Rolling northern Piedmont farmland with red-orange clay, a red dirt track and a row of derelict flue-cured tobacco barns with rusting tin roofs at the field edge.
Guilford, Davidson, Forsyth & Randolph Counties 2018 NC Residential Code, statewide

Barndominium Builders in High Point, NC

High Point is one city in four counties — Guilford, Davidson, Forsyth and Randolph — and that is not a piece of trivia, it is the whole permitting question. The 2025 Census county-part estimates split its 120,571 residents as Guilford 112,858, Davidson 7,254, Forsyth 448 and Randolph 11, so the city is overwhelmingly a Guilford place with three slivers attached. But the slivers are real, and the county line does work the city line does not. Inside the corporate limits the City of High Point Inspections Division issues the building permit everywhere, in all four counties, on one fee basis. Step across the city line and the department changes, and so does the way the fee is even calculated: Guilford County charges per heated square foot, so an unheated shop bay is free; Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Inspections charges per square foot of building with no heated carve-out; Davidson and Randolph do not measure square feet at all and price from construction valuation instead. Four counties, four different questions asked of the same house. The county line also decides which health department permits the septic system, which register of deeds records the plat, and which IECC climate zone the envelope is built to — Guilford and Forsyth are 4A, Davidson and Randolph are 3A. What it does not change is the structural design criteria: all four counties take the 115 mph default. And the honest thing to say about buying here is that there is very little buildable acreage inside the city limits. The land is in Randolph and Davidson, and that is where most High Point buyers end up.

High Point at a glance

Counties
Guilford, Davidson, Forsyth & Randolph Counties
City rules outside city limits
High Point regulates land development inside its corporate limits and its extraterritorial jurisdiction, which at 120,571 people may reach up to three miles past the city line under G.S. 160D-202 — carrying city zoning, subdivision rules and the building code, but no city tax and no city vote.
Cities & counties covered
Guilford County part 112,858 · Davidson County part 7,254 · Forsyth County part 448 · Randolph County part 11
Site visits
Same week across High Point and the Triad
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Building conditions in High Point

The building code does not change at a county line here. Under § 143-138(e) the North Carolina State Building Code applies throughout the state, and a city or county may adopt only a fire prevention code and floodplain regulations of its own — there is no general local amendment power, so there are no county amendments to look up. The edition in force is still the 2018 NC Residential Code, effective 1 January 2019; the 2024 edition has been delayed three times and carries no effective date at all. What genuinely differs is who issues the permit and inspects the work, what that office charges, how the parcel is zoned, what the local floodplain ordinance requires of the foundation — and two design numbers the code publishes county by county, the ultimate design wind speed and the seismic design category. The rest of Table R301.2 is set once for everyone: a flat 20 psf roof live load, a 12-inch frost line, Moderate weathering, and termite protection required everywhere in the state with no exemption. There is no ground snow load column in the residential code at all.

Build conditions for High Point , Guilford, Davidson, Forsyth & Randolph Counties, North Carolina : ultimate design wind speed 115 mph. BUILD CONDITIONS HIGH POINT, NCGuilford, Davidson, Forsyth & Randolph Counties2018 NC RESIDENTIAL CODEULTIMATE DESIGN WIND SPEED115 mphGuilford, Davidson, Forsyth and Randolph Counties are all unlisted in Table R301.2(4) of the 2018NC Residential Code, so all four take its 115 mph default.WHO ISSUES THE PERMITCity of High Point Inspections Divis…Inside the city limits in all four counties. Outside them it isGuilford, Davidson or Randolph County, or Winston-Salem/Forsyth…
Build conditions for High Point, drawn from the sourced facts on this page. Every figure above is cited in the quick-facts panel below, with its source and vintage.
One city, four counties — and eleven people in one of them
High Point is one city in four counties. The 2025 Census county-part estimates split its 120,571 residents as Guilford 112,858, Davidson 7,254, Forsyth 448 and Randolph 11. Eleven people. That lopsidedness is exactly why the distinction gets missed: 94 percent of the city is in Guilford, so a page, a supplier or a lender can name Guilford and be right most of the time and wrong about your parcel. The county line decides who permits your septic system, which register of deeds records your plat, and which energy climate zone your envelope is built to — and it does not follow the city line.

