• Cyburbia is a friendly big tent, where we share our experiences and thoughts about urban planning practice, the built environment, planning adjacent topics, and anything else that comes to mind. No ads, no spam, and it's free. It's easy to join!

Home stuff 🏡 What is the size of your lot or parcel?

What is your lot square footage?

  • Less than 5,000

    Votes: 2 8.3%

  • 5,001-7,500

    Votes: 3 12.5%

  • 7,501-10,000

    Votes: 4 16.7%

  • 10,001+

    Votes: 12 50.0%

  • Apartment/condo/townhouse

    Votes: 3 12.5%
  • Total voters
    24
  • Poll closed .
SlaveToTheGrind

SlaveToTheGrind

Cyburbian
Messages
5,048
Points
54
mendelman made the comment in RTDNTOTO about mowing his lawn in less than 13 minutes. Made meet think of mine which takes upwards of 30 minutes (5,000 sf of lawn? in a Köppen climate classification of Dfa) and the size of lots today. Probably fair to say most Cyburbians are involved in the planning field in some way. The textbook/Zen art of planning really discourages low-density mcmansions in favor of close knit urban design to lessen the strain on infrastructure (including future maintenance which is rarely considered) and encourage walkable communities. Throw in public transit options and you have your capstone project ready to present to close out your master's degree. I suspect there are Cyburbians that live in 500 s.f. in New York or San Francisco and pay an exorbitant amount in rent/mortgage and others living on acreage in rural America. Are we living our planning education and what we publicly profess? I confess I live in suburbia on a 9,000 plus square foot lot with a snouthouse nowhere near transit - don't hate me. Also, I want acreage and no neighbors.
 
We live on a 1/4 acre at the end of a cul-de-sac. I know, I know, it a very "un-planner" like thing to do. However, we have not followed our neighbor's lead and bought a golf cart or anything like that.... I am saving up for a boat and a pool instead.

But the setting is perfect. It does take me about an hour to fully mow my lawn. Once the pool is in, it will take less time. I hope.
 
I live in a SFH, on a small lot. I don't want to share walls or get parked in by inconsiderate neighbors for now. I did plenty of that in the first decade of my adult life.

I picked the neighborhood for walkability and affordability and can walk to school/grocery/library/city hall/pizza/bus stop/hardware store/yarn store/etc. I can't walk to work but i can bike there, at least some times.
 
We are now in a townhouse with a terrace and small yard. It takes about 10, maybe 15, pushes of the reel mower to do the yard, followed by some weed whacking to clean up the edges.

On today's bike ride I was noting how most housing units here have very little yard space. But there is greenery all around and trails and natural areas. And many people have allotment areas on the outskirts of town. I really want one of those but apparently it is difficult to get one as they get passed down among families.
 
Our lot is just shy of a half acre (20,880 sqft) and is about average for our neighborhood. We are on the edge of a relatively dense area: once you go about a quarter mile to the neighborhood just west of ours (further away from downtown) the lots quickly get considerably larger. As you move further east from our neighborhood towards downtown the lots get smaller and smaller. The neighborhood just east has lots about the same as ours and they get progressively smaller from there until you get downtown about 2 miles away where most of the lots are under 5,000 sqft, though there is one exception neighborhood halfway between our house and downtown where most of the lots are about an acre+.

As for how long it takes to mow my yard? 0 minutes. It magically appears mowed every Wednesday when I return from the office.
 
I'm on a 70' x 100' - 7,000 sq. ft. - lot in a mid-1960s neighborhood. It takes me about 40 minutes to mow + weedwhack since I bag the front yard clippings and that slows me down a bit. My front yard is also on a slight but noticeable incline, and I ain't gettin' any younger.
 
Gedunker said:
I'm on a 70' x 100' - 7,000 sq. ft. - lot in a mid-1960s neighborhood. It takes me about 40 minutes to mow + weedwhack since I bag the front yard clippings and that slows me down a bit. My front yard is also on a slight but noticeable incline, and I ain't gettin' any younger.
Click to expand...

The self-propelled mower was invented for a reason. A few things I have never skimped on in life is 1) AC, 2) self-propelled lawnmowers, 3) diapers, and 4) toilet paper.
 
Currently have a 8,712 sqft (66' x 132') interior lot with a 1,200 sqft ranch and side driveway to a 440 sqft detached garage at the lot's rear.

Therefore, I have most of the lot covered with impervious surface and that's why I have very little grass to mow. Plus I don't edge/weedwhack, so it's easy-peasy for me. My last house was ~17,000 sqft of grass and it would easily take 1 hour to simply mow - yuck.

We're in a interconnected gridded area of my 2nd ring suburb. We're walkable to some life needs (the HS the boys will attend is an easy 3-4 short block walk), but pretty much everything we'd need is an easy 10 minute drive in any direction.

Plus, we're about a 1.5 mile walk to two (one to the east and one to the west) separate stations for our region's commuter rail, so we've go that going for us which is nice. :)

EDIT: I don't bag the clippings. I mulch, so lots less time wasted.
 
