Garage apartments in Arlington Heights
Half the neighborhood is zoned one-family and a quarter two-family. Your zoning decides what the apartment can be.
Our work · Arlington Heights Backyard Casita
Design, drawn and built
What a garage apartment in Arlington Heights involves
A second front door on the same lot. Room for a parent, a place for an adult kid to land, a guest house, a studio, or an income unit where the zoning allows one: a small complete home with its own kitchen, its own bath and its own key.
So the first work is a survey, a coverage calculation and an hour with the city's rules for your particular parcel. Some lots take one easily. Some need a variance. Some are a no, and hearing that in week one is worth more than a pretty rendering. After that it is ours end to end, drafting through framing through the walkthrough.
In Arlington Heights
The lots here are the right shape for this and often the wrong width. A median parcel is 50 feet wide by 130 deep, so there is usually room behind the house for a second structure without crowding the one in front — depth is the thing Arlington Heights has. What it does not reliably have is width: unless an alley serves the lot, a drive has to reach the back building, two side yards come out of what is left, and on a narrow lot that leaves a footprint narrower than people expect. The one we built on these streets is a backyard casita with a sleeping loft, a Murphy bed, a wet bar and its own bath. A garage apartment is the same class of building with a kitchen added.
Design and drafting, in house
The drawings come from the people who have to build them
Plans, elevations and selections are done here, by the team that will be on site — so the thing you approve on paper is the thing that gets built, and the number under it is real.
The construction set
Every room dimensioned, every window and door scheduled, ceiling heights called out — the drawing a plan reviewer stamps and a framer builds from.
Where it gets decided
Samples and the drawing set on the same counter, with the designers who will see the job through — the tile is chosen against the plan, not after it.
The selections
Stone, tile, timber and cloth, chosen together and seen in daylight before anything is ordered.
Building in Arlington Heights
What the houses here actually ask for
1920s–1950s
Craftsman bungalows and Tudor cottages from the 1920s and '30s beside mid-century houses that have been updated since — a genuine mix rather than one era, on oak-shaded streets.
The ground on this side of town is thin over limestone, close enough to the surface that excavation is a real line item and seasonal movement mostly is not. Above it, three decades of building practice share the same streets.
- Median lot
- 6,250 sq ft
- Median house
- 1,508 sq ft
- Built before 1940
- 57%
50 ft wide by 130 deep — and a third are narrower than 50
which is why so much of the work here is finding room, not finishing it
1,001 in the 1920s and '30s alone, out of 1,971 houses
Measured from City of Fort Worth GIS and Tarrant Appraisal District parcels, measured 2026-09-01
The ground rules in Arlington Heights
No historic overlay on most blocks. Hillcrest, on Tremont, is the exception.
Arlington Heights as a whole is not one of Fort Worth's fourteen local historic districts, so on most blocks nothing you do to the front of the house needs a Certificate of Appropriateness. The exception is Historic Hillcrest, a designated district on a stretch of Tremont Avenue, and nothing at the curb tells you that you are in it.
A-5 One-Family~50%
- Min lot
- 5,000 sq ft
- Min width
- 50 ft
- Max coverage
- 50%
- Front yard
- 20 ft, 15 ft limited local
B Two-Family~26%
- Min lot
- 5,000 sq ft attached / 7,500 detached
- Min width
- 50 ft
- Max coverage
- 50%
- Front yard
- 20 ft
Where a row shows two front-yard figures, Fort Worth is setting that minimum by street classification — the lower one applies only on a limited local street. Which classification your street carries is the city's answer rather than anything you can read off the street sign, so we pull it before we draw.
A third of the lots are under the 50-foot minimum width
678 of 1,971 measure narrower than the 50 feet A-5 requires, which makes them nonconforming lots of record — legal to build on, but the side yards and the buildable width are the constraint on every addition and every back building here. It is the first thing to check, and it is not something the zoning map tells you: it comes from the parcel.
Measured from City of Fort Worth GIS and Tarrant Appraisal District parcels, measured 2026-09-01; City of Fort Worth Zoning Ordinance §4.705(c)(1) and §6.101(d), read 2026-09-25 (edition 2026 S-20)
What it runs in Arlington Heights
$40,000–$280,000
converting the garage you have at the low end, a detached new build at the top.
A garage apartment takes longer than an addition while costing less, which reads as odd until you see why: it is a separate structure with its own foundation, its own utility runs and its own permit, and none of that borrows from the house the way an addition does.
Ranges for a garage apartment in Arlington Heights, not a quote. Before there are drawings, a range is the only honest number anyone can give you — the spread between a high and a low bid on the same job is routinely 20% or more. We bill cost-plus, so when there is a plan you see the actual materials, labor and subcontractor costs, plus our overhead and profit, rather than a single figure with the unknowns padded into it.
What moves it
- Converting versus building. A conversion finishes a foundation, walls and roof that already exist, which is why it is the cheapest way to add real square footage.
- Kitchen and bath from nothing. Supply lines, drain lines and a panel upgrade into a building that has never had them is the single largest line on most conversions.
- The foundation, on anything detached. A slab or pier-and-beam for a new structure is one of the biggest items on a ground-up build.
- How far the utilities have to come, and whether a truck can get to the back of the lot.
- Per square foot
- $150–$350
- How long it takes
- 6–9 months
- Fort Worth permit fees
- $800–$2,500
- Carry a contingency
- 10–15% of budgetmore on a conversion, where demo is where the surprises live
Built by 6th Ave Homes
Backyard Casita in Arlington Heights See the gallery →What we'd actually do here
The moves that matter in Arlington Heights
Every neighborhood rewards something different. These are the three that come up on almost every garage apartment we take on.