U.S. Census Bureau, Vintage 2025 sub-county population estimates (sub-est2025_37), SUMLEV 157 county-part records; four county-part records for High Point city.

Four counties, four different ways of calculating the same permit
There is no North Carolina permit fee, and High Point demonstrates it four ways at once. Inside the city limits the City of High Point Inspections Division issues the permit everywhere in all four counties and computes it from the International Code Council Building Valuation Data — ICC table value times square feet times 0.004 for a building area up to 1,300 square feet, and ICC table value times 0.005 above that, with all associated electrical, mechanical, plumbing and zoning inspections included and a $100 residential minimum. Cross the city line and the basis changes with the county. Guilford County charges $150 plus $0.35 per heated square foot for a detached single-family structure, so an unheated shop bay adds nothing to the base. Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Inspections charges $0.42 per square foot combined across building, electrical, plumbing and mechanical, on the "square footage of building" with no heated carve-out. Davidson County charges $70 up to $10,000 of ICC construction cost and then $2.90 per $1,000. Randolph County charges $60 up to $20,000 and then $3.00 per $1,000. One house, one code, four different questions asked of it.

City of High Point Development Fee Schedule Appendix C, effective 1 July 2021, highpointnc.gov; Guilford County Inspections Department fee panels, guilfordcountync.gov; Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Inspections Division Fee Schedule, dated April 2026, cityofws.org; Davidson County Inspection Department Permit Fees, effective 1 January 2017, co.davidson.nc.us; Randolph County Permit Fee Schedule, effective 1 July 2026, randolphcountync.gov. All read 5–6 September 2026.

A heated shop bay is free on one side of the line and not the other
The sharpest version of that split is Guilford against Forsyth, because the two are worded differently on purpose. Guilford County's schedule prices a new detached single-family structure at $150 plus $0.35 per heated square foot. The Winston-Salem/Forsyth schedule prices its per-square-foot lines on the "square footage of building" and carves nothing out. For a barndominium whose unheated shop bay may be half the slab, that is a materially different base on identical drawings. Two cautions worth having in writing: Guilford's schedule does not tag its detached single-family line with the "+ Trade fee(s)" note that every other residential line carries, so whether four $75 trade permits are added on top is genuinely unresolved on the published page; and the Forsyth schedule does not define its area term. Call the department before you budget either one.

Guilford County Inspections Department fee panels, guilfordcountync.gov, read 6 September 2026; Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Inspections Division Fee Schedule, April 2026, cityofws.org. Guilford's page states no effective date.

The energy code's zone line runs through the city
Table N1101.7 of the 2018 NC Residential Code assigns Guilford and Forsyth Counties to IECC climate zone 4A and Davidson and Randolph Counties to 3A. Because High Point sits in all four, there is no single climate zone for the city — the line runs through it. The zone changes what the envelope has to do: the air-impermeable insulation alternative to R-38 ceiling insulation is R-20 in zone 3 and R-25 in zone 4. So two High Point addresses a few miles apart can be built to different envelope requirements while sharing one building department, one development ordinance and one design wind speed. Any kit or plan package quoted for "the Triad" has picked one of those zones without telling you which.

2018 NC Residential Code Table N1101.7 and the 2018 NC Energy Conservation Code amendments, NC Office of the State Fire Marshal, read 5 September 2026.

