Which city line your lot sits on
Which West U Is Your House In, and Why It Changes Your Rules
Updated September 2026
Which city is a West U address actually in, and what changes about the rules depending on the answer?
Chapter 42 allows a single-family lot of 3,500 square feet inside the City of Houston with wastewater collection service, where West University Place sets 5,000 square feet for a Single-Family building site established before 24 October 1987.
Paige Martin, Houston Properties Team, West U
Source: City of Houston Code of Ordinances, Chapter 42, Subdivisions, Developments and Platting, Article III, August 2026.
What do people mean when they say West U?
On this page, West U means the City of West University Place; Southampton, Boulevard Oaks and Rice Village sit inside the City of Houston. Every content page on this site opens with that sentence, and this page is the long form of it: those two words cover addresses in more than one city, and the city an address is in decides which rule book governs the lot.
West University Place writes its own zoning ordinance, Appendix A to its Code of Ordinances, and divides itself into named districts: the Single-Family District, the Rotated Corner Overlay District, the Old Building Site Overlay District, the Townhouse District, the First General Residential District, the Second General Residential District, the Commercial District, the Town Center Commercial District and Planned Development Districts. The version read is dated 17 March 2026, with Articles 3, 4 and 5 amended by Ordinance No. 3066 on 22 April 2024.
The City of Houston works from a different kind of document. The Planning and Development Department's own statement is that development in the city is governed by ordinance codes that address how property can be subdivided, that the city has no zoning, and that the city codes do not address land use (read July 2026). Chapter 42 of the city's Code of Ordinances is the land development ordinance that does the work there.
The City of Southside Place is a third city inside the same few square miles, with its own building department. The market figures published on this site cover West University Place together with the Southside area beside it, and they carry the date September 2026, while the zoning, subdivision and tree rules below apply city by city.
How do you find out which city your house is in?
The taxing units a property sits in are printed on its own appraisal record. The Harris Central Appraisal District's instruction is to go to the page for your account and click the blue word Jurisdictions in the heading of the table of jurisdictions, or to call the district at the numbers on its contact page (read September 2026). The city on that list is the line that changes with the boundary, while the county, school and special-district lines mostly do not.
Two notes travel with that display. If a jurisdiction is inactive it is shown in non-bold print on a blue background, and an inactive jurisdiction may still tax property even though it does not participate in the district's budget. If a tax rate for a unit is blank, the district does not yet have the information, and every rate is expressed as dollars per $100 taxable value.
An address settles the mail rather than the jurisdiction. The City of Southside Place writes its own contact address as Houston, TX 77005 (read September 2026), so a Houston line in an address is not the answer to which city governs a parcel.
Cross-check the account against the collector's own numbering. The Harris County Tax Office publishes its jurisdiction rate table by code: 085 for the City of West University Place, 079 for the City of Southside Place, 061 for the City of Houston, 040 for Harris County and 001 for Houston ISD (read September 2026). Where the city on the account and the city code on that table agree, two records say the same thing.
What changes if the house is in West University Place?
Inside the city limits the zoning ordinance applies, and the boundaries of its districts are delineated on the Zoning District Map, adopted and made part of the ordinance as fully as if the map were set out in it in detail. One or more originals of that map, bearing the signature of the Mayor and the attestation of the City Secretary and carrying the same date as the ordinance that last adopted or amended it, are filed with the City Secretary and kept as original records.
District boundary lines usually run along streets, alleys, property lines or extensions of them, and the ordinance carries its own rules for uncertainty. Boundaries indicated as approximately following the right-of-way lines of streets, highways or alleys are construed to follow those lines, boundaries indicated as approximately following City limits are construed as following City limits, and any area not clearly included in another district is within the SF-3 District.
Everything else hangs off the building site. Every structure must sit on a site that is contiguous and under common fee-simple ownership and that consists of one or more whole subdivided lots, and when two or more building sites are merged or divided the approved site designation forms are filed in the Administrative Official's Office and in the Harris County Real Property Records.
