Austin residential use classifications: all sixteen, defined

What counts as residential at all

Before the sixteen classifications, §25-2-3(A) draws the outer boundary. Residential use is occupancy of living accommodations on a nontransient basis, and it expressly excludes two things:

• institutional arrangements providing 24-hour skilled nursing or medical care; and
• arrangements providing forced residence, including mental hospitals and prisons.

So a facility that looks residential but provides round-the-clock nursing is not a residential use, and is classified elsewhere — most likely as a civic use.

The distinctions are numeric, and they are close together

Most of the residential classifications are separated by unit count and by where the walls and lot lines fall. These are the ones that get confused:

The remaining classifications

• Condominium residential — attached or detached condominiums as defined in the Texas Property Code. Note that multifamily residential includes condominium residential.
• Conservation single family residential — multiple detached units each on an individual lot, with the remainder of the site jointly owned and preserved as open space.
• Townhouse residential — the use of a site for townhouses.
• Mobile home residential — occupancy of mobile homes on a weekly or longer basis, including mobile home parks and subdivisions.
• Bed and breakfast residential — a residential structure providing rooms for temporary lodging to overnight guests on a paying basis.

Short-term rental: under 30 consecutive days, with two carve-outs

Short-term rental use is the rental of a housing unit, or part of one, for less than 30 consecutive days. The definition then carves out two things that would otherwise be caught:

• an extension of under 30 days to a rental agreement that was already 30 days or more; and
• a rental between the parties to the sale of that housing unit — the lease-back that often follows a closing.

Both carve-outs are about the same thing: a short occupancy that arises out of a longer-term arrangement is not converted into a short-term rental by its length alone.

Where duplex, two-unit, three-unit and multifamily are allowed

§25-2-491 (Permitted, Conditional, and Prohibited Uses) is the table that answers this. There is no separate use table for multifamily zoning — §25-2-491 is a single table covering every use in the code, with one column per zoning district, and MF-1 through MF-6 are six of those columns. The rows below are read straight off it, for the residential uses the HOME ordinance reshaped. The pattern is not what the unit counts alone would suggest:

Two-unit and duplex go further than three-unit does

The unit count alone would suggest three-unit is a bigger ask than two-unit or duplex, and in one sense it is: it needs more floor area and a wider building. But the zoning reach runs the other way. Two-unit and duplex residential uses are permitted everywhere single-family is, all the way through SF-5 and SF-6 and into Multifamily zoning districts. Three-unit residential stops at SF-3 — it is not permitted in SF-5, SF-6 or Multifamily at all.

§25-2-773, the section this hub's units and site-development pages describe in detail, governs the site development standards for two-unit, duplex and three-unit uses wherever those uses are permitted. The table above is about whether the use is allowed on the lot at all — a separate question from what §25-2-773 requires once it is.

Three units on multifamily-zoned land: a gap in the code

The Multifamily columns are the ones worth pausing on. Read literally, a lot zoned MF-1 through MF-6 may be used for one dwelling unit, for two, or for four or more — but not for exactly three. Multifamily residential is defined at §25-2-3(B)(7) as four or more dwelling units, so three units cannot be classified as a multifamily use. Three-unit residential, the classification that does describe three units, is not permitted in any MF district. Nothing in §25-2-491 covers the space between them.

People reasonably expect the density number to settle this, and it does not. §25-2-64 describes MF-3 as allowing up to 36 units per acre; the MF-1 through MF-6 designation sections each carry a figure like it. Those are ceilings on a use that has already been established, set as a minimum site area per dwelling unit. A ceiling does not tell you which uses are permitted underneath it — that is what §25-2-491 is for, and you still have to name a use the district allows.

This reads as an oversight rather than a decision. Before the HOME ordinance, multifamily residential began at three units and there was no three-unit residential classification at all — three units on Multifamily-zoned land was simply a multifamily use, and the question could not arise. HOME moved the multifamily floor up to four and created three-unit residential to cover what dropped out, but added the new use only to the single-family columns of §25-2-491, which is where that ordinance was aimed. The Multifamily columns were left as they stood.

Council appears to agree it was an omission — but nothing has changed yet. A draft resolution, File ID 26-1709, was introduced on 22 April 2026 and set for the 7 May 2026 Council agenda. Its item (J) would direct the City Manager to propose amendments to “include two-unit and three-unit residential uses in appropriate multifamily residence base districts”, and a further clause directs a comprehensive review of the Land Development Code “to correct inadvertent omissions in order to allow two-unit and three-unit residential uses, and to ensure internal consistency throughout the LDC”. “Inadvertent omissions” is Council’s own phrase.

Two things about that draft matter, and both cut against relying on it. It has not passed. The document we archived is a draft on its face: the resolution number is blank and so is the adoption date. And a resolution of this kind does not amend the code: it directs staff to bring amendments back, which this draft asks for by 3 December 2026 at the latest. So even if it is adopted tomorrow, §25-2-491 reads exactly as it does above until Council separately adopts the amendment. Treat it as a signal about where the code is heading, not as a basis for a submittal.

We cannot tell you how the City would respond to such an application. What is on this page is what the code text says. City staff interpretation CI2026-0002 reads the table the same way and relies on the result elsewhere — it reasons that because three-unit uses are not permitted in Multifamily districts, a project next door to one does not get the reduced rear setback that adjacency to an MF-permitted use would earn. That is some evidence staff apply the table as written rather than treating it as a drafting slip. But no interpretation we have found addresses an actual three-unit application on MF-zoned land, and this hub will not guess at the outcome. If this is your situation, ask Development Services directly or obtain a zoning verification letter before designing to it.

This table does not cover every use or every district. Confirm a specific lot against the full §25-2-491 table or a zoning verification letter before relying on it.