What the county line does not change: 115 mph, everywhere in the city
Guilford, Davidson, Forsyth and Randolph Counties are all absent from Table R301.2(4) of the 2018 NC Residential Code, so all four take that table's unlisted default of 115 mph ultimate design wind speed — the floor of the code, shared with 51 of the 100 counties. All four are also absent from Table R301.2(7), the Seismic Design Category C list, whose own note places every county not listed in Category A or B. So the structural design criteria are the one thing in High Point that does not move when a parcel crosses a county line, and a shell engineered to 115 mph is engineered for the whole city. Two more code figures hold everywhere: a flat 20 psf roof live load. And there is no ground snow load column in the table at all, because Section R301.2.3 is deleted.

2018 NC Residential Code, Tables R301.2(1), R301.2(4) and R301.2(7) and Section R301.2.3, NC Office of the State Fire Marshal, read 5 September 2026. The 2018 edition is in force; the 2024 edition has no effective date.

The land is not inside the city limits — it is in Randolph and Davidson
High Point is a commuter market and it is worth saying plainly rather than pretending otherwise: there is very little buildable acreage inside the city limits, and the city's footprint in three of its four counties is a sliver, down to 448 residents on the Forsyth side and 11 on the Randolph side. The acreage is out in the counties. Randolph County ranks 17th of North Carolina's 100 counties for land in farms — 1,238 farms across 131,301 acres, 26.2 percent of the county, at a median farm size of 49 acres against a statewide median of 48. Davidson has 847 farms on 73,655 acres, 20.8 percent of the county, at a 40-acre median. Guilford is 22.9 percent farmland and Forsyth 12.6 percent, the thinnest of the four. Buy in Randolph or Davidson and the permit office, the fee basis and the health department all change with you — which is the argument for settling the county question before the land question.

USDA NASS 2022 Census of Agriculture, county profiles; U.S. Census Bureau Vintage 2025 population estimates and sub-county county-part records.

Also worth knowing before you build in High Point

Septic follows the county line even where the permit follows the city line
15A NCAC 18E .0201(e) provides that all documentation related to a wastewater system shall be maintained by the local health department "in the county where the permit is issued and the property taxes are paid." So a High Point parcel on the Davidson side deals with Davidson County's environmental health division, not Guilford's, no matter whose name is on the building permit. And .0201(c) provides that upon issuance of the Construction Authorization the applicant may obtain a building permit in accordance with G.S. 130A-338 — so on a well-and-septic parcel the county's paperwork has to be finished before anyone issues a building permit at all. The order is Improvement Permit, Construction Authorization, building permit, then Operation Permit after the system is inspected before it is covered with soil.

15A NCAC 18E .0201 through .0205, NC Office of Administrative Hearings, read 5 September 2026.

City rules, and a doubled fee, outside the city line
High Point regulates land development inside its corporate limits and its extraterritorial jurisdiction through its Development Ordinance. At 120,571 people the city falls in the top tier of G.S. 160D-202, where the ETJ may reach up to three miles beyond the contiguous corporate boundary, carrying city zoning, subdivision regulation and building-code enforcement — while city property tax, city voting, city police jurisdiction and city business licensing all stop at the corporate line. G.S. 160D-307 answers part of that asymmetry: one member of High Point's Planning and Zoning Commission is appointed from the ETJ by the Guilford County Board of Commissioners. And the city's own land development fee module carries a line reading "Outside Corporate Limits — Fee for property outside the corporate limits is 100% greater", doubling the total fee on exactly the land the city does not tax.

City of High Point Development Ordinance page and Development Fee Schedule Appendix C, Module 3, effective 1 July 2021, highpointnc.gov, read 6 September 2026; UNC School of Government legal summaries on extraterritorial jurisdiction, read 5 September 2026.

Two named watershed areas in one city's fee schedule
High Point's Development Fee Schedule prices development inside two named watershed areas of its own — a "Randleman Lake Credit Area" and an "Uwharrie General Watershed Area" — each at $50 per acre where development in that area exceeds 50 percent built-upon area. Randleman Lake sits in the Deep River headwaters on the Randolph and Guilford side of the city, and its riparian buffer rule, 15A NCAC 02B .0724, is 50 feet in two zones: 30 feet of undisturbed vegetation and 20 feet of stable vegetation. Note the citation trap if you go looking — the Randleman buffer provisions were renumbered out of 02B .0250 and into .0724 effective 15 June 2020, so an older reference points at a rule number that no longer holds the text.