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Draw the lot before you draw the apartment
Before a floor plan, the survey: the drive, both side yards, any easement and the tree line, drawn on the parcel. What is left between them is the footprint.
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Let the house set the height
An accessory dwelling cannot stand taller than the house in front of it. Behind a one-story bungalow, that one number shapes the apartment more than the square footage does.
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Protect the trees you are building under
The back lots here sit under mature oak canopy. Root zones, and where a crew can stage and turn on an occupied lot, get marked on the ground first. The elevation is drawn around them.
Both numbers, one conversation
Remodel it, or buy the one you actually want?
The location and the trees are why people stay on this side of town. Whether this particular house is worth the work is a different question, and it deserves a real number on each side.
What the work would cost
Priced by the people who'd build it.
Design, drafting and construction, in house.
What it'd sell for as-is
Valued by the agents who sell this market.
6th Ave Homes is a licensed brokerage.
A remodeler can price the work. An agent can price the house. We do both.
We can price both sides, which almost nobody can. Our drafting team will tell you what your house will and won't give up, our builders price the work off those drawings, and our agents can tell you what it's worth as it stands. Sometimes the honest answer is that the house you're describing is already for sale two streets over. We'd rather say that than sell you a remodel that never quite gets there.
How it works
A garage apartment in Arlington Heights, in three steps
The people who draw it, price it, and build it share a hallway — which is why the plan you fall in love with is the plan that actually gets built.
Meet Up
We walk the house, listen to how you actually live in it, and talk honestly about budget before anyone draws a line.
Team Up
Our designers and drafting team put a real plan on paper — layout, selections, and a number you can build around.
Glasses Up
We build it, keep you in the loop, and hand back a home that feels like you. Pour something good.
Our work in Arlington Heights
Arlington Heights Backyard Casita
Backyard Casita
A new casita in the backyard of an Arlington Heights bungalow: a detached board-and-batten building with a sleeping loft, a wet bar and built-in storage, designed and built by the 6th Ave Homes design and construction teams. Every square foot has a job.
See the whole projectNot our first time on these streets
More of our work in Arlington Heights
The neighborhood
The Army left the streets and sewers. The houses went up on them.
H.B. Chamberlin platted Chamberlin Arlington Heights in 1890 and built a resort hotel on the hill near Merrick and Bryce to sell it. The Panic of 1893 killed the venture and the inn burned the next year. Then in 1917 the Army took roughly two thousand acres of the same ground for Camp Bowie, and when the camp closed in 1919 the landowners got it back with streets, sewers and utility lines already in.
The old businesses stayed, and not as nostalgia. They are why the boulevard still works as a main street instead of a through road, and why somebody renovating a house here buys the cake, the groceries and the burgers within a mile of it.
What's around it
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Camp Bowie Boulevard
The brick is the point. It is why this stretch still reads as a boulevard and not a highway.
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Kincaid's Hamburgers
A 1946 grocery whose head butcher started grilling burgers in the back in 1964.
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Blue Bonnet Bakery
The bakery in the old church on the boulevard, going since 1934.
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Roy Pope Grocery
Still the one people mean when they say the store. On Merrick since 1943.
- Camp Bowie Boulevard
- Crestline Road
- Bryce Avenue
- El Campo Avenue
- Tremont Avenue
- Clover Lane
- Merrick Street
- Hillcrest Street
- Carleton Avenue
- Birchman Avenue
- Tulsa Way
- Montgomery Street
What that means for your garage apartment
Most of these houses went up small, in the twenties and thirties, on lots that run long. That shape suits a garage apartment: the room people need is behind the house rather than inside it, and building it back there leaves the front elevation, the part the street sees, exactly as it is.
Inside the work
The rooms, up close
Before you start
A garage apartment in Arlington Heights: the questions worth asking first
The answers that change a project in Arlington Heights are usually the ones nobody asks until the drawings are done. We work through these first.
Nearby and related
- Home Additions in Arlington Heights
- Whole-Home Remodel in Arlington Heights
- Garage Apartment in Mistletoe Heights
“6th Ave Homes is amazing! Their realtors are top notch and their construction team was amazing. They helped us find our dream home and then make it amazing.”
Can a garage apartment here be a rental, or only a guest suite?
It depends on your parcel's zoning, and Arlington Heights is split. On the half zoned A-5 One-Family, the city allows the building out back only as an accessory dwelling, not as a separate independent residence, so it is planned around a parent, a grown kid, guests or an office — and whether it can be leased is a question we put to the city for your parcel rather than guess at. On the quarter zoned B Two-Family, a second residence is possible, though two detached homes need a 7,500-square-foot lot and more than half the lots in the neighborhood are smaller than that.
Doesn't Fort Worth cap backyard buildings at a few hundred square feet?
There is a size table, and it is the rule people find first, but it is written for outbuildings nobody lives in — sheds, workshops, storage. A habitable accessory dwelling is not held to it, and garages and carports are written out of it as well. On a lot here the limits that actually bite are the ones on your parcel: its width, where a building can sit behind the house, and how tall the house in front of it is. All three come off your survey, not off a table.
What is the difference between a garage apartment, a casita, and a guest house?
Mostly where it sits and what it is attached to. A garage apartment lives above or beside a garage; a casita or guest house stands on its own. Zoning cares about that distinction, and so does the way the backyard feels afterward, but all three are the same class of building.
Can we keep parking in the garage?
Yes. Living space goes over the top, or beside it, and the cars stay where they are. It costs more than converting the garage you already have, and it keeps the thing you use every day.
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Thinking about a garage apartment in Arlington Heights?
Tell us about the lot, or the house that isn't big enough anymore. We'll tell you honestly what it can carry, draw it, and price it — before anyone signs anything.