How Far From the Property Line?
How far does an ADU have to sit from your property line? The honest answer is: it depends on your city, and in most of Tampa Bay, it depends on your specific zoning district too. There's no single "Florida setback" number you can rely on. Here's what each jurisdiction actually requires.
ST. PETERSBURG
St. Petersburg doesn't give ADUs a separate setback number. Instead, an ADU has to meet whatever setback applies to its zoning district, and that number changes based on the height of the roofline:
NT-1 and NT-2 districts: 25 ft front (35 ft if the roofline is taller than 24 ft), 6 ft side (12 ft for the taller tier), 10 ft rear (30 ft for the taller tier)
NT-3 districts: 30 ft front (40 ft taller tier), 7.5 ft side (16 ft taller tier)
NT-4 districts: 18 ft front (28 ft taller tier), 5 ft side (10 ft taller tier)
One ADU-specific rule on top of that table: a detached ADU in an NS district needs a 10 ft side setback (7.5 ft if the lot is alley-accessed).
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UNINCORPORATED PINELLAS COUNTY
The county code is explicit that an ADU has to meet "all applicable district regulations pertaining to setbacks, building height and lot coverage" there's no ADU-specific setback distance written anywhere in the ordinance. Whatever your property's zoning district requires for a standard accessory structure is what applies.
One rule that IS specific to ADUs: the unit can't be taller than the principal dwelling, in height or in number of stories.
TAMPA
Tampa is the one city in the region with a clean, published ADU setback standard, as long as the ADU stays under 15% of the minimum lot area for the zoning district:
If the ADU is larger than 15% of the minimum lot area, that entire table stops applying, and the ADU instead has to meet the full setback requirements of a principal structure, which are considerably deeper.
Source: City of Tampa Code of Ordinances, §27-290 — Accessory structures, and the city's own ADU general standards diagram.
Front:
60 ft (all districts)
Corner lot line:
15 ft in RS-75, RS-100, and RS-150 districts; 7 ft in all others
Side:
3 ft
Rear:
3 ft
Clearwater
Clearwater splits the rule by whether the ADU is attached or detached. An attached ADU simply follows the main house's setbacks (25 ft front, in the LDR district). A detached ADU can't sit between the street and the main house at all, and needs 5 to 10 ft on the sides and 10 to 20 ft in the rear (18 ft from a seawall on waterfront lots). Exact numbers can shift with landscape buffering requirements, so this is a "confirm before design" item, not a fixed rule.
Source: Clearwater Community Development Code, §2-103 (LDR district table) and §3-203 accessory use standards, current through Ord. No. 9758-24 (2024).
THE BOTTOM LINE
Only Tampa publishes one clean setback table for ADUs specifically. Everywhere else in Tampa Bay, the number depends on your zoning district, which means it depends on your specific address. We pull the exact setback for your lot as part of every feasibility review, before any design work starts.