City of High Point Development Fee Schedule Appendix C, Module 3, effective 1 July 2021, highpointnc.gov, read 6 September 2026; 15A NCAC 02B .0724 and the 2020 renumbering, NC Office of Administrative Hearings, read 5 September 2026.

An excavator grading a compacted building pad on a cleared lot, with survey stakes, a drainage swale and a silt fence along the downhill edge.
Below the slab

The expensive surprises are in the ground, not the building

What moves a North Carolina budget is usually below grade, and the thing most often got wrong is which clay to worry about. Cecil — the red Piedmont clay everyone pictures, and the state soil — is kaolinitic and low shrink-swell; it does not heave. The soil that does is Iredell, formed over diabase and gabbro, which the USDA describes as vertic, very high shrink-swell, with a perched water table a foot or two down from December through April. The tell is colour: Cecil is red and Iredell is dark grey-brown, and they sit within a few miles of each other across the central Piedmont. West of that the question stops being clay and becomes slope, rock and colluvium; east of the fall line it becomes water, and in the Tidewater it becomes organic soil that subsides irreversibly once it is drained. Then the same ground decides the septic system, and North Carolina rewrote those rules recently enough that most of what is published about them is out of date. 15A NCAC 18E replaced the old subchapter on 1 January 2024 and was amended again on 1 June 2026: the site is classified on soil morphology — the word "percolation" does not appear anywhere in it — and there is no "provisionally suitable" any more, only suitable or unsuitable, on a single failed parameter. There is no statewide minimum lot size either; the area you need is derived from the soil result and then doubled, because a site that cannot fit both the initial field and its repair area is unsuitable. And the order matters more than people expect: the county health department's Improvement Permit and Construction Authorization come first, and the building permit is available on the strength of the Construction Authorization, not before it. One more thing that catches people: disturb more than an acre and you need an approved erosion and sedimentation control plan in hand before work starts, with penalties up to $5,000 a day, and a pad plus a drive plus a drainfield plus a laydown area crosses an acre faster than it sounds. So the site work, the foundation and the drainfield get resolved together rather than one at a time. We price the dirt before we price the building.

What we build in High Point

All nine services are available in High Point. What a build costs depends far more on the parcel than on square footage, so we price against your land rather than publishing a rate card.

Barndominium Kits

Engineered shell packages drawn to your own county's wind and seismic numbers under the 2018 NC Residential Code, with the exclusions written down.

Custom Plans

Barndominium floor plans drawn for your parcel, your county's design figures and the septic system your bedroom count will actually need.

Metal Homes

Metal building homes finished to live in — envelope, insulation, condensation control and interior finish specified to your NC county's climate zone.

See all nine services

What a build looks like

Three stages every High Point project passes through, from a raw parcel to a finished home. Site work first, because that is where the budget is decided.

Aerial view of an undeveloped rural lot with cleared grass, a mixed oak, hickory and pine treeline, exposed red clay in one corner and a pale gravel access track.
Stage one

The parcel

Zoning, setbacks, flood zone and utility access get checked before anything is drawn.

An excavator grading a compacted building pad on a cleared lot, with survey stakes, a drainage swale and a silt fence along the downhill edge.
Stage two

Pad and permit

Clearing, grading and a compacted pad, while the septic authorization and the building submittal work through whichever offices cover your parcel.

A finished barndominium at dusk with warm interior lighting glowing through its large windows.
Stage three

Frame to finish

Shell erected and dried in, then systems, insulation and interior finish through to CO.

Those are the rules where you are building in High Point. Tell us what you want to build and we will draw it to them.

