Building in Deer Valley: Design Rules for a New Home

Deer Valley is one of the most regulated places in Utah to build a house. Your HOA reviews the design. Park City reviews it again and issues the permit. The rules cover height, materials, color, lighting, snow and landscaping, and they add months to the front of a project.

This post covers new homes. If you are remodeling or adding on to a house or condo you already own, read our Deer Valley remodel guide instead.

Two reviews, in order

Start with your HOA's design guidelines. Each Deer Valley community writes its own, and they decide what the house can look like: massing, roof forms, stone and wood, colors, windows and site lighting. Get the current guidelines from the HOA or its manager before your architect draws anything.

Park City reviews the plans separately. Its planning department checks exterior design in the Residential Development zone, and its building department checks code. The city does not wait for HOA approval, but for exterior work in a registered HOA it requires an HOA notification before the limits of disturbance inspection. An approved permit does not mean your HOA is satisfied, and the reverse is true too.

The rules that shape the house

• Height is measured from existing grade. In the Residential Development zone the limit is 28 feet, or 33 feet with a roof pitched 4:12 or steeper. On a steep lot that limit, plus the building pad, decides the shape of the house before anything else does.
• Building pads are real lines. Many Deer Valley lots have a platted building pad. Building outside it needed a plat amendment in at least one recent case.
• Some materials are off the table. Park City bans vinyl and aluminum siding, synthetic stone and reflective metal roofs. Most HOAs narrow the choices further.
• Lights are reviewed with the plans. Exterior fixtures must be fully shielded, 3000K or warmer, with no uplighting of trees or walls.
• Snow cannot land on your neighbor. A roof that sheds onto a neighbor's property needs a recorded snow shed agreement or engineered snow retention.
• Landscaping gets a plan. New construction requires a landscape plan, and HOAs cannot ban water-wise landscaping.
• Wildfire rules apply. Park City's wildland urban interface code reviews the landscaping and home hardening plan with the permit.
• Sewer first. A new home needs a sewer receipt from the Snyderville Basin Water Reclamation District before the permit.

Construction rules on the site

• Work hours: 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday. Extensions need a written request two business days ahead.
• No work on restricted dates, including Thanksgiving, Christmas, Presidents Day, Memorial Day and Sundance.
• A construction mitigation plan, an approved parking plan, and a limits of disturbance fence that holds all staging and dumpsters.
• Deliveries need two flaggers, and the site needs a construction sign.
• Many HOAs add a refundable compliance deposit. Empire Pass listed $30,000 per site in 2019.

How to plan the timeline

1. 1.
   Read the guidelines before you design

   It is far cheaper to design inside the rules than to redesign after a rejection. We read the HOA guidelines and the city's zone rules with the architect at the start.

2. 2.
   Ask for a pre-submittal meeting

   Ask your HOA's board or manager whether it will meet before a formal submittal. Ask the city's planning department the same. Early feedback saves a revision cycle.

3. 3.
   Submit complete packages

   Material samples, color chips, lighting specs and the landscape plan all go in. Incomplete submittals get tabled, not approved.

4. 4.
   Budget months, not weeks, for review

   HOA review, city design review and the permit run one after another, and revisions add time. We build the review period into the schedule and tell you the date work can start.

What this does to cost

Natural stone, wood and metal, clad windows, shielded lighting, engineered snow retention and a full landscape plan all cost more than the standard versions. So do an architect's revision rounds and the HOA deposit sitting idle for a year. We price all of that up front, and our Park City cost guide shows what the finished per-square-foot numbers look like.

Where we stand

We have priced and planned work in Deer Valley neighborhoods, and we built a Parade of Homes custom home in Hideout under similar mountain rules. We have not yet built a new home inside Deer Valley. We would rather say that plainly than let a page imply otherwise. What we bring is a team that reads the rules first, prices honestly and runs the site to the letter of the mitigation plan.

Common questions

Where these rules come from

We checked these sources in October 2026. HOA rules change and many are only shared with owners, so confirm the current rules with your HOA before you design. Height and material rules come from a published transcription of Park City's Land Management Code.

• Park City: building permits
• Park City: HOA information for building permits
• Park City: wildland urban interface code
• Park City Construction Mitigation Plan template
• Park City lighting ordinance (2021)
• Park City Snow Shed Guide (2022)
• Park City landscaping ordinance (2023)
• Bald Eagle building pad plat amendment (2023)
• Park City staff report on Empire Pass Design Review Board approval (2021)
• Deer Crest community documents
• Park City Land Management Code, Residential Development zone (transcription)