The envelope on a West U site is public and short to state: at least 45 percent of a building site must stay open and at least 35 percent pervious, framed area for all buildings is capped at 80 percent of the site area, and a principal building is capped at two and a half storeys and 35 feet, 25 feet in a rear yard. The minimum width, depth and area of the site itself turn on whether it was established with its present boundaries before 24 October 1987.
Chapter 82 of the city code then puts a gate on the permit. Once a permit for development or predevelopment activity is in effect on a site, every large tree on that site counts as a protected tree, and a large tree is one with a circumference of 19 inches or more. The building official may not issue such a permit until the applicant has filed a tree survey the urban forester has approved and tree disposition conditions approved by the forester have been inserted into the permit. Chapter 18 makes a permit necessary before anyone erects, moves, improves, removes, constructs, enlarges, repairs, converts, demolishes or alters a structure, raises grade, or engages in pre-development activity (city Code of Ordinances, read March 2026).
What changes if the house is in the City of Houston?
Chapter 42 is the city's land development ordinance, and the Planning and Development Department checks subdivision plats for the proper subdivision of land, for adequate street or right-of-way and building lines, and for compliance with it. Development site plans are checked against regulations that include parking, tree and shrub requirements, setbacks and access. Applications for subdivision plats, subdivision variances, public hearing items, name changes, extensions of approval and recordation are submitted through the department's Plat Tracker platform.
The sharpest difference between the two rule books sits in the lot minimums. Chapter 42 sets the minimum lot size for a single-family residential lot with wastewater collection service at 3,500 square feet for a lot within the city and 5,000 square feet for a lot within the extraterritorial jurisdiction, except for lots within courtyard style development meeting the requirements of section 42-194 (Article III read August 2026; Section 42-181 amended by Ordinance No. 2023-801, effective 27 November 2023). A building site in the West University Place Single-Family District established with its present boundaries before 24 October 1987 may be 5,000 square feet at 50 feet of width and 100 feet of depth; a site established on or after that date needs 75 feet of width, 110 feet of depth and 8,250 square feet.
Chapter 42 allows a lot below its own minimum where the subdivision plat meets performance standards, either the compensating open space standards of section 42-182 or, for a plat within the city, the standards of section 42-184. A plat may not include a lot smaller than 1,400 square feet unless it meets further standards, including that the property is within the city, that all lots take vehicular access from the shared driveway or permanent access easement, and that the average lot size is at least 1,400 square feet, with a lot larger than 3,500 square feet counted as 3,500 square feet in that average.
Width and building lines work by rule rather than by district map. The minimum width of a lot along a street or shared driveway is 20 feet unless the ordinance allows otherwise, and may be 15 feet in a subdivision within the city where every lot takes access from a shared driveway or permanent access easement and the average width of all lots is at least 18 feet.
Except as the chapter otherwise requires or authorizes, for a lot restricted to single-family residential use the building line is 25 feet along the front and ten feet along the back and sides where the lot adjoins a collector street that is not an alley, and 20 feet along the front with ten feet at the back and side along a local street that is not an alley, reaching ten feet where the plat carries a typical lot layout and the plat notations the section requires; a garage or carport facing the street takes 20 feet. Each lot also has to be of sufficient size and shape to allow a single-family residential building that meets the Code, the Construction Code and the design manual, to carry the utility easements that building needs, and to have direct vehicular access from a street, shared driveway or alley.
If Houston has no zoning, what stops a teardown next door?
Deed restrictions carry the lot size character of many Houston blocks, and Chapter 42 has a process for the blocks they leave open. The city council may designate a special minimum lot size block or a special minimum lot size area within the city to preserve the lot size character of a single-family residential neighborhood that does not have a minimum lot size established by deed restrictions. A minimum lot size established that way prevails over any lesser minimum in the article, and such a requirement controls over all other provisions of the minimum lot size section.
