the improvement-plan and bonding steps (Title 30 §30.06.11E). People routinely assume they can move dirt while plan check runs. They cannot.

Timelines: the County publishes them, the City sells them

This is the single clearest difference between the two biggest jurisdictions in the valley, and it changes how you should plan.

Clark County publishes day-count goals — 21 days custom, 14 days residential minor, 10 days for revisions and subsequent reviews — and publishes its performance against them (Plan Review Timelines; Statistics & Service Goals). Process runs through the Citizen Access Portal, with the County migrating plan review to an ePermitHub "Plan Room" environment (Plan Review Process).

The City of Las Vegas publishes no standard residential plan review turnaround time on its permit pages. What it does publish is a price for going faster: owner/builder express review at a $550 non-refundable administrative fee plus $660 per hour over published plan review fees, with pre-review appointments starting at $176 per hour. Electronic submittal is mandatory (Building & Offsite Permits).

Henderson sells a guarantee. Expedited review costs four times the normal plan review fee, 50% due at submittal and the remainder at issuance — and the remainder is waived if the City misses the target date. In exchange you get 4 full working days on building permits and on Public Works civil, traffic and hydrology reviews, on initial and subsequent reviews, with working days counted Monday through Thursday. H-1 through H-5 occupancies are excluded (Henderson Expedited Review).

North Las Vegas publishes no turnaround times on its Building Safety or Permit Application Center pages (NLV Building Safety).

The fee stack, in the order it hits you

The permit fee itself is valuation-based: the County determines an estimated valuation from the square footage of the residence and calculates the permit fee from it, with plan review at 65% of the permit fee, due at submittal (BPG-182; Fees/Calculator). The County’s estimator produces estimates only; final fees are calculated by staff, and other development fees are assessed at fee work-up before issuance (fee calculator).

Water is usually the largest single soft cost, and it is driven by meter size. A 5/8-inch meter carries an LVVWD facilities connection charge of $2,371 and an SNWA regional connection charge of $7,998; a 2-inch meter carries $18,967 and $50,377 (both effective 3/1/2026, adjusted each March 1) (LVVWD Service Rules). Deciding meter size is a design decision with a five-figure consequence, so make it early and deliberately.

Then the per-unit items: the Clark County transportation privilege tax of $1,000 per single-family dwelling unit for units on or after July 1, 2020, with exceptions that include "rehabilitation, remodeling, or expansion of an existing single-family dwelling unit" (CCC §4.22.020; §4.22.030); the MSHCP disturbance fee at $550 per acre (Development Disturbance Fee); and the CCWRD connection fee at $3,020 per ERU (CCWRD Services).

If you need a land use application

Clark County’s Title 30 fee schedule prices these separately: pre-submittal conference $500; rezone $500 plus $500 mailed notice plus a sign fee; variance $300 plus $500 notice; waiver of development standards $300 plus $500 notice; minor deviation $100; extension of time $300 per application type; design review $500 plus $500 notice (Title 30 Fee Schedule). The notification sign fee was raised to $300 per sign by Ordinance 5349, adopted 2/18/2026 and effective 3/5/2026, which also amended the Title 30 fee schedule and §30.03.03 (Clark County ordinance list).

The license classification this work requires

New single-family construction sits under B General Building or B-2 Residential and Small Commercial. B-2 covers construction and remodeling of houses and other structures sheltering persons, animals or chattels, "not more than three stories above the ground and one story below the ground" (NAC 624.160–624.170). Related classifications: B-3 Speculative Building for build-to-sell, B-1 for premanufactured housing, and B-7 Residential Remodeling for remodels of an existing detached single-family residence of three stories or fewer.

What these classifications cannot cover

B-7 may not increase existing enclosed space (NAC 624.170). So a B-7 can remodel your kitchen and cannot build your 700 sq ft addition. And no general building license, B or B-2, authorizes the specialty trades: a general building contractor "shall not perform specialty contracting in plumbing, electrical, refrigeration and air-conditioning or fire protection without a license for the specialty" (NRS 624.215). Expect separately licensed C-1 plumbing and heating, C-2 electrical, C-21 refrigeration and air conditioning, and C-41 or C-1b for fire protection where sprinklers are required.

Site work is a different branch entirely — general engineering and general building are mutually exclusive under NRS 624.215. Grading and site work fall under A-7 Excavating and Grading or A-12, sewer and drain lines under A-15, and paving under A-16 (NSCB classifications). There may be only one prime contractor per project.

How the monetary limit works

Every Nevada license carries a dollar limit, and the limit is not per contract. NRS 624.220 requires the Board to set a monetary limit that is the maximum contract a licensed contractor may undertake on one or more construction contracts on a single construction site or subdivision site for a single client (NRS 624). Read that carefully: it aggregates. Splitting one job into three contracts does not get a contractor under the limit, because all three are the same site and the same client. The Board can raise the limit for a single project on request, and where a contractor is bidding work above the limit, the increase has to be requested at least 5 working days before the bid opening and approved before the bid goes in (NRS 624.220). The Board may also count trades that are incidental and supplemental to the classification, and may condition a license in other ways.

