Lot Selection Part #7 - Maximum Building Footprint

All of this past week’s discussion about lot selection was much to consider, but remember the three most important things about real estate: location-location-location. When Amaris Company assist’s a client with the purchase of a lot, we recommend the lot be purchased with a blanket contingency that allows the buyer to exit the purchase agreement, that way if the lot does ultimately fit the needs of the buyer a full refund of earnest money can be obtained. When the real estate market was hot a few years back, a contingency of this type might not have been possible. In the current market conditions, securing a lot with a contingency of this type is completely doable.

Once your lot is secured, the builder should first look at a variety of factors to determine the maximum allowable building footprint for the lot you have chosen. Things like lot set-backs required by zoning, wetland buffers, trees locations and a number of contributing factors will determine the building footprint. In suburban type subdivisions the building footprint may have already been determined by the land developer and City and is already preset. In any event, prior to beginning the actual designing of the home, the building footprint must be determined. The red box in the sketch to the left below represents the maximum allowable footprint on a recent project once we allowed for the wetland buffer (e.g. solid red shape), rear yard setbacks, front yard setbacks and side yard setbacks. Further in the process, as the design progresses the layout is verified by a surveyor (shown on right).