The eligibility tests sit in Section 42-197, and each designation carries its own list. A block's list includes not less than one blockface and no more than two opposing blockfaces, all lots on each blockface, a contiguous area without out tracts, lots at least 60 percent of which are developed for or restricted to single-family use, and at least one lot without a minimum lot size established by deed restrictions. An area's list includes at least five blockfaces of five lots or more each, no more than 500 lots within the same subdivision plat or 400 lots within different subdivision plats, lots at least 80 percent of which are developed for or restricted to single-family use, and lots at least 10 percent of which do not have a minimum lot size established by deed restrictions.
Whether a particular block carries a designation is a question for the list: Section 42-197(a) says the department maintains a list of current special minimum lot size blocks and special minimum lot size areas on its website. What a block's own deed restrictions require is a separate document again, recorded rather than published by the city, and read one block at a time.
And if the house is in Southside Place?
The City of Southside Place runs its own Building Department, which develops and enforces the city's building, zoning and public nuisance ordinances and handles plan review, the issuing of building related permits and the records of those projects (read September 2026). It has adopted its own editions of the building, residential, energy conservation, fire, fuel gas, mechanical, plumbing, property maintenance, swimming pool and electrical codes, and it works from a Flood Prevention Ordinance and a Construction Ordinance of its own.
The permit set is the city's own as well, running from a building permit and contractor registrations to a fence permit, a flood plain permit, a demolition moving permit and a tree removal permit, and the department allows no construction activity and no inspections on an observed city holiday. For 2025 the Harris County Tax Office records an adopted city rate of $0.3408960 per $100 of taxable value for jurisdiction code 079, the City of Southside Place (read September 2026).
What does the boundary do to the tax bill?
The Harris County Tax Office's jurisdiction rate table puts the cities side by side, and the city line is the one that changes with the boundary.
West University Place is the only city in that table carrying a 2026 adopted rate: $0.2222190, with maintenance and operations at $0.1754320 and debt at $0.0467870, against a no-new-revenue rate of $0.2197610 and a voter-approval rate equal to the adopted rate. The 2026 cells for the other cities read 0.0000000 when the table was read, which is why the comparison below runs on tax year 2025.
The city is one line among several on a statement. West University Place lists the other jurisdictions its residents and businesses pay: Houston Independent School District, Harris County, the Harris County Flood Control District, the Port of Houston Authority, the Harris County Hospital District, the Harris County Department of Education and the Houston Community College District, and the Harris County Tax Office bills and collects the city's property taxes, payable at any of the 15 County Tax Offices (city taxes page, read September 2026). The city does not offer a homestead exemption to property owners other than those over 65 or disabled, and each of those exemptions is $185,000.
Three factors determine the total amount of taxes imposed on a property: the appraised value the appraisal district establishes, the exemptions the property is entitled to, and the tax rates set by the governing bodies of the taxing units it sits in. Harris County currently provides a 20 percent optional homestead exemption to all homeowners, and any taxing unit may offer an exemption of up to 20 percent of a home's value, with the governing body of each unit deciding whether it will offer the exemption and at what percentage (Harris Central Appraisal District, read September 2026).
| Jurisdiction code | Taxing entity | 2025 adopted rate |
|---|---|---|
| 085 | City of West University Place | $0.2294410 |
| 079 | City of Southside Place | $0.3408960 |
| 061 | City of Houston | $0.5191900 |
| 052 | City of Bellaire | $0.4174000 |
What can this page not tell you?
Which city a specific address is in. That is settled by the appraisal account for the property and by the recorded plat, one parcel at a time.
Where the city limits run on the ground. West University Place adopts its Zoning District Map by reference and files the originals with the City Secretary, so the drawn line lives in that record and in the ordinance's own rules for reading boundaries.
What the ordinances of the City of Southside Place require of a lot. Its Building Department names the code editions and the two building ordinances it works from, and the city holds the text, which is where a setback, a lot minimum or a subdivision rule there is settled.
Which Houston blocks carry a special minimum lot size designation, and what any block's deed restrictions require. The department keeps the list of current designations, and deed restrictions are recorded instruments read block by block.
