Reference
Glossary
The zoning, flood, and entitlement terms a Plat report surfaces — in plain language, no jargon-for-jargon.
- Zoning
- The city's rulebook for what you can do on a piece of land — whether homes, shops, offices, or industry are allowed, and how big or tall a building can be. A parcel's zoning is the first thing that decides whether your plan is even possible.
- Use (permitted vs. conditional)
- What the land is actually allowed to be used for. A permitted use is allowed outright; a conditional use is allowed only with special approval. If the use you want isn't on the list, the plan stops before it starts.
- Entitlement
- The set of approvals a project needs from the city before it can be built — rezoning, permits, variances, and sign-offs. "Fully entitled" land already has these in hand, which removes risk and time from a deal.
- Plat
- The official map that divides land into lots and records their boundaries, easements, and streets. Recording a plat is how raw land becomes buildable, legally defined parcels.
- Parcel
- A single, legally defined piece of land with its own boundary and ownership record. A Plat report is built around one parcel at a time.
- Floodplain / flood zone
- Land mapped as likely to flood. A parcel in a mapped flood zone can face higher insurance costs, elevation requirements, and limits on where you can build — a condition to price in, not always a dealbreaker.
- Setback
- The minimum distance a building must sit back from a property line, street, or waterway. Setbacks shrink the part of a lot you can actually build on.
- Floor area ratio (FAR)
- A limit on how much building floor area you can put on a lot, relative to the lot's size. A higher FAR lets you build more; a low FAR caps the size of what's possible.
- Impervious cover
- The share of a lot covered by hard surfaces — rooftops, driveways, parking — that rain can't soak through. Cities cap it to manage runoff, and the cap can limit how much of a lot you can develop.
- Easement
- A recorded right for someone else to use part of your land for a specific purpose — a utility line, a shared driveway, drainage. Easements stay with the land and can restrict where you build.
- Overlay district
- An extra layer of rules laid on top of the base zoning for a specific area — historic character, environmental protection, corridor design. An overlay can add requirements the base zoning alone wouldn't tell you about.
- Variance
- Special permission from the city to depart from a zoning rule — for example, to build closer to a property line than the setback allows. Variances are case-by-case and not guaranteed.
- Right-of-way
- The public strip of land set aside for streets, sidewalks, and utilities. It's not part of the buildable lot, and its width and access can shape what a site can become.