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Where we build around High Point

Guilford, Davidson, Forsyth & Randolph Counties and the rural land around it. The buildable acreage for a project this size usually sits outside the town limits — which does not automatically put it under the county, because a town's zoning and building-code enforcement reach one to three miles past its limits into its extraterritorial jurisdiction. Inside the limits, in the ETJ, or in neither are three different answers to who issues your permit.

The High Point service area, including the rural acreage outside the built-up edge, which is where the parcels big enough for a build like this usually sit. The map marks the territory we build in. It is not a branch location, and there is no office at this pin.

Keep reading

The questions that usually come next once you know what High Point allows.

Barndominium Cost Guide

What the named, dated sources actually publish for North Carolina, with a calculator built on the same figures.

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Is It Legal in North Carolina?

Why a "farm building" is defined as nonresidential, and the ten-acre right § 160D-903(b) gives you in exchange for building to the code.

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How Long Does It Take?

Census build-duration data, and what actually sets the permit clock where you are building.

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Nearby areas we build in

Others we cover nearby. Every North Carolina municipality sits inside a county — there are no independent cities here — but that does not settle who regulates a given parcel. A town's zoning, subdivision rules and building-code enforcement extend one to three miles beyond its limits, by population, into what the statute calls its extraterritorial jurisdiction; town taxes and town elections do not follow. So the office that issues the permit, what it charges and how the land is zoned can all differ from one card to the next, and the mailing address will not tell you which case you are in.

Randolph County

Randolph County
Davidson County

Davidson County
Greensboro

Guilford County
Winston-Salem

Forsyth County

Building in High Point: common questions

6 questions we get asked most often about building in High Point. If yours is not on the list, ask it directly.

