South Richmond Hill, Queens

South Richmond Hill's tax-lot file counts 6,857 housing units, the lowest total among the neighborhoods profiled in this cluster despite a lot count, roughly 3,600 parcels, similar to several denser areas nearby. That lower unit count lines up with a building stock still built mostly at a small scale: two-family homes lead at 44%, one-family classifications follow at 35%, and walk-up apartment buildings account for 11%. No coverage gaps are flagged in the underlying parcel record, so the figures throughout draw on the complete recorded set rather than a partial sample. That combination of a familiar lot count but a notably lower unit total is one of the more distinctive readings among the neighborhoods grouped with it in this file, and one that separates it clearly from its more crowded neighbors.

Construction here is heavily prewar: 87% of buildings predate 1940, and the median building dates to 1920. Only 6% was built during the 1945-to-1975 postwar boom, and 6% has gone up since 2000 — prewar and recent construction recorded in identical shares here, an unusual split compared with neighborhoods where the postwar-boom share runs much larger. Land-use coding runs 79% one- and two-family, 11% multi-family walk-up, and 6% mixed residential-and-commercial, a profile close to several of its immediate neighbors but sitting on a noticeably lower unit total.

Lots run small, with a median of 2,500 square feet and the largest on record reaching 4,050 square feet — among the tighter lot-size ranges in the surrounding area. Recorded floor area sits below the district's current allowance on 85% of lots, with a median residual of 0.4 in floor-area-ratio terms. The building record tops out at a median height of 2 stories, with 0% of recorded structures above 6 floors, and both flood exposure and historic-district status read 0% on file, a reading of the current regulatory map rather than a claim about the land itself. None of these figures, taken alone or together, describe a neighborhood in transition — only what the current tax-lot and mapping record shows today.

Residential use covers 95% of lots. Jamaica, Ozone Park (North), Richmond Hill, South Jamaica, and South Ozone Park border South Richmond Hill, each with its own separate lot-by-lot record in the same municipal file, several of them recording a similarly two-family-led, prewar building stock to the one described here, though none with quite as low a unit count relative to its lot base as the figure recorded in this file.