What any of it is worth in dollars on a particular lot. No public record carries a land price, so that answer comes from a valuation rather than from a statistic.
Questions & answers
West U questions, answered
Is my house in the City of West University Place or in Houston?
West U covers addresses in more than one city. On this site West U means the City of West University Place, and Southampton, Boulevard Oaks and Rice Village sit inside the City of Houston. Which city governs your own lot is a fact about the parcel, settled from the appraisal account for the property and the recorded plat rather than from the neighborhood name.
The appraisal record is where the answer is written down. The Harris Central Appraisal District lists the taxing units a property sits in on the account page for that property, and the city among them is the line that changes with the boundary. The consequence is the rule book. Inside West University Place the city's own zoning ordinance applies, with district boundaries delineated on a Zoning District Map adopted by reference. Inside the City of Houston, Chapter 42 governs how land may be subdivided, platted and developed, and the city codes address subdivision rather than land use. The two set different minimum lot sizes, different setbacks and different permit paths, so the same plan can be workable on one side of a line and unworkable on the other.
How do I check which taxing units my house is in?
Open the page for your own appraisal account and read the units listed for it. The Harris Central Appraisal District tells you to go to the account page and follow the blue Jurisdictions heading above the table of units, and you can also call the district at the numbers on its contact page. Two notes go with the table: an inactive jurisdiction may still tax property, and a blank rate means the district does not yet have the information.
Every rate on that display is expressed as dollars per $100 taxable value, and three things drive the bill: the appraised value the appraisal district establishes, the exemptions the property is entitled to, and the rates the governing bodies of those units adopt (read September 2026). For a second reading, the Harris County Tax Office publishes the same units by jurisdiction code and tax year, with adopted, maintenance and operations, debt, no-new-revenue and voter-approval columns beside each one (read September 2026). If the city shown on your account and the city code on the collector's table agree, the answer rests on two documents rather than one.
Does Houston really have no zoning?
The Planning and Development Department regulates land development in Houston and inside its extraterritorial jurisdiction, and its own statement is that the city has no zoning: development is governed by codes about how land may be subdivided. Chapter 42 is that ordinance. The department also publishes a No Zoning Letter and Boundary Map for 2026, updated January 2026, and checks plats and development site plans against the code (read July 2026).
Two consequences follow for a lot there. The rules that decide what fits are subdivision and platting rules rather than land-use districts, so the questions are lot size, lot width, building lines and access. And what holds the lot size character of a block comes from its deed restrictions, or from a special minimum lot size designation the city council has made for a block or area that has no minimum lot size in its deed restrictions. The department checks subdivision plats for the proper subdivision of land, for adequate street or right-of-way and building lines, and for compliance with Chapter 42, and it checks development site plans against regulations that include parking, tree and shrub requirements, setbacks and access. Applications for plats, variances, name changes, extensions of approval and recordation run through its Plat Tracker platform.
What is Chapter 42, and what does it control?
Chapter 42 of the City of Houston Code of Ordinances covers subdivisions, developments and platting. It sets how land may be divided: minimum lot size and lot width, building lines by street class, the requirement that each lot be large enough and shaped to hold a single-family residential building with its utility easements and direct vehicular access, and the process for special minimum lot size blocks and areas (read August 2026).
With wastewater collection service, and except for lots within courtyard style development meeting section 42-194's requirements, the minimum single-family residential lot is 3,500 square feet within the city and 5,000 square feet in the extraterritorial jurisdiction. A plat may go below that where it meets the compensating open space standards of section 42-182 or, within the city, the standards of section 42-184, and no plat may include a lot under 1,400 square feet unless it meets further standards. A lot's minimum width along a street or shared driveway is 20 feet unless the ordinance allows otherwise, and may be 15 feet in a subdivision within the city where every lot takes access from a shared driveway or permanent access easement and the average width is at least 18 feet. Except as the chapter otherwise requires or authorizes, building lines run 25 feet at the front along a collector street that is not an alley and 20 feet at the front along a local street that is not an alley, reaching ten feet where the plat carries a typical lot layout and the notations the section requires, and 20 feet for a garage or carport facing the street.
