Why do fence permits get rejected?

Because the drawing does not prove compliance with a rule, and usually because the applicant had the wrong rule in mind before they drew anything. Fence height is the clearest case: of the 67 US cities whose fence ordinances are encoded on this site from each city's own municipal code, 55 state a rear-yard cap, and 17 of those 55 are not the 6 feet that nationally-written fence guides quote. A drawing built to a number from the wrong city is complete, accurate and still rejected.

Is a 6-foot back garden fence allowed everywhere?

No. Across the 55 cities here that state a rear-yard limit, 38 allow 6 feet and 17 do not — the stated values run from 4' to 8'. Some of those cities are stricter than the guide and some are more generous, so the guide costs you a rejection in one direction and a shorter fence than you were entitled to in the other. Read your own city's code.

Does my city's fence ordinance tell me what to draw?

Probably not, and that is the structural problem. Of the 67 ordinances encoded here, 5 mention a drawing at all and only 1 — Tarpon Springs, FL — ties one to the fence permit submittal. The rules live in the code and the drawing requirements, where they are written down at all, live in a counter handout or a checklist on the department's website. Chesapeake, VA is what that looks like: the city asks for a survey or scaled site plan with the fence marked, and says so on its zoning page rather than in its ordinance. Ask your building department for the fence packet before you draw, not after.

What has to be on the site plan itself?

A scaled, dimensioned plot plan: your lot with its boundaries, the buildings already on it, the proposed fence with its lengths, height, material and gate widths, the distance from the fence to each boundary, a stated scale and a north arrow. Existing fence that is staying should be drawn separately from what you are adding. Anything geometric that your code mentions — a corner sight triangle, an easement — has to be visible on the sheet, because the reviewer has no other way to check it.

Can I draw it myself, or do I have to pay someone?

You can draw it yourself. Fence Plotter produces the plot plan free, on a satellite image of your own address, using the county's parcel outline where we have it — and for the cities whose ordinances are encoded here it also checks the fence you drew against that city's own height and setback numbers before you print. It is a permit drawing, not a land survey, and it says so on the sheet.

Why fence permits get rejected

Almost everything written about this says your drawing was incomplete, and it is usually written by somebody who sells drawings. That is half the answer. The other half is that a drawing is rejected against a rule — and the rule is the part people get wrong before they draw anything.

The short version

Fence height advice is written nationally — “about four feet in front, six in the back” — and permits are issued locally. Of the 67 US cities whose fence ordinances we have encoded from each city's own municipal code, or from the fence rules its zoning office publishes where that code is not readable as text, 55 state a rear-yard limit and 17 of them are not 6 feet. A fence drawn to the number from the wrong city is complete, accurate, to scale, and rejected.

Then there is the structural problem underneath it. Of those same 67 ordinances, 5 mention a drawing at all and 1 ties one to the fence permit submittal. The code tells you the rule. Something else — a counter handout, a checklist, a phone call — tells you how to prove it, and applicants routinely never see that second document.

The number everyone repeats, against 55 cities that wrote their own

38 of the 55 cities here that state a rear-yard cap do allow 6 feet, so the national guide is right more often than not. These are the 17 where it is wrong — in both directions, which is the part that costs money either way.

Cities whose stated rear-yard fence height limit differs from 6 feet
City	Rear-yard cap	Versus the guide
Grosse Pointe Shores, MI	4'	Stricter — a 6' fence here is a rejection
Grosse Pointe Woods, MI	4'	Stricter — a 6' fence here is a rejection
St. Clair Shores, MI	6'6"	More generous — you may build taller than you thought
Abilene, TX	7'	More generous — you may build taller than you thought
Chandler, AZ	7'	More generous — you may build taller than you thought
Greensboro, NC	7'	More generous — you may build taller than you thought
Ann Arbor, MI	8'	More generous — you may build taller than you thought
Cedar Park, TX	8'	More generous — you may build taller than you thought
Durham, NC	8'	More generous — you may build taller than you thought
Gilbert, AZ	8'	More generous — you may build taller than you thought
Jacksonville, FL	8'	More generous — you may build taller than you thought
Killeen, TX	8'	More generous — you may build taller than you thought
Raleigh, NC	8'	More generous — you may build taller than you thought
Round Rock, TX	8'	More generous — you may build taller than you thought
Sandy Springs, GA	8'	More generous — you may build taller than you thought
Scottsdale, AZ	8'	More generous — you may build taller than you thought
Tempe, AZ	8'	More generous — you may build taller than you thought

2 of them cap the back garden at 4' and then sell the rest back to you for a signature: you may build to 6' with the adjoining owner's written consent submitted with the application. That is not a drawing problem, and no site-plan service will catch it for you.

