Who to ask, what they will want to know, and what the counties we deliver to said when we checked in October 2026.
This is a starting point, not legal advice. Rules change, and your county, city, town or township has the final word. What is below was checked in October 2026: check it again before you order.
Permits, setbacks and anchoring are the customer’s responsibility. We’ll help with whatever paperwork we can, but the permit is between you and your local government, so find out before you order.
In the Indiana counties we checked, it usually comes in two parts. The plan commission handles zoning, meaning whether a building may go where you want it, and issues an Improvement Location Permit. The building department handles how it is built and issues the building permit. Some counties take both in one packet; LaGrange County’s runs from Planning & Zoning to the Surveyor to the Building Department.
Towns and cities can have their own. Elkhart County says the cities of Elkhart and Goshen and the town of Nappanee have their own planning staff; DeKalb County names the towns its zoning does not cover; Steuben County takes Improvement Location Permits from several town offices; Kosciusko County’s planning office covers a list of towns, and Warsaw is not on it. The county pages below have the details and the pages they come from.
Some counties say a small portable building needs no building permit. Noble County’s line for a portable building is 120 sq ft, and DeKalb County’s building permit page exempts a storage shed under 300 sq ft with no permanent foundation, which still needs an Improvement Location Permit, and a pre-built shed under 500 sq ft (checked Oct 2026). The other counties did not state a size on the pages we found: call and check.
Zoning in Michigan is usually local: the township decides where a building may go, or the city or village if you live inside one.
Building permits in Michigan can come from the township or village, from the county or from the State of Michigan, depending on the community: Michigan’s Bureau of Construction Codes says building codes have three levels of enforcement, state, county and local, and keeps a list of which applies where (checked Oct 2026).
Branch County’s building department, for one, says a detached residential accessory building of 200 sq ft or less needs no building permit (checked Oct 2026). A mailing address may not tell you which township you are in, so find out first: in St. Joseph County, six towns share their names with a township (the county’s local government directory, checked Oct 2026).
A setback is how far a building has to stay from your lot lines, the road, and things like your septic system, well and county drains. The distances are in your local zoning rules and differ from place to place, so we don’t print them here: ask for the ones for your lot, and measure before the building comes.
A homeowners association, or the deed to your lot, can have rules of its own: where a building may go, how big, what color, sometimes whether you can have one at all. Those are separate from the government’s. Get the OK in writing before you order.
Questions worth asking: Do I need a permit for a building this size? Do I need an Improvement Location Permit or a zoning permit? How far from the lot lines, the road, the septic and the well? Is the spot in a floodplain, or near a county drain?
Where to start in each county we deliver to. Each county’s page has what its offices said, with links to their pages.
This is a starting point, not legal advice. Rules change, and your county, city, town or township has the final word. What is below was checked in October 2026: check it again before you order.
Pick whatever’s easiest — we answer them all.