What does a fence permit need?
Almost every US municipality requires a permit before you build a fence. The application typically asks for two things: a plot plan showing where the fence will sit on your property (with dimensions, distance from the street, and lot lines), and a fence elevation — a side-view sketch that conveys height, panel layout, and any gates.
Fence Plotter generates both from a satellite image of your lot and the fence you draw on it, in under two minutes. For supported cities we pull the actual parcel polygon from county GIS, so your fence sits on the surveyed property line. For everywhere else you trace from the satellite image — building departments accept owner-drawn plans as long as they're clearly dimensioned and to scale.
What you get
- Plot plan — top-down view of your lot with the fence drawn on it, every segment dimensioned in feet.
- Fence elevation — side view showing height, panel count, and gates.
- Real lot lines for supported cities — pulled from county GIS so your fence sits on the actual property boundary.
- Auto-filled permit form for tier-1 cities (e.g. Grosse Pointe Farms, MI).
- Universal PDF for everywhere else — any US building department can read it.
Frequently asked
- Do I really need a permit to build a fence?
- In almost every US municipality, yes — even for residential rear-yard fences. Cities want to know where the fence will sit on your property, how tall it will be, and that it doesn't violate sight-triangle, setback, or neighbor-consent rules. Skipping the permit is rarely worth it: cities can require you to tear down a non-conforming fence after the fact.
- What's a plot plan?
- A top-down drawing of your property showing the lot lines, your house, and the proposed fence — with dimensions and the distance from the street. Fence Plotter generates this automatically from a satellite image plus the fence you draw on it. For supported cities we use real parcel polygons from county GIS so the lot lines are surveyed.
- What's a fence elevation?
- A side-view sketch of the fence showing height, panel layout, and any gates. Most permit applications ask for one to confirm the fence isn't above the city's height limit. Fence Plotter draws this automatically from your fence specs.
- Will my city accept a homeowner-drawn plot plan?
- Yes — almost all US building departments accept owner-drawn plans as long as they're clearly dimensioned and to scale. A land survey is a separate thing that costs whatever a local firm quotes for your lot, and of the 67 cities whose fence codes are encoded here, one requires it with the application.
- How does Fence Plotter work?
- Type your address, and we load a satellite image of your lot. For supported cities we also overlay the actual parcel polygon. You draw your fence by clicking points on the map. Click a segment to mark it as a gate. Hit Download to get a permit-ready PDF — for tier-1 cities like Grosse Pointe Farms we also stamp your info onto the official city form.
- Is anything uploaded? Do I need to sign up?
- You never need to sign up — no account, no email, no payment. The fence you draw stays in your browser's local storage; the only things that take it off your device are ones you ask for — a share link, or asking us to post you a printed packet, which sends us that same link, carrying the drawing and the owner name, phone and property address you typed, though never the PDF itself. Your address is the exception: to locate your lot we send it to a geocoding service (Nominatim or Mapbox) in the web address of the request, so that company logs it. We then send the house number and street to our own parcel lookup — in the body of the request rather than the URL, so what our host writes down for that call is your IP address and a timestamp, without the address in it. We also count pageviews ourselves rather than through an analytics company: opening a page sends which page you opened and which page you came from to factscore.mrcto.ai, another site we run, and a few moments in the tool are counted the same way: when your permit packet PDF finishes generating we send that too, with which city you picked and whether county lot lines were found; when a lot is located, a fence is finished, the download menu is opened, a packet is asked for or the print dialog is opened we send the name of that step; and when you download the city permit form or the neighbour consent letter we send which of the two it was — never your address, your name, the fence you drew, the parcel number or any of the PDFs. No cookies, no cross-site tracking, though we do leave a random marker in your browser so a repeat visit can be counted as one person. Full detail is on our privacy page.
What it's not
Fence Plotter is not a substitute for a licensed land surveyor. The lot lines we use come from county GIS, which is accurate enough for most fence permits but is not survey-grade. If your city requires a stamped surveyor's plat, hire a surveyor. We also don't check for buried utilities — call 811 before you dig.