Last edited:
I live in a rural residential subdivision (most lots are 1.5ac+). I have about 1.5ac of yard and about 2ac of woods and prairie. It take me about 45 minutes to mow. My house is a tri-level built around 1969. 1100sq ft above ground, 1800 total. 24x32 pole barn.
 
I live on a 9,496 s.f. residential lot with a 2,300 s.f. home. This is my second home I built and the first was when I was a new assistant planner 22 years ago and the lot was 7,000 s.f. and the home was 1,450 s.f. Both are part of suburbia in T3 zone (for lack of a better example than Duany) and not within walking distance to most services other than the elementary school near the current home.
 
My lot is about 15,000 s.f., platted in the 1910s. It was originally part of one of the "farm blocks" of the original city plat. The two houses next door were the original homes from the late 1800s when this lot was covered with pecan and fruit trees, plus some veggie farm plots. But I'm walking distance to the town square, so I'm highly walkable.

I'm ultimately planning to subdivide my lot or otherwise develop it... I want to add an ADU for my house, and then another house+ADU, small cottage court or duplex on the resulting divided lot.
 
Suburb Repairman said:
My lot is about 15,000 s.f., platted in the 1910s. It was originally part of one of the "farm blocks" of the original city plat. The two houses next door were the original homes from the late 1800s when this lot was covered with pecan and fruit trees, plus some veggie farm plots. But I'm walking distance to the town square, so I'm highly walkable.

I'm ultimately planning to subdivide my lot or otherwise develop it... I want to add an ADU for my house, and then another house+ADU, small cottage court or duplex on the resulting divided lot.
Click to expand...
You win the "Does As He Says" professional planner award for today.

Nice. :)
 
mendelman said:
You win the "Does As He Says" professional planner award for today.

Nice. :)
Click to expand...
It gets a big asterisk...

I'm debating the timing, and whether to try for a zoning change that would allow a better/more creative design. Unfortunately, zoning change cases are nutty these days and involve a stupidly large notification area. I'm not really in the mood to deal with explaining what I'm doing over and over to neighbors that have a tendency to default to NIMBY. and the code here kinda sucks. It shouldn't, but it does because of a reactive city council.
 
48 by 150, 7200 SF, platted in 1910. Shades are pulled on the sides quite a bit, unfortunately.
 
Suburb Repairman said:
It gets a big asterisk...

I'm debating the timing, and whether to try for a zoning change that would allow a better/more creative design. Unfortunately, zoning change cases are nutty these days and involve a stupidly large notification area. I'm not really in the mood to deal with explaining what I'm doing over and over to neighbors that have a tendency to default to NIMBY. and the code here kinda sucks. It shouldn't, but it does because of a reactive city council.
Click to expand...
Well...you know how to run the ROBD (return on brain damage) calculations on that so...

As wise man once said....small scale developers should stick with as-of-right projects.

EDIT: or you try for the zoning change and bail if it gets too onerous, but you still have the existing vested rights.
 
SlaveToTheGrind said:
The self-propelled mower was invented for a reason. A few things I have never skimped on in life is 1) AC, 2) self-propelled lawnmowers, 3) diapers, and 4) toilet paper.
Click to expand...
I wouldn't have bought my new cordless mower if self-propulsion was not an option. It was, and I did.:D
 
I'm at just above a quarter acre, though I do have a pretty notable 2:1 sloped hill in my backyard. I've been redoing a lot of the landscape to reduce the maintenance and watering efforts, though I do have a small amount of turf that's easy to mow and edge.

My prior home was a small lot (around 3,000 sq.ft.) and I do miss the almost nonexistent yard work for that home.
 
9,365 sq ft lot, with 2,737 of built square footage (house plus detached garage), so about 7,000 of open lot including lawn, garden and sidewalks. Takes me about 2-3 hours to edge, mow and blow, but that's with usually doing my neighbor's front yard as well. The edging takes a while because I'm on a corner lot on a curbed street with sidewalk and it's about 800 feet of edging altogether (with the neighbor's lot).
 
Last edited:
So we have 445,000 square feet. It takes me around 2 hours to mow the 2 acres of actual grass around the house with my 60" zero turn mower ;). We have made about an acre of prairie so I don't have to mow that anymore, which is nice and it looks great and has created a solid bird habitat.
 
10,000 +/- square foot lot, takes me (though more often my kids) about an hour to mow with our rechargeable Black and Decker mower (10 years old).
 
19,166 square feet (rounds up to 0.44 ac). Steeply sloped backyard with a bunch of hardwood trees, so no grass there and I have to get out and do some maintenance work on it maybe twice a year. The front yard is grassed, with a big 'ol berm/pine island in the middle (so I have a good defensive position whenever the enemy du jour invades). I have a lawn service that mows/blows/edges; I handle the rest once a month or so. Transit (heavy rail) is a ten minute walk or a two minute drive from here.
 
