Barndominium and barn builders in Boerne, Texas

Boerne is the seat of Kendall County, set along Cibolo Creek with its well-known Hill Country Mile downtown and the Cibolo Center for Conservation nearby. Growth pushes north and west off I-10 into ranchettes and acreage subdivisions. Buyers are often families and professionals leaving San Antonio for a few acres, plus established ranch owners. Projects skew to barndominium homes, big shops, and combined home-and-shop builds.

Barndominiums and metal building homes lead, with workshops and garages close behind because so many buyers want shop space for vehicles, an RV, or a home business. Horse barns appear on the larger western tracts.

Barndominium contractors around Boerne stay busy because the Kendall County acreage north and west of I-10 is where San Antonio families go to build a custom home with a shop attached. Most projects here are turnkey: a general contractor runs the post-frame or steel construction, the slab, the interior finish and the septic together and hands over a finished metal home. Ask a Boerne barndominium builder two things before you sign: whether they have taken a job through the Kendall County development-permit process, and whether the lot sits inside the city limits, in the one-mile ETJ, or out in the county, because that decides who signs off before the slab is poured.

How to check a builder before you sign

Inside the Boerne city limits, city building permits apply. In the city's extraterritorial jurisdiction (one mile under state law, adjusted by petitions) they do not: the city's own development code FAQ lists subdivisions, platting, stormwater, infrastructure and signage as what reaches the ETJ, and the code adds its floodplain and environmental rules, but building permits are not on that list. Out in unincorporated Kendall County, the county runs a development-permit process rather than a building code, covering septic, addressing and access, though a commercial building there does go through the county Fire Marshal. The Edwards Aquifer rule is one thing you can set aside here: 30 TAC Chapter 213 names eight counties and Kendall is not among them. The Kendall County permitting page explains it.

Kendall County permitting reference

Boerne-area land is classic Hill Country limestone, so wells can be deep and septic is usually an aerobic unit. Engineer for roughly 105 to 115 mph design wind, more on the exposed ridges north of town, and budget for rock in the pad and post holes.

Groundwater across Kendall County, outside the Fair Oaks Ranch city limits, is regulated by the Cow Creek Groundwater Conservation District, and its rules changed for small tracts on September 8, 2025. A house and livestock well now stays exempt from an operating permit only on a tract larger than 10 acres, with one exempt well for each 10 acres and a cap of 25,000 gallons a day (Rule 3.2.A). On a smaller tract the house well becomes a permitted low production well: equipped for 5 gallons a minute or less, under one acre-foot a year, and only one of them on a tract under 10 acres. So a five-acre ranchette west of town is a permit file, not a registration form.

Every new well, exempt or not, registers with the district before the rig arrives, and the district fee schedule effective September 10, 2025 puts the application at $500. Spacing in Rule 6.4 (amended July 13, 2026) depends on pump size: a well equipped for 5 gallons a minute or less sits 50 feet from property lines and 100 feet from other wells, and one up to 17.36 gallons a minute needs 100 and 200. A neighbor's recorded waiver can shorten the property-line distance, but there is no variance at all for the gap between wells. The district also bars any part of a septic system within 150 feet of a sinkhole, cave or open fracture, so walk the lot for rock features before the septic designer picks a spot, and tell the district 24 hours before drilling starts.

The City of Boerne runs its own electric, gas, water and wastewater systems. Its Utility Rules and Regulations (approved by City Council January 23, 2024) say city water and sewer service is generally limited to the incorporated area, and service outside it takes City Council approval. Out on acreage, plan on a well and an on-site system. For a permanent home the city extends up to 100 linear feet of overhead electric line, and of each gas, water and sewer main, along public right-of-way at no cost to the owner; past that, and anything on private ground, the owner pays. Barns, bunkhouses, equipment shelters, stock wells and water wells, along with weekend homes and hunting camps, fall in the city's indeterminate class, where the owner pays the actual cost of all electric facilities built to serve them.

Much of the land around town is served by co-ops instead. Bandera Electric Cooperative's tariff names Kendall County and parts of Boerne in its service area, and it splits new single-phase service by use. A permanently occupied home gets the first $2,500 of estimated construction cost covered; a barn, workshop, livestock pen, stock well, hunting camp or weekend home gets $750, and the owner pays the rest up front as a non-refundable contribution. Ask the co-op for its estimate while the site plan can still move the barn closer to the road. Pedernales Electric Cooperative also lists Kendall County and Boerne in its tariff, so confirm which utility holds your parcel first.

Section 1-6 of the Boerne Unified Development Code carries five of its chapters into the extraterritorial jurisdiction, and Chapter 8, environmental design, is one of them. So land just outside town is not free of the city. Under Section 8-1 a floodplain development permit covers construction within 100 feet of a FEMA special flood hazard area, and the lowest floor of a new home goes two feet above the base flood elevation, backed by an elevation certificate. On Cibolo Creek and its side drainages, that two feet sets the slab height before anything else does.

Section 8-9 adds a rule for the karst itself: in the Lower Glen Rose Protection Zone, the mapped outcrop of that limestone plus 1,200 feet upgradient, no plat or building permit application may be filed until a geologic assessment is done. Section 8-2 caps impervious cover on a single-family lot in the extraterritorial jurisdiction at 25 percent, and the slab, the shop floor, the porch and a paved drive all count toward it. On a two-acre lot that leaves room for a generous barndominium and shop, but a gravel drive may be what keeps the plan under the line.