Where you live in Rockwall County — city, ETJ, or unincorporated — changes the rules

There's a band of land just past every city's border that doesn't feel like the city but isn't quite free of it either. Texas calls it the Extraterritorial Jurisdiction, or ETJ. Out there the city can set some building and land-use rules, but it usually can't put you on the city tax roll.

The City of Rockwall proper covers about 22.3 square miles, and its reach into the ETJ goes beyond that line. Heath, Fate, Royse City, and McLendon-Chisholm each draw their own city limits and their own ETJs around them. Push past all of those and you're in unincorporated Rockwall County, where the county's rules govern instead of any city's.

Which bucket you land in decides a lot of small things you only notice when you're knee-deep in them: zoning, whether you need a short-term rental permit, what a building permit costs, who hooks up your water. A rural mailing address doesn't settle the question; the boundary lines do. Pull up the parcel on the county's map viewer, and if the line runs close to your property, the development services desk can tell you which side of it you're on before you've paid for plans.