11,664 sq ft. Fairly flat. Too many trees, however, blocking sunlight to the vegetable garden. Part of me wishes it were just a tad bigger so I could fit a couple more raised garden beds in the back yard, but losing a few trees would accomplish that objective too.
 
2 acre lot in the woods - it's a cluster subdivision so it's surrounded by open space - even though it's a cul-de-sac that is a mile long, I was comfortable moving there because the circle had an extension to bring the road across to create more lots and connect to a collector street - a land trust ended up buying that land as it has a large heath and other wetland types so it's permanently a cul-de-sac - but they did cut in trails so my son can walk to the high school on a trail system

I would love to downsize to a smaller house in a downtown neighborhood in my current community and fantasize over Zillow every morning when I get my Zillow email...
 
And here I was thinking this was a family friendly site and now you're asking the size of my parcel. :oops:

Seriously though, my current property is about .25 acre that backs to a large, protected pine forest/wetland so it seems bigger. The new house will be on about .6 of an acre and is lakefront:

1631193474183.png
 
On .36 acre odd shaped lot with most of the lot landscaped. I can push mow it in about 30 minutes. We are adjacent to a 1.5 acre neighborhood park so it seems bigger and lots of separation from the neighbors on 2 sides.
 
Typical lot size in Chicago is 25 or 30 by 125' deep. Lots are so tiny that some people create outdoor living space on their garage roof...
 
My living room is bigger than my front lawn. Buffalo Double on a 33 x 105 city lot, which also includes a driveway and 2-car detached garage. Full width covered upper porch, and 2 smaller covered back porches (1 each upper and lower) open up the house to the outside world. Full basement and finished attic means 4 floors of usable space. Back lawn is 1/2 vegetable garden and 1/2 a 3rd parking spot.

I'm not an urban planner, just an urban do-er I guess.
 
Actually, our yard looks like this (yellow outlines our yard, the lot to the left is the one I usually mow the front yard of too):
1631500747179.png


1631499625940.png


The house looks like this (rotated 180 degrees from the lot plan above):
1631499749287.png
 
MD Planner said:
And here I was thinking this was a family friendly site and now you're asking the size of my parcel. :oops:

Seriously though, my current property is about .25 acre that backs to a large, protected pine forest/wetland so it seems bigger. The new house will be on about .6 of an acre and is lakefront:

View attachment 55049
Click to expand...
New house on a lake? Very nice!!



As for me, we'll be selling a .28 acre lot at the end of the second cul de sac on our road (yup, second). We do have access to transit but it would take so long to get the eight miles to downtown that I've never used it from the house. My husband bought the house before me and, when we met, I was living downtown on a 875+/- sq' lot -- a place that I still dearly love. Since the hubs works from home and needs garage space, we'd like the next house to be 0.5 acres or larger, ideally.
 
10,500sf of awkward angles that sits below the road grade with a significant sloped driveway upon which is sucks to clear snow.
 
Newark house 14' x 65', so 910 SF. The house is 14' x 40' three story rowhome with 0' side setbacks and a 6' front setback. No lawn :)

Beach house 80' x 100', so 8,000 SF. The house is a 24' x 50' ranch house with a little separate garage. Currently making plans to eliminate half the lawn and replant with native specimens.
 
As a planner who champions TND and new urbanism ... about 12,000 square feet, in an area that straddles the line between T-2 and T-3. Our walk score is in the low single digits. There's a bus stop at the end of our street, and service downtown has a headway of 30 minutes peak, 1 hour off-peak.

Why? Housing is expensive here, even more so in walkable neighborhoods, and quality is lacking even at the middle end of the market. We thought we'd be facing drive-to-qualify, a frontage lot on busy roads, or some "quirky" gabled ell that hits most of the criteria for functional obsolescence. When we found a relatively "normal" house close to town, on a local subdivision street, with public sewer and water, and wired broadband Internet, at a price we could afford, we jumped on it, urbanist cred be damned.
 
jsk1983 said:
Lots are so tiny that some people create outdoor living space on their garage roof...
Click to expand...
At least folks who do that don't have to worry about their deck falling down because the ledger pulled out from the wall! (It's one of the most common reasons why conventionally-constructed residential decks collapse, which is why I plan to do the "deck atop garage roof" thing with my next abode, if plans come to fruition for that, even though it'll be going on something somewhat larger than a Chicago lot.)

To the original thread, even though I'm but a hobbyist when it comes to urbanism or anything like that:

Lot's a bit bigger than 1/3rd of an acre, yet nonconforming on lot size and setbacks (due to the lot being originally created under county jurisdiction, then getting an inappropriate "default" zoning for its development pattern attached to it when it was annexed into the city limits)
House is about 1500sf, give or take, in a 1950s ranch style
Plenty of lawn, but pay the neighbors to mow it (who also happen to be the landlord, so it works out in the end since they're much more into the green carpet than I am)
 
Back
Top