How small can a lot be in Houston compared with West University Place?
With wastewater collection service, and except for lots within courtyard style development meeting section 42-194's requirements, Chapter 42's minimum single-family residential lot is 3,500 square feet inside the City of Houston and 5,000 square feet in the extraterritorial jurisdiction (read August 2026). In West University Place the smallest building site the ordinance recognizes in the Single-Family District is 5,000 square feet, and only where the site was established with its present boundaries before 24 October 1987 (ordinance read March 2026).
On the West U side, a site established on or after that date needs 75 feet of width, 110 feet of depth and 8,250 square feet, and the Old Building Site Overlay District holds an older site to 75 by 105 feet for 7,875 square feet. Which category a site falls into is a fact about its plat history. On the Houston side the floor can move in either direction. A plat meeting the performance standards of section 42-182 or section 42-184 may go below the stated minimum, while a special minimum lot size requirement designated under the chapter prevails over any lesser minimum in the article. So the question on a Houston block is the block's own designation and deed restrictions, and the question on a West U lot is the date its building site was established.
Why is my mailing address Houston if I live in another city?
A mailing address and a governing city are two different facts. The City of Southside Place writes its own contact address as Houston, TX 77005 (read September 2026), so a Houston line in an address settles the post rather than the jurisdiction. Which city taxes and permits a parcel is on its appraisal account, in the list of taxing units, and on the recorded plat.
The distinction has teeth because the rule books differ. A parcel inside West University Place is measured against that city's zoning ordinance and its tree chapter. A parcel inside the City of Houston is measured against Chapter 42's subdivision and platting rules. A parcel inside the City of Southside Place is permitted by that city's own Building Department. The city line also carries its own tax rate, while the county, school and special-district lines on a statement mostly do not change with it. Reading the jurisdictions list on the appraisal account, then matching the city against the collector's jurisdiction rate table by code, answers the question from records rather than from the postmark.
How much difference does the city line make to a tax bill?
The city line is the one line on a tax statement that changes with the boundary. The Harris County Tax Office's table, read September 2026, gives the 2025 adopted city rate per $100 of taxable value as $0.2294410 for the City of West University Place under code 085, $0.3408960 for the City of Southside Place under 079, and $0.5191900 for the City of Houston under 061.
West University Place is the only one of those cities carrying a 2026 adopted rate in the table as read: $0.2222190, with maintenance and operations at $0.1754320 and debt at $0.0467870. The 2026 no-new-revenue figure beside it is $0.2197610, and its voter-approval figure matches the adopted rate. The 2026 cells for the other units read 0.0000000 when the table was read, which is why the rates in the answer above are for tax year 2025. Exemptions move the same bill. West University Place offers $185,000 to an owner who qualifies for the over-65 or disabled exemption, and no general homestead exemption. Harris County currently provides a 20 percent optional homestead exemption to all homeowners, and any taxing unit may offer up to 20 percent of a home's value, with each governing body deciding whether to offer one and at what percentage (read September 2026).
Which city issues the permit for a rebuild on my street?
Whichever city the parcel is in issues it. In West University Place the building official issues the permit, and may not do so until the urban forester has approved the tree survey and the tree conditions are written in. In the City of Houston the Planning and Development Department handles plats and development site plans, with applications through Plat Tracker. In Southside Place the Building Department issues building related permits.
The trigger in West University Place is broad. Under Chapter 18 a permit from the building official is needed before anyone erects, moves, improves, removes, constructs, enlarges, repairs, converts, demolishes or alters a structure, raises grade, or engages in pre-development activity, and once such a permit is in effect every large tree on the site counts as protected, a large tree being one with a circumference of 19 inches or more. Southside Place works from its own adopted editions, among them the International Residential Code, 2021 Ed. and the International Property Maintenance Code, 2018 Ed., and construction activity and inspections pause on the city holidays it lists. Which of the three cities you deal with is established from the appraisal account and the plat, not from the street name.