Read this first. Everything below is general information compiled from publicly available sources — California statutes, state and local building codes, and published city and county guidance — current as of August 2026. It is an estimate of how the rules generally work, not a determination about your property.
Codes get amended locally, thresholds and fees change, and building officials apply judgment case by case. Two houses on the same street can get different answers. Do your own research with the building and planning departments that actually have jurisdiction over your parcel, and have a qualified professional look at your specific property and scope — a designer, a registered engineer, or a licensed architect, depending on what the project turns out to need — before you make decisions or spend money on the strength of anything you read here.
This is not legal, engineering, or code-compliance advice, and reading it does not create a professional relationship. RDD Solutions is a residential design and drafting firm; we are not an architecture firm and we do not provide licensed architectural services.
The short version. A California building department requires complete, code-compliant drawings. It does not require an architect’s stamp on exempt single-family residential work. The stamp question and the completeness question get confused constantly, and they are not the same thing — plans get rejected for being incomplete far more often than for who drew them.
What the counter is actually checking
When a plan checker opens your submittal, they are asking three questions in this order:
- Is this set complete? Are all the required sheets here, and do they reference things that actually exist in the set?
- Does it comply with the code? Structural, energy, egress, fire, accessibility where relevant, and the local zoning overlay.
- Where the code requires a licensed professional, is one present?
Most homeowners assume question three is the gate. It is question one that fails sets. A drawing that calls out “see detail 4/A5” when there is no sheet A5 comes straight back, regardless of who signed it.
The licensure rule, precisely
Business & Professions Code § 5537(a) exempts an unlicensed person preparing plans for (the full explanation is here):
- Single-family dwellings of woodframe construction, not more than two stories and basement in height
- Multiple dwellings of woodframe construction containing no more than four dwelling units, same height limit
- Garages and other structures appurtenant to those buildings, woodframe, same height limit
- Agricultural and ranch buildings of woodframe construction — subject to the building official’s public-safety finding
Inside that box, no stamp is required and none is expected. The building department will process a permit on drawings prepared by a designer, a drafting firm, a contractor, or the owner.
§ 5537(b) is the limit. Where any portion of an otherwise exempt structure deviates from substantial compliance with conventional woodframe framing requirements, the building official shall require that portion to be prepared by or under the responsible control of a licensed architect or registered engineer.
So the practical answer to the title question is: no architect, but frequently an engineer — and only for the parts that need one.
A reminder, because it matters here. The rules above are the general shape of California law and common local practice as of August 2026, drawn from public sources. They are estimates, not guarantees, and they have not been checked against your parcel. Cities and counties amend the building code locally and building officials have discretion on individual projects.
Verify with your own jurisdiction, and get a professional to review your actual property before acting. Treat every timeline on this page as an estimate rather than a commitment. RDD Solutions is a residential design and drafting firm — not an architecture firm — and this article is general information, not legal or engineering advice.
What a residential submittal typically contains
This is where sets fail, so it is worth being concrete. A typical California residential permit submittal includes:
- Scope of work and property data — parcel, zoning, valuation, occupancy, construction type
- Site or plot plan — setbacks, existing and proposed footprint, lot coverage, drainage, trees where protected
- Foundation plan
- Floor plans, existing and proposed
- Roof and floor framing plans
- Construction sections and details
- Mechanical, electrical and plumbing plans
- Title 24 energy compliance documentation where conditioned floor area is added
- Structural calculations, stamped, where framing deviates from conventional requirements
Many jurisdictions now take these as digital PDFs by email or through an online portal. The City of Monterey, for example, requires plans and calculations to be submitted digitally as PDF.
The two clocks people forget
Plan check is one review. Depending on the jurisdiction and the project, there may be a second, entirely separate planning review — design review, architectural review, historic review — that runs on its own schedule and can require story poles, neighbor notification, and a hearing.
These do not run in parallel by default. A project that needs discretionary planning approval typically has to clear that before or alongside building plan check, and the planning package is a different drawing set with different emphases. Finding this out after you have paid for construction documents is the expensive version.
Treat every published timeline as an estimate. Jurisdictions publish target review times, not guarantees. Those targets assume a complete submittal, they reset in part with each correction round, and they say nothing about how long a discretionary planning review will take. Ask your building department for their current figures before you build a schedule around them.
Where jurisdictions add their own thresholds
State law sets the floor. Local building officials publish technical bulletins that go further, and these vary. Sonoma County’s bulletin, as one published example, calls for licensed design on items including decks over eight feet in height and cripple walls over four feet or adjacent to garage openings — conditions that would not obviously read as “needs an engineer” to a homeowner.
Two consequences. First, “my neighbor did this without an engineer” is not evidence about your jurisdiction, or even your parcel. Second, the twenty minutes it takes to read your building department’s bulletin before design starts is the cheapest twenty minutes in the project.
Not sure which side of the line you’re on?
Send us the address and a sentence about the scope. We will tell you whether it is a drafting job, an engineering job, or one of the few that genuinely needs a licensed architect — and if it is the last one, we will say so.
Ask us about your projectADUs are their own case, and a friendlier one
Accessory dwelling units sit inside the § 5537 exemption as appurtenant woodframe structures, and state law adds a procedural protection on top. Under Government Code § 66314, ADU applications must be reviewed ministerially — no public hearing, no discretionary design review — and approved or denied within 60 days of a complete application. A completeness determination is due within 30 days, and failure to act within 60 days results in the application being deemed approved. Pre-approved plan sets get an expedited 30-day timeline.
Ministerial does not mean unreviewed. It means the criteria are objective: meet the standards and it is approved. Which puts the emphasis squarely back on the drawings being complete and compliant.
So who should draw your plans?
Someone who has taken a set through your specific building department and can show you the drawings. That is the qualification that predicts a smooth permit, and it is available from architects and design and drafting firms alike.
RDD Solutions is a residential design and drafting firm in Carmel — not an architecture firm. We produce permit sets for exempt residential work across Monterey County, coordinate the licensed structural engineering when a project needs it, and answer the plan-check comments rather than handing them back to the homeowner to interpret.
Related reading
- When do you actually need an architect in California? — the full guide
- The complete guide to Monterey home permits
- six permit mistakes that stall Monterey County remodels
- Carmel home remodeling permitting 101
- Do I need a permit for a remodel in Santa Cruz County?
- What qualifies as an ADU in California
Where we work
RDD Solutions provides residential design and drafting across the Monterey Peninsula — Monterey, Pacific Grove, Pebble Beach and Carmel Valley — including kitchen and bathroom design, home additions, whole-house drafting, and plan sets for general contractors. Get in touch to talk through your project.