Nobody at the permit counter is going to catch this for you. Clark County verifies that the license is active and that a Multi-Jurisdictional Business License and a matching DBA exist (Clark County licensing requirements). Whether the classification and the limit actually fit your job is your check to make, on the Board lookup, before you sign.

If you are considering building it yourself: NRS 624.031 exempts an owner "building or improving a residential structure on the property for his or her own occupancy and not intended for sale or lease," but offering it for sale or lease within 1 year of completion creates a rebuttable presumption that it was built for sale or lease, and you must apply to the Board for the exemption (NRS 624.031). Clark County requires an Owner Builder Affidavit of Exemption and ownership shown in Assessor records (Licensing Requirements).

Published fees

These are government fee schedules, not a cost estimate for your project. Building Las Vegas is a media company — we do not bid, quote, or price work.

Fee	Published amount	Charged by	Source
Clark County plan review fee	65% of the building permit fee, payable at submittal	Clark County Building & Fire Prevention	BPG-182 · Fees/Calculator
Clark County building permit fee	Valuation-based, with valuation estimated from the square footage of the residence. The dollar table is not published in retrievable form; the County estimator produces estimates only and final fees are calculated by staff.	Clark County Building & Fire Prevention	BPG-182 · fee calculator
Clark County transportation privilege tax	$1,000 per single-family dwelling unit on or after July 1, 2020, with exceptions including "rehabilitation, remodeling, or expansion of an existing single-family dwelling unit"	Clark County (Title 4.22)	CCC §4.22.020 · §4.22.030
MSHCP development disturbance fee	$550 per acre, one time, at the grading or building permit	Clark County Desert Conservation Program	Development Disturbance Fee
CCWRD sewer connection fee	$3,020 per ERU; septic conversion $1,600. Annual service charge $307.16 per ERU effective July 1, 2026, plus $4 per bill.	Clark County Water Reclamation District	CCWRD Services
LVVWD facilities connection charge	5/8-inch $2,371; 3/4-inch $3,556; 1-inch $5,927; 1.5-inch $11,854; 2-inch $18,967, effective 3/1/2026	Las Vegas Valley Water District	LVVWD Service Rules, Table A.3.b
SNWA regional connection charge, residential	5/8-inch and 3/4-inch $7,998; 1-inch $15,780; 1.5-inch $31,476; 2-inch $50,377, effective 3/1/2026	Southern Nevada Water Authority, billed through LVVWD	LVVWD Service Rules, Table A.18.a
LVVWD frontage and inspection charges	Frontage connection charge $17 per front foot, minimum $1,190 where a parcel has less than 70 ft of chargeable frontage. Inspection: domestic service 2-inch or less $185; over 2-inch and combined $1,000; firelines $550.	Las Vegas Valley Water District	LVVWD Service Rules, Tables A.3.c and A.3.d
LVVWD service installation	5/8x3/4-inch to 1-inch: $1,177 service excluding meter, $104 AMR, $840 backflow; 1.5-inch $1,267/$1,120; 2-inch $2,391/$1,180; over 2-inch at cost	Las Vegas Valley Water District	LVVWD Service Rules, Table A.3.f
City of Las Vegas R-3 single-family, custom or model	1,000 sq ft $500 plan check / $933 inspection; 2,500 sq ft $1,200/$1,649; 5,000 sq ft $1,300/$3,282; 7,000 sq ft $1,700/$4,304; 10,000 sq ft $2,500/$5,834. 2020 Building User Fees, Table 3-A effective July 1, 2021.	City of Las Vegas Building & Safety	City of Las Vegas fee tables
City of Las Vegas single-family production or repeat	500 sq ft $550 inspection; 1,250 sq ft $750; 2,500 sq ft $1,200; 3,500 sq ft $1,600; 5,000 sq ft $2,000 (no separate plan check shown in the table)	City of Las Vegas Building & Safety	City of Las Vegas fee tables
City of Las Vegas remodel with MPEs	200 sq ft $64 plan check / $227 inspection; 1,000 sq ft $162/$523; 2,000 sq ft $262/$771	City of Las Vegas Building & Safety	City of Las Vegas fee tables
Clark County land use application fees	Pre-submittal conference $500; rezone $500 plus $500 notice plus sign; variance $300 plus $500 notice; waiver of development standards $300 plus $500 notice; minor deviation $100; extension of time $300; design review $500 plus $500 notice; notification sign $300 per sign under Ordinance 5349	Clark County Comprehensive Planning	Title 30 Fee Schedule · ordinance list
North Las Vegas permit fees	Valuation from Table 3-E Building Valuation Data in NLVMC 15.72.270 with the Nevada regional modifier of 0.89; plan check 65% of permit fee; $75 administrative fee per permit; park impact fee $0.36 per sq ft residential; recording 3% of permit fee; planning and zoning review 10%; fire review $100	City of North Las Vegas	NLV Permit Application Center
Henderson fees	n.a. — schedule effective October 1, 2025, CPI-adjusted annually, but the amounts are in script-loaded PDFs that were not retrievable. Expedited review is 4x the normal plan review fee.	City of Henderson Development Services Center	Henderson Fees Schedules
Residential construction (park) tax	n.a. — Clark County Title 19.05 text not retrievable. The NRS 278.4983 cap is 1% of building permit valuation or $1,000 per residential dwelling unit, whichever is less, collected at permit issuance and restricted to neighborhood parks of 25 acres or less.	Clark County, at fee work-up	NRS 278.4983 · Fees/Calculator

