A land buyer counts
homes before acres

A land buyer works in the number of homes the ground looks like it holds, and most of the questions they raise are ways of getting to that number.

You can see it in the form itself. Our own land buyer list has no field for acreage at all. It runs on a lot count, in bands: 1 to 3, 4 to 10, 11 to 25, or 26 and up, alongside whether approvals need to already be in place, and a price range for each piece rather than a price per acre. A builder who tells us ten lots has told us what they are shopping for.

Where there is no sewer, the State does part of that count arithmetically, and it is worth knowing because it is not a rule of thumb. For ground to be served by individual septic systems, a wastewater management plan has to determine how many acres one unit needs, then take the undeveloped acres and divide. What comes out the other side is a number of units.

And the unit is a house. The State defines it as a single family home with three bedrooms and three residents, the standard it uses for its nitrate model. That is why a conversation about your land ends up being a conversation about houses even when nobody has drawn a plan yet.

Several things come off the top before that number is real. Wetlands, a stormwater basin, the road right of way and the access point all reduce what is left, and a town's own ordinance can be stricter than the state analysis. How the lots are cut also decides which clock the application runs on: ten lots or fewer is a 45 day period, more than ten is 95.

The honest phrasing is therefore what the ground looks like it holds, not what it holds. The number moves again at the board. But it is the number a buyer is working from when they call, and it is the reason two owners with the same acreage can get very different conversations.

A yield is an estimate until a board rules on it; wetlands, access and a town's own ordinance all change the count. Written by Justin Kelly, NJ Real Estate Broker-Salesperson. More at South Jersey New Construction.