Can you legally rent your basement in Utah County?

An Orem accessory apartment has to be inside the main residential building, and the owner has to live in one of the two units — either the house or the apartment. That owner-occupancy rule is the one that most often decides whether a purchase pencils out, because it rules out buying a house purely to rent both halves.

The part that catches people

Orem publishes a list of every legally approved accessory apartment in the city, by address and tax ID. If you're buying a house advertised as having a basement apartment, that list settles in about a minute whether the unit is legal or whether you're inheriting somebody's unpermitted project.

Vineyard allows an accessory dwelling unit within the home if the lot is at least 5,200 square feet and the unit meets building and fire code. A home with an ADU has to provide five onsite parking spaces on a paved surface or approved driveway, which is more than people expect and occasionally the binding constraint on a narrow lot.

The part that catches people

Vineyard runs ADU authorization through business licensing rather than purely as a building matter, and the license is renewed every two years with a fee and a code enforcement inspection. It's a separate track from the basement finish permit, it doesn't start itself, and it's worth opening early rather than at the end.

Lindon allows one accessory apartment per owner-occupied single-family home. Two limits catch people: lots of 6,000 square feet or less are excluded outright, and so are areas shown on the Lindon City Accessory Apartment Map — so this is a question about your specific address, not about Lindon generally. Homes approved as part of an R2 overlay project are also excluded.

The part that catches people

Lindon wants a site plan drawn to scale showing property lines and dimensions, existing buildings and their entrances, anything proposed, the distances to the property lines, and where the parking stalls go. That's a real drawing, not a sketch, and it's part of what we produce rather than something handed back to you.

Pleasant Grove allows an accessory apartment in the basement, over the garage, or in an addition, in the A-1, R-R, R-1, RM-7, DV and Grove mixed housing zones. The home has to stay owner occupied, backed by a signed owner's affidavit, and only one accessory apartment is allowed per dwelling.

The part that catches people

Registration is a separate step from the building permit — an Accessory Apartment Registration form with a $25 fee. It's the step most often missed, and missing it is a strange kind of failure: the construction passes every inspection and the unit still isn't legally registered to rent.

American Fork requires the owner to live in either the house or the accessory apartment — defined as full-time residency by the actual property owner. Parking is the item that surprises people: two off-street spaces for the accessory apartment on top of the two required for the house, so four spaces on the lot.

The part that catches people

The zoning approval and the building permit are two separate approvals in American Fork, and passing one tells you nothing about the other. We confirm what the parcel allows before scoping the unit, because the expensive version of this mistake is finding out after the drywall is up.

Cedar Hills permits accessory dwelling units in all residential zones unless the code prohibits them somewhere specific. The unit can be rented but cannot be sold or split off by deed — it stays part of the single-family property permanently.

The part that catches people

The accessory apartment registration permit becomes void the moment the house is sold, and the buyer has to apply for a new one. Two consequences: if you're buying a Cedar Hills home with an apartment, the legal unit does not simply come with it, and if you're selling one, a buyer who's counting on that rental income needs to know this before closing rather than after.

A unit inside the home remains the settled path in Highland while the detached rules are rewritten, and Highland basements are large enough that an internal unit rarely feels like a compromise. Utah's internal accessory dwelling unit statute applies here as it does statewide; the local requirements around owner occupancy, registration and parking are what we'd confirm for your address.

Utah's internal accessory dwelling unit statute applies in Alpine as it does everywhere in the state, so a unit inside an existing single-family home is a permitted use in single-family zones. We could not verify Alpine's local requirements around owner occupancy, registration and parking from a primary source, and we'd rather say that than guess — those are what we'd confirm for your address.

A unit inside the home is permitted on lots of 6,000 square feet or more, down from 8,000. The owner has to occupy one of the two structures, recorded as an affidavit against the property. Short-term rentals under 30 days are not allowed in a Lehi ADU.

The part that catches people

Lehi has applied moratoriums on new ADU permits in specific neighborhoods where sewer capacity is constrained. It's the one thing on this page that can make a fully qualifying lot a no, and it's decided by which part of the city you're in — so it's the first thing we check for a Lehi address.