Take a lot of about 7 acres in South Carolina, beside the marsh and zoned for houses. On paper, that is a lot of land. The question is how much of it a house can actually stand on, and how many homes that makes.
| Step | Land left |
|---|---|
| The lot | about 7 |
| Less: Mapped wetlands, open water and easements, with the setback the code keeps from them | about 4¾ |
| Less: Easements on the owner's survey | about 4½ |
| Less: Protected grand trees and the root zones around them (about 35 trees) | about 3 |
| Less: Roads and access to the new lots | about 2½ |
| Less: Stormwater ponds | about 2¼ |
About 2¼ acres of the 7 are left, and not in one piece: the constraints cut it into several pieces, and every new lot has to fit inside one of them.
What fits: about 18 houses by right. On the code's affordable-housing path, about 85 homes as triplexes and fourplexes, more than 4 times as many, though that path needs a board hearing.
The acreage suggested far more. The difference is the land the rules and recorded rights keep free, and it is the difference between a good price and a bad one.