Why these projects get rejected or stall

Grading plan not prepared by a Nevada registered civil engineer, or grading plan and site plan footprints and setbacks that do not match each other (BPG-182).
Geotechnical report older than one year without letters of applicability — or missing entirely on an addition of 600 sq ft or more (BPG-182).
Missing pad certification or finished-floor-elevation certificate, which stops the foundation and framing inspections respectively (BPG-182).
Missing ICC-ES evaluation report numbers for stucco systems, roofing materials and prefabricated framing components (BPG-182).
A wood-burning fireplace specified below 4,000 ft elevation, where it is prohibited unless the unit meets federal EPA standards (BPG-182).
Dust control permit not obtained when disturbance exceeds a quarter acre, or grading started before the grading permit issued (Title 30 §30.06.11E).
Land use approval or civil engineering requirements left out of the schedule — the County’s own 21-day figure expressly excludes both (BPG-182).
Applying under the wrong review category, such as a custom home submitted as Residential Minor, since the categories carry different definitions and day goals (Plan Review Timelines).

Verify before you start

Lot legality and the district standards that apply to it — minimum lot area, coverage, setbacks and height for your specific district.
Whether the parcel is in a flood zone. Clark County Public Works, (702) 455-4600, per BPG-182.
Whether offsite improvements and bonding will be required under Title 30 section 30.04.08, and whether a County grading agreement is worth pursuing.
Your water purveyor commitment and the meter size, which drives the largest single fee on most projects.
Sewer versus septic, and whether a Southern Nevada Health District septic permit is in play.
Whether hillside rules apply to the parcel, because that changes disturbance limits and adds Design Review.
Your contractor's NSCB classification and monetary limit against the contract value, plus the active Multi-Jurisdictional Business License and matching DBA.
The exact code edition in force at your application date, given the January 2026 code changes in both the County and the City.

What we could not confirm

What we could not confirm, said out loud.

Clark County building permit fee dollar amounts are not published in retrievable form. The Title 22.02 fee listing at §22.02.385 was not retrievable, and the County points users to a calculator that returns estimates only (fee calculator). So the honest description of a County permit fee is "valuation-based, with plan review at 65%," not a number.

The residential construction (park) tax amount is n.a. Clark County Code Title 19.05 text could not be retrieved; only the NRS 278.4983 statutory cap of $1,000 per unit or 1% of valuation, whichever is less, is known (NRS 278.4983). The State Water Impact Fee under NRS 540.61 to 540.091 has no published amount either.

Henderson’s numeric district standards and fee amounts are both n.a. The RS, RM and RH density and setback tables were not located in the sections we could parse, and the fee PDFs are script-loaded (Henderson Development Code; Henderson Fees Schedules). Henderson’s and North Las Vegas’s adopted code editions were also n.a. from the pages retrieved.

North Las Vegas Title 17 zoning standards could not be retrieved at all. Municode and the mirror both failed, so this page carries no NLV district numbers. Start at the NLV permit center and call (702) 633-1536.

Currency warning on our two most-cited documents. BPG-182 carries a document date of 2/17/2017 and still references the UBC and 13 SEER prescriptive values. Its process, clearance sequence and submittal list are the County’s own published guidance and we use them for that. Every numeric code value in it should be verified against the January 2026 adoptions — Clark County went to the 2024 I-Codes and 2024 IECC effective January 11, 2026 with the 2023 NEC (Clark County Building Codes).

The City of Las Vegas has two pages that disagree about its own code edition. Building & Safety lists the 2024 IBC, IRC, IEBC, ISPSC, UPC, UMC, IECC, IFC and IWUIC plus the 2023 NEC effective January 2026, with the 2019 City Administrative Code retained (City Building & Safety), while the permit landing page still describes the 2021 IBC/IFC adopted September 2022 with a March 23, 2023 effective date (Building & Offsite Permits). Confirm the governing edition with the plans examiner before design. Also note the City fee PDF is titled "2020 Building User Fees" with Table 3-A effective July 1, 2021.

Sources

This page is general reference information for the Las Vegas Valley, compiled from published code and agency schedules. It is not legal advice, not an engineering opinion, and not a bid. Codes change — confirm against the current adopted version for your address before you rely on any figure here. Corrections: corrections@buildinglasvegas.com

Other build types

Casitas & ADUsBackyard units, and the caps nobody mentions Luxury & custom homesHillside grading, guard-gated review, one-off design MultifamilyApartments, condominiums, build-to-rent CommercialGround-up and tenant improvement

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