The front yard is worse

39 of these 67 cities state a front-yard cap, and between them they use 7 different numbers running from 2'6" to 6'. Of the 37 cities that state both a front and a rear limit, 36 use different numbers for the two.

Stated front-yard fence height limits and the cities that use them
Front-yard cap	Cities	Which
2'6"	2	Abilene, TX, Grosse Pointe Woods, MI
3'	9	Cedar Park, TX, Chandler, AZ, Glendale, AZ, Goodyear, AZ, Grosse Pointe, MI, Harper Woods, MI, Quincy, MA, Round Rock, TX, Tampa, FL
3'4"	1	Phoenix, AZ
3'6"	4	Avondale, AZ, Buckeye, AZ, Mercer Island, WA, Seminole, FL
4'	21	Ann Arbor, MI, Chesapeake, VA, Clearwater, FL, Colorado Springs, CO, Durham, NC, Georgetown, TX, Greensboro, NC, Grosse Pointe Farms, MI, Jacksonville, FL, Killeen, TX, Largo, FL, Newark, OH, Orlando, FL, Philadelphia, PA, Raleigh, NC, Royal Oak, MI, Sandy Springs, GA, Seattle, WA, St. Petersburg, FL, Tarpon Springs, FL, Tempe, AZ
4'6"	1	Bellevue, WA
6'	1	Federal Way, WA

The two ends of that spread are worth reading in the cities' own words, because neither is reachable from a national average.

Grosse Pointe Woods, MILowest front-yard cap here · 2'6"

Front yard fences must be at least 24″ and no more than 30″ tall, measured from the property grade line.

Source: Grosse Pointe Woods, MI municipal code

Federal Way, WAHighest front-yard cap here · 6'

Fences and railings up to 6' may stand in any required yard. The code draws no front/side/rear distinction, so 6' applies in the front yard as well as the rear.

Source: Federal Way, WA municipal code

What the reviewer is checking that only the drawing can settle

Height is a number you can be told over the phone. These are the rules that need a scaled plan, because they are about where things sit relative to each other. Each count is how many of the 67 encoded ordinances carry that kind of provision.

Corner-lot sight obstruction52 of 67 cities

A rule about a triangle measured from an intersection. Nothing in an application settles it except a scaled drawing showing where the fence sits relative to both street lines.

Prohibited or restricted materials40 of 67 cities

Barbed wire, razor wire, electrified strands and exposed spikes are banned outright in most of these codes, and several restrict chain link or wood by where it faces. The permit sheet has to name the material.

Easements and watercourses12 of 67 cities

A fence may be legal at its height and still sit across a utility easement. The reviewer checks this by eye against the plan, which is why an easement the applicant did not draw is a correction.

Finished side facing out15 of 67 cities

Which way the rails face is not a dimension, and it is a rule in a meaningful minority of these codes. It belongs in the notes or the elevation on the sheet.

Does the ordinance tell you what to draw? Almost never

We searched all 67 encoded ordinances for any mention of a site plan, a plot plan or a scaled drawing. 5 cities use one of those phrases, and reading them in context is more instructive than the count:

Tarpon Springs, FLTies a drawing to the permit

A fence permit is required from the Building Development Department, and the owner or owner's agent must be present to apply with a legible survey showing dimensions. An inspection is required after installation.

The one city of the forty-nine whose fence code names the document you must bring and says what it has to show. If more codes read like this, fewer applications would come back.

Source: Tarpon Springs, FL municipal code · all Tarpon Springs, FL fence rules

Scottsdale, AZMeans something else

A permit is required to build any fence over 3', to add height to an existing fence over 3', or to replace an existing fence. Fences up to 3' need no permit, but courtesy site plan approval is required to confirm the wall does not encroach on easements or watercourses.

Read it twice: the only place Scottsdale's fence code says "site plan" is the case that needs no permit at all. The fences that do need one are told their height limits and nothing about the drawing.

Source: Scottsdale, AZ municipal code · all Scottsdale, AZ fence rules

Sammamish, WAMeans something else

A fence over 6' is allowed only along a side or rear yard line shared with a separately owned property, and only under a site plan and maintenance agreement executed with that owner and recorded with King County Records before the building permit is issued. The segment above 6' may not exceed 32 linear feet, and no fence may exceed 8'.

The site plan here is an instrument recorded with the county between two neighbours, not a sheet handed to a plan reviewer. It is a much larger errand than a permit drawing and it applies only above 6'.

Source: Sammamish, WA municipal code · all Sammamish, WA fence rules

Jacksonville, FLMeans something else

A lot with more than one required front yard may take a fence up to 8' in one of them, but only if that fence is approved as part of site plan or sketch plan approval under Section 656.404.

