ADU Pass
Saint Augustine Annex
ADU Pass helps homeowners in Saint Augustine Annex — a USPS locale inside Saint Augustine, St. Johns County, Florida — navigate the permit paperwork for building an accessory dwelling unit. This locale covers 2 ZIP codes.
St. Johns County — county ADU rules and overlays
County ADU ordinance
St. Johns County regulates accessory dwelling units on unincorporated parcels through the St. Johns County Land Development Code (LDC), administered by the St. Johns County Growth Management Department. St. Johns is one of Florida's fastest-growing counties (Ponte Vedra / World Golf Village corridor, and greater St. Augustine). The county includes the historic city of St. Augustine (the oldest continuously-inhabited European-founded city in the continental US), which operates its own Historic Architectural Review Board with stringent exterior-design authority over ADUs and additions in the designated historic district. § 163.31771 FS is permissive only; St. Johns's ADU rules arise from local zoning.
State-floor overlay: No Florida statewide ADU preemption floor exists as of April 2026. SB 48 / HB 313 (2026 session) is the active preemption bill. St. Johns retains full discretion until enactment.
County regulatory overlays
St. Johns County administers flood, coastal, historic, wetland, and PUD/CDD overlays. Atlantic-front and Intracoastal Waterway parcels face VE/AE flood mapping and CCCL permitting; the St. Augustine Historic Ancient City overlay (a city-administered but nationally-recognized National Historic Landmark District) governs the historic core; many Ponte Vedra / Nocatee / Silverleaf parcels sit inside PUDs with overlay ARC entitlements that function like overlays.
- FEMA Special Flood Hazard Areas (SFHA) — AE zones are extensive along the St. Johns River, the Intracoastal Waterway, and along tidal marshes. VE zones affect Atlantic frontage especially on Anastasia Island and Ponte Vedra Beach. Significant hurricane exposure — Hurricanes Matthew (2016), Irma (2017), and Ian (2022) each produced federal disaster declarations affecting St. Johns flood reclamation.
- Coastal Construction Control Line (CCCL) — Atlantic-front St. Johns parcels are seaward of the CCCL and require a state DEP CCCL permit in addition to county approval. ADU construction on a CCCL parcel faces engineered-foundation and dune-protection review.
- St. Augustine Historic Ancient City / National Historic Landmark District — The St. Augustine Historic Preservation district is nationally-recognized as a National Historic Landmark District — one of only a handful in the continental US. ADU construction inside the HP district requires HARB Certificate of Appropriateness and is subject to design guidelines more stringent than typical historic-district review; affected parcels are inside the City of St. Augustine, but the overlay is significant enough to note here because it governs a meaningful share of the county's historic parcels.
- Ponte Vedra / Nocatee / World Golf Village / Silverleaf PUD & CDD Overlays — Major St. Johns master-planned communities operate under PUD ordinances that supersede base-zoning use tables with community-specific entitlements, and under CDDs that fund community infrastructure. ADU rights inside a PUD are governed by the PUD document and the community's CC&Rs, not base LDC. Many PUDs prohibit detached ADUs via CC&R; a county permit may be obtainable but the CC&R violation would control.
- Wetland / Salt Marsh Protection — Extensive tidal marshes along the Intracoastal Waterway and the Guana Tolomato Matanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve face enhanced setback and buffer requirements. ADU siting on wetland-adjacent parcels adds an environmental review step.
- Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) — Western and rural St. Johns parcels abutting undeveloped pine-flatwoods and scrub face moderate WUI exposure.
County permitting (unincorporated parcels)
Permits for ADUs on unincorporated St. Johns County parcels are issued by the St. Johns County Growth Management Department, which combines planning review and building review under a unified intake. Incorporated St. Augustine and St. Augustine Beach handle their own permits; the Town of Hastings merged into St. Johns County government in 2018 so its parcels are now under county permitting. Unincorporated Ponte Vedra, World Golf Village, Nocatee, Silverleaf, and similar master-planned PUDs operate under layered PUD and CDD (community development district) frameworks with community-level architectural review boards.
