What’s actually buildable

Reading a parcel against both the code and the dirt.

Gross acres are a number in a listing. Buildable acres are a number in your pro forma, and they are rarely close.

Between the two sit buffers, floodplain, slopes that grade expensively, utility easements, required open space, stormwater facilities, and the street length it takes to reach the lots at the back. Every one of them is knowable early. Most of them get discovered in engineering, after the price has been agreed.

What a land review produces

• A land budget, gross acres down to net developable, with each deduction named and sourced
• A realistic yield, and the binding constraint that sets it
• The range, where yield depends on something not yet resolved, and precisely what would resolve it
• What breaks the pro forma without warning: an obligation, a required dedication, an access condition

Code and dirt together

Most reviews do one or the other. A civil engineer reads the site; a planner reads the ordinance. The expensive surprises live where the two interact, a required buffer that lands on the only developable slope, a stormwater standard that consumes the acreage your yield assumed.

We read both at once, because that’s where the answer is.