The drawing here buys an exception, not a permit. Jacksonville's ordinary fence applicant is told a 4' front-yard cap and nothing about what to submit; the site plan appears only for the homeowner who wants to exceed it on a second frontage.

Source: Jacksonville, FL municipal code · all Jacksonville, FL fence rules

Harper Woods, MIMeans something else

Barbed-wire and electrified fences are prohibited unless the Planning Commission approves them for public safety as part of an approved site plan.

A site plan in the land-use sense — the thing a commission approves for a development — not a residential fence drawing. It has no bearing on an ordinary back-garden permit.

Source: Harper Woods, MI municipal code · all Harper Woods, MI fence rules

The other 62 say nothing about the drawing at all. They are not being careless — submittal requirements normally live in the building department's own application packet, which is a different document in a different place, often not in the code and sometimes not on the website. So the single most useful thing you can do before drawing anything is ring your building department and ask for the fence permit packet.

What these counts are, and what they are not

These 67 cities were chosen because their counties publish parcel data we can use, not at random — they sit in 13 states, and there are roughly 19,500 incorporated places in the US. The rules were transcribed to drive height, setback and material checks, so a submittal requirement written elsewhere in a city's code, or in a counter handout that is not code at all, can be absent from this sample. Read these numbers as a map of how much cities differ, which is what they are good for, and your own city's fence handout as the answer that binds you.

Getting it right the first time

Start from your city's number, not a national one

For the 67 cities here, the height and setback rules are encoded from the city's own code and the drawing is checked against them before you print — front and rear caps, setbacks, prohibited materials, and the neighbour consent 2 of these cities require above 4'. See which cities are covered.

Draw what the reviewer checks, not what looks tidy

Dimensioned property lines, a stated scale, a north arrow, the proposed fence with lengths and gate widths, existing structures, and existing fence kept separate from what you are adding. The full list of what belongs on a fence permit site plan goes through it item by item, including the two things we do not draw.

You almost certainly do not need a survey first

It is the most expensive wrong turn in this process. One of these 67 cities requires a land survey with the application — the rest ask for a scaled plot plan, which you can draw yourself.

Questions people actually ask

Why do fence permits get rejected?: Because the drawing does not prove compliance with a rule, and usually because the applicant had the wrong rule in mind before they drew anything. Fence height is the clearest case: of the 67 US cities whose fence ordinances are encoded on this site from each city's own municipal code, 55 state a rear-yard cap, and 17 of those 55 are not the 6 feet that nationally-written fence guides quote. A drawing built to a number from the wrong city is complete, accurate and still rejected.
Is a 6-foot back garden fence allowed everywhere?: No. Across the 55 cities here that state a rear-yard limit, 38 allow 6 feet and 17 do not — the stated values run from 4' to 8'. Some of those cities are stricter than the guide and some are more generous, so the guide costs you a rejection in one direction and a shorter fence than you were entitled to in the other. Read your own city's code.
What about the front yard?: The front-yard cap is where the variation is worst. 39 of these 67 cities state one and they use 7 different numbers, from 2'6" to 6'. Of the 37 cities that state both a front and a rear limit, 36 use different numbers for the two, so "how tall may my fence be" has no single answer even inside one city.
Does my city's fence ordinance tell me what to draw?: Probably not, and that is the structural problem. Of the 67 ordinances encoded here, 5 mention a drawing at all and only 1 — Tarpon Springs, FL — ties one to the fence permit submittal. The rules live in the code and the drawing requirements, where they are written down at all, live in a counter handout or a checklist on the department's website. Chesapeake, VA is what that looks like: the city asks for a survey or scaled site plan with the fence marked, and says so on its zoning page rather than in its ordinance. Ask your building department for the fence packet before you draw, not after.
What has to be on the site plan itself?: A scaled, dimensioned plot plan: your lot with its boundaries, the buildings already on it, the proposed fence with its lengths, height, material and gate widths, the distance from the fence to each boundary, a stated scale and a north arrow. Existing fence that is staying should be drawn separately from what you are adding. Anything geometric that your code mentions — a corner sight triangle, an easement — has to be visible on the sheet, because the reviewer has no other way to check it.
Can I draw it myself, or do I have to pay someone?: You can draw it yourself. Fence Plotter produces the plot plan free, on a satellite image of your own address, using the county's parcel outline where we have it — and for the cities whose ordinances are encoded here it also checks the fence you drew against that city's own height and setback numbers before you print. It is a permit drawing, not a land survey, and it says so on the sheet.

Start with your address. If your county is covered, the real lot lines come up on their own — and the fence you draw is checked against your city's numbers before you print.

Draw my site plan →

Fence Plotter prepares the drawings your application asks for. It is not a land survey, it does not file anything and it does not approve anything — confirm height, setback, material and submittal requirements with your building department before you build. Are you a building department? This tool can live on your own permit page.