Florida state — ADU law and programs
State ADU law
Florida does NOT currently have a statewide ADU preemption law in effect. Florida Statutes § 163.31771 (enacted 2004, last amended 2020) is permissive — it authorizes local governments to adopt ADU ordinances but does not require them to. ADU rules are therefore set municipality-by-municipality: Miami-Dade, Orlando, St. Petersburg, Tampa, and a growing set of Florida cities have their own ordinances; many smaller counties and cities still prohibit or restrict ADUs by default. A preemption bill (SB 48 / HB 313) is pending in the 2026 legislative session and is likely to pass given that its 2025 predecessor cleared the Senate 37-0 and House 97-10 before dying on a procedural amendment dispute.
- Florida Statutes § 163.31771 — Accessory dwelling units — Permissive (not mandatory) statute. Defines an ADU as 'an ancillary or secondary living unit, that has a separate kitchen, bathroom, and sleeping area, existing either within the same structure, or on the same lot, as the primary dwelling unit.' Authorizes — but does not require — local governments to adopt ordinances allowing ADUs in single-family residential zones. Contains no size caps, no owner-occupancy rules, no HOA preemption. All substantive rulemaking is local.
State financing programs
Florida Housing Finance Corporation (FHFC) does not operate an ADU-specific state loan or grant program. FHFC's primary affordable-housing lever at the ADU tier is the State Housing Initiatives Partnership (SHIP), which distributes state documentary-stamp-tax revenue to all 67 counties and 52 entitlement cities for locally-administered housing programs — some of which may fund ADU construction at the local level (notably Orange County's Affordable ADU Loan Program, run through the Orange County Housing Finance Trust). FHFC's FL Assist down-payment programs and HFA Preferred / HFA Advantage conventional loans apply to ADU-eligible primary residences but do not single out ADUs. Proposed CS/SB 1440 would create a state property-tax exemption of up to 100% of assessed value for an ADU rented at affordable rates.
State housing programs
Florida does not currently operate a statewide pre-approved ADU plan catalog (unlike California or Washington). State-level ADU implementation is driven by (a) the permissive § 163.31771 which lets willing jurisdictions adopt ordinances, (b) SHIP pass-through funding to local ADU programs (Orange County's Affordable ADU Loan Program is the model), and (c) the affordable-housing property-tax exemption under the Live Local Act (SB 102 / SB 328). The Department of Economic Opportunity (DEO) — now reorganized as the Department of Commerce — provides technical assistance to local governments but no statewide ADU-specific mandate or program. Major counties (Miami-Dade, Orange, Pasco, Hillsborough, Pinellas, Broward) have published their own ADU ordinances and guidance documents.
Federal (United States) — ADU-relevant rules and programs
Federal ADU law
The United States has no federal statute that directly regulates accessory dwelling unit entitlement or design. Land-use authority over ADUs resides with states and local governments under the traditional police power. Federal engagement is limited to financing (Fannie/Freddie/FHA/VA/USDA), flood insurance (FEMA/NFIP), and discretionary housing programs (HUD), which are recorded in sibling sections of this file.
Federal financing programs
Federal housing-finance agencies and GSEs set nationwide underwriting rules that govern whether an ADU can be financed, appraised, and counted toward mortgage qualifying income. The relevant actors are Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, FHA (HUD), VA, and USDA Rural Development.
Federal tax credits
There is no ADU-specific federal tax credit. ADUs may incidentally qualify for existing federal energy-efficiency and clean-energy tax credits when the ADU construction includes qualifying measures.
Federal housing programs
HUD administers several discretionary programs that can fund ADU-related activity at the grantee's election, but none is an ADU-specific program.
ZIP Codes
- 32080
- 32086
Post Office
- 1740 Dobbs Rd, 32084