Unincorporated Mohave County building permits

Tips & gotchas

• Unincorporated Mohave County is administered directly by the Mohave County Development Services Building Division — this is distinct from the county's four incorporated cities (Kingman, Bullhead City, Lake Havasu City, Colorado City), each of which runs its own independent building department and code adoption under Arizona's per-jurisdiction code authority (A.R.S. Title 9/Title 11).
• Mohave County is one of the largest counties by land area in the continental United States, and its own fee schedule reflects this directly: solar inspection fees alone range from $41.32 near Kingman/Bullhead City/Lake Havasu to $323.56 for remote Planet Ranch, purely based on inspector travel distance across the unincorporated area's nine defined geographic zones.
• Fences and block walls up to 7 feet tall (measured from the lowest adjacent property grade) do not require any building permit at all — a notably permissive threshold. But a fence/wall serving as a pool barrier must still independently meet the 60-inch ISPSC barrier standard regardless of this general exemption, and manufactured-home skirting never counts as 'fencing' for the exemption.
• An approved septic system is a hard prerequisite for any permit involving plumbing — this is a separate approval track (Environmental Health/Septic & Well Permitting) that can be slower than the building permit itself; start it early.
• Properties in 'the Strip' (the portion of Mohave County north of the Grand Canyon, physically separated from the rest of the county) must submit three sets of plans instead of the standard two for building, steel/engineered accessory structures, and non-prescriptive engineered designs.
• CORRECTED 2026-07-13: the county publishes TWO dedicated review-timeframe documents, not one. The '1- and 2-Family Residential and Manufactured Home Permit Time Frames' document (Administrative Completeness 10 working days + Substantive Review 20 working days = 30 working days combined, per A.R.S. §§ 11-1604/11-1605) covers residential and manufactured-home permits. A separate document, 'Licensing Time Frames for Commercial-Multiple Family Residential-Industrial Applications' (Management Practice B-2012-001), covers commercial building permits: Administrative Completeness 10 working days + Substantive Review 35 working days = 45 working days combined. No dedicated timeframe document was found for electrical/plumbing/mechanical-only, solar, pool, fence, or demolition permits — those permit types still carry a documented reviewTimelineNote rather than a fabricated estimate, per this project's zero-tolerance verified bar.
• AFCI (arc-fault circuit interrupter) protection has been relaxed from mandatory to optional for most one- and two-family dwelling branch circuits under local NEC/IRC amendments — EXCEPT bedroom circuits, which remain mandatory. Several other 2017 NEC/2018 IRC electrical safety provisions (tamper-resistant receptacles, GFCI on dishwashers/laundry outlets) are similarly relaxed to 'may' rather than 'shall' — verify current requirements rather than assuming the stricter national-code default applies.
• Plumbing, gas piping, and electrical systems are only allowed in structures with PERMANENT foundations under Mohave County's local amendments — auger-type tie-downs or similar anchoring do not qualify, even though the same local amendments allow light-frame accessory structures (like sheds) to sit on pressure-treated skids for structural purposes alone.
• A Standardized Plan Review program exists for both residential building plans and solar installations — repeat/production builders who register a design once receive a steeply reduced review fee (10% of the permit fee for residential; $15.00 flat for solar) on every subsequent identical submittal, valid until the next code adoption cycle.
• Mohave County offers a fee waiver for low-to-moderate-income single-family housing built by volunteer labor under a County-approved nonprofit, provided the home isn't rented, leased, or sold within one year of the Certificate of Occupancy — a notable affordability provision not commonly found in Arizona county fee ordinances.
• A Building Permit Amnesty program exists for structures built before December 31, 2007 without a required zoning permit, provided the applicant can document the construction date and ownership at the time — useful for legalizing legacy unpermitted structures uncovered during a sale, refinance, or title search.
• The Building Division's physical office (3250 E. Kino Avenue, Kingman) is a different address than the Mohave County Administration Building (700 W. Beale Street, Kingman) that houses the Board of Supervisors — both addresses appear across county web materials, so confirm you're headed to the correct building before an in-person visit.
• Mohave County independently adopted the full 2018 ICC code suite (including the International Property Maintenance Code and International Swimming Pool and Spa Code, both less commonly adopted county-wide) plus the 2017 NEC — one edition cycle behind jurisdictions that have moved to 2024 codes, consistent with the adoption cycle seen at Bullhead City within the same county.
• CLOSED 2026-07-23: no published county timeframe document has ever existed for standalone electrical/plumbing/mechanical trade permits (confirmed via a Wayback CDX scan of the Building Division's entire archived /documents/ history), and the county's own 'Licensing Time Frames & Exceptions - Brochure C' page explains why — it quotes A.R.S. §11-1605(K) verbatim: permits 'issued within seven working days after receipt of the initial application' are exempt from the state's licensing-timeframe-disclosure statute. Since standalone electrical/plumbing/mechanical permits are typically issued over-the-counter/same-day, they fall outside the statute's disclosure requirement entirely, unlike the plan-review-heavy residential (30 working days) and commercial (45 working days) building-permit categories, which ARE subject to §11-1605 and do carry published SLAs.