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Which county am I actually in, and why does it matter in High Point?
High Point is one city in four counties — Guilford, Davidson, Forsyth and Randolph — and the answer for your parcel is on the deed and the county tax record, not the mailing address. It matters because the county line does work the city line does not. It decides which health department permits your septic system: 15A NCAC 18E .0201(e) says the wastewater documentation is maintained by the local health department in the county where the permit is issued and the property taxes are paid. It decides which register of deeds records the plat. It decides the energy climate zone, because Table N1101.7 of the 2018 NC Residential Code puts Guilford and Forsyth in 4A and Davidson and Randolph in 3A. And the moment the parcel is outside the city limits, it decides who issues the building permit and how that permit is priced. On the 2025 Census estimates the city splits Guilford 112,858, Davidson 7,254, Forsyth 448 and Randolph 11 — so naming Guilford is right 94 percent of the time and useless if you are in the other 6.
Who issues the building permit for a High Point address?
Inside the corporate limits, the City of High Point Inspections Division, and it does so across all four counties on one fee basis. That is corroborated from both sides: the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Inspections Division — a consolidated city-county agency — states it reviews and inspects building and zoning activity throughout Forsyth County "with the exception of the town/city limits of High Point, Kernersville and King", and Guilford County Inspections lists its own service area as all unincorporated Guilford County plus Jamestown, Oak Ridge, Pleasant Garden, Sedalia, Stokesdale, Summerfield, Whitsett and the Piedmont Triad Airport Authority, which does not include High Point. Outside the limits it is the county: Guilford County Inspections, Davidson County Central Permitting, Randolph County Inspections, or Winston-Salem/Forsyth on the Forsyth side. And there is a third case in between. Under G.S. 160D-202 a city of High Point's size may enforce its zoning, subdivision rules and the building code in an extraterritorial jurisdiction reaching up to three miles past the corporate boundary, on land that pays the city no property tax and cannot vote in its elections. Check the city's zoning map and the county register of deeds before you buy, because rural-looking land can be under city rules.
Is the permit fee cheaper if my shop bay is unheated?
In one of the four counties, yes, dramatically — and in the other three the question does not even apply, which is the part nobody explains. Guilford County prices a new detached single-family structure at $150 plus $0.35 per heated square foot, so an unheated shop bay adds nothing at all to that base. The Winston-Salem/Forsyth schedule charges $0.42 per square foot combined across building, electrical, plumbing and mechanical on the "square footage of building", with no heated carve-out, so the whole slab is in. Davidson and Randolph do not measure area at all: Davidson is $70 up to $10,000 of construction cost and then $2.90 per $1,000, Randolph is $60 up to $20,000 and then $3.00 per $1,000, both computed from the International Code Council Building Valuation Data. And inside the city limits, High Point runs its own ICC-valuation formula — table value times square feet times 0.004 up to 1,300 square feet of building area, times 0.005 above that — with all trade and zoning inspections included and a $100 residential minimum. Two warnings before you budget: Guilford's detached single-family line does not carry the "+ Trade fee(s)" tag that its other residential lines do, so whether trade permits are added is unresolved on the published page, and the Forsyth schedule does not define its area term. Both are worth a phone call.
Can I actually buy land and build inside High Point?
Rarely, and it would be dishonest to imply otherwise. High Point is a built-out commuter city of 120,571 people, and its footprint in three of its four counties is a sliver — 448 residents on the Forsyth side, 11 on the Randolph side. Infill lots exist; buildable acreage of the size a barndominium wants generally does not. Where it does exist is immediately outside, and the numbers say which direction. Randolph County ranks 17th of North Carolina's 100 counties for land in farms, with 1,238 farms across 131,301 acres — 26.2 percent of the county — at a median farm size of 49 acres. Davidson County has 847 farms on 73,655 acres, 20.8 percent of the county, at a 40-acre median. Guilford is 22.9 percent farmland and Forsyth 12.6 percent, the thinnest of the four. That is why most people who start with a High Point search finish in Randolph or Davidson, and why the county question is worth settling before the land question rather than after it.
Does the design wind speed change across High Point?
No, and that is the one simplification the four-county split gives you. Guilford, Davidson, Forsyth and Randolph Counties are all absent from Table R301.2(4) of the 2018 NC Residential Code, so all four take that table's unlisted default of 115 mph ultimate design wind speed — the floor of the code, which 51 of the 100 counties share. All four are also absent from Table R301.2(7), the Seismic Design Category C list, whose note places every county not listed in Category A or B. So a shell engineered to 115 mph is engineered for the whole city and for the ring around it, and nobody in the Triad is designing against a coastal wind load. Three more figures do not vary either. The code sets a flat 20 psf roof live load. It carries no ground snow load column at all, because Section R301.2.3 is deleted. And termite protection is required in all of North Carolina under Section R318 — with the catch that building in steel does not satisfy it here, because cold-formed steel framing was deleted from the accepted methods of termite protection. Name the edition on any drawing: the 2018 code is in force and the 2024 edition, though adopted, has no effective date.
Do I need to check High Point's or my county's building-code amendments?
No — there are none to check, and that is worth stating because it is the opposite of what most sites in this trade imply. G.S. 143-138(e) provides that the North Carolina State Building Code shall apply throughout the State from the time of its adoption. The only two things a city or county may adopt of their own are a fire prevention code — which requires Residential Code Council approval and may not reach one- and two-family dwellings beyond what the Residential Code prescriptively requires — and floodplain management regulations. There is no general local building-code amendment power at all, so no county here can impose a stricter structural, foundation or energy requirement on a house, and there is no High Point amendment package to hunt down. What does vary, and what this whole page is about, is a different list entirely: zoning and subdivision regulation under Chapter 160D, the extraterritorial jurisdiction, the permit fee schedule and its basis, the health department, floodplain and watershed regulation, and the wind, seismic and climate-zone values published inside the one statewide code county by county. In a city sitting in four counties, that list is four lists.

Building in High Point?

Start with the plan. Tell us what you want to build and we will draw it, then confirm which office issues the permit for your parcel, what it will let you put there, and what wind load it has to meet. That conversation costs nothing.

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