Development site

A development site is property marketed and priced for its development capacity rather than its existing income — a vacant lot, a low taxpayer building in a dense district, an assemblage offered whole. The market's unit of account is the buildable square foot: land trades at a price per square foot of what zoning permits, which makes the zoning analysis the substance of the valuation rather than a due-diligence afterthought.

The term is commercial, not regulatory — no rule defines a development site. What makes the label true or false is the arithmetic behind it: the governing maximum, the honest residual, the envelope's cooperation, and a recorded history that has not already committed the headroom.