Yavapai County’s Home of My Own program, which launched in 2020, aims to encourage housing construction by providing pre-approved single-family home plans for landowners who wish to build on their property. Available options through the program are a one-bedroom house with 607 square feet of livable space, a two-bedroom with 787 square feet and a three-bedroom with 1,300 square feet, all of which feature walk-in closets or storage and carports or garages.

“We’ve issued permits for 61 planned so far,” assistant director of development services Mark Lusson said. “Out of those 61, 19 have been completed and received their certificate of occupancy … The numbers between the most popular one and the least popular one are separated by about three or four permits issued. I think the three-bedroom and the one-bedroom are just about neck and neck, and the two-bedroom is the least popular, and that’s only three or four permits behind the three-bedroom. It’s pretty even on popularity with all of them.”

“These homes are designed for virtually any property in Yavapai County that is zoned for residential use,” director of development services Jeremy Dye said. “They’ll fit just about anywhere. The basic process is they download the plans that they want, they’ll submit that through our portal for review and then the permit can be issued from there. The property owner is still responsible for their own water system, whether it’s a municipal water system or some kind of a water company or a well, whatever the case is, and then they are also responsible for their own septic system or their own wastewater system.”

While the septic and water systems require separate permits, Dye pointed out that homebuilders can apply for those permits concurrently with their application for a building permit.

“In terms of permits, it’s just going to be the house permit and it’s going to be the septic permit,” Dye said. “If they’re going to put a well on their property, that would be a separate permit through ADWR. If they’re going to build a house themselves and live on their property while they’re building it, that would require a temporary dwelling permit. Anywhere from two to four permits.”

“There is a few reports and different criteria that still need to be met,” Lusson said. “You need that slab-grade build site. You don’t have any type of stilt package or engineering. These are all built for slabgrade only … They still follow the same inspections required, because it still is your foundation, slab grade, framing, trusses, drywall, electrical, all that still follows the required inspections. Unfortunately there is no express lane through that through this program.”

However, Lusson added, “because they are pre-approved plans created by us for Yavapai County residents, it does significantly speed up the permitting process because we’ve already looked at these plans dozens and dozens of times, and they’re our plans, we know that there are no calculations that have to be verified or anything like that. Permit review being seven to 10 business days, these are being done in about three business days.”

The county has also lightened the burden on homebuilders by providing both next-day inspections and now remote video inspections that can be scheduled at any time convenient for the builder.

“I was just looking at one that had recently received its certificate of occupancy, and they actually had, it looks like 28 inspections,” Dye said. “Some of those passed, some of those failed, so I would say on an average construction for a Home of My Own house, it would be somewhere in the 25 to 30 inspections range. Which is typical for any kind of a home.”

“Just talking with the homeowners and the contractors who build them, on average, the one-bedroom is being built for around $65,000, the two-bedroom is being built for, on average, around $100,000, and the three-bedroom is being built for, on average, around $150,000,” Lusson said. “And that’s county-wide. Materials and labor. It is not including the septic or the land.” Completion times for the three-bedroom model have been on the order of five months.

The program has been sufficiently successful that county development services plans to add three more sets of plans “hopefully within the next few weeks,” Dye said. “In designing these next sets, we took a lot of the feedback we heard, both positive and negative, from folks that had downloaded these plans and looked at them and built them, and incorporated that into these new sets of plans. A good example of that would be having the split floor plan on the twobedroom. Things like that. We wanted to improve on the last iteration.”

“I would think probably the biggest criticism, which would basically undo the intent, is people wish they had more options to change like a wall or some outlets or anything,” Lusson said. “But those are things that are incorporated in the design and stamped by the architect, so then to change anything before or during construction would basically undo the purpose of the program.”

How Sedona Stacks Up

“We’ve discussed implementing something similar, but don’t think it would be used broadly or provide enough cost savings to make a difference,” Sedona Housing Manager Shannon Boone said. “Maybe if we can get an ADU ordinance, we could have some pre-approved ADU plans, but that will have to wait to see what comes from the current state legislative session regarding ADUs as STRs.”

“I don’t believe affordable home ownership is being hampered by permitting timeframes in Sedona,” Boone added.

Boone also said that the Home of My Own plans had only been used by “three or four spec builders.”

According to Sedona Community Development Director Steve Mertes, processing a city building permit application usually requires eight to 11 business days, as compared to three for the county’s Home of My Own program, followed by five to seven days for each review of corrections that the city requires to be made to the plans, a step that the county program eliminates.

“Most often, the time that the applicant takes for corrections to be turned back in is more that the entire time that the city has had their hands on the project reviewing and processing it,” Mertes said. “My guess would be that 40% to 50% of our applicants’ resubmittals do not fully address the initial plan review comments, thus leading to another round of reviews. Each additional round of reviews can take another three-plus weeks depending on how fast and correctly the applicant can resubmit.”

Mertes added that “permits for single-family homes are usually issued within two to three months,” and that in the “vast majority” of cases where it takes longer than three months, the delay is due to the applicant’s failure to address the city’s review comments.

The city of Sedona’s Housing Department is currently planning to spend $18.9 million on subsidizing four affordable housing apartment projects at subsidies of between $77,272 and $168,478 per affordable unit. Estimated build cost per unit on these projects ranges from $257,492 to $450,419.