What is a front foot?

One foot of a lot's frontage, the side that faces the street or the water. Illinois' assessor course defines it as a strip of land one foot wide running from the front of the lot to the rear, and assessors use it as a unit for comparing lots of different widths.

How do you calculate price per front foot?

Divide the lot price by its frontage in feet. Illinois' assessor course uses $24,000 ÷ 80 feet = $300 per front foot. Going the other way, lot value is the number of front feet times the rate, adjusted by a factor for depth or shape.

How is frontage measured on a cul-de-sac or corner lot?

It depends on the code or contract. Some zoning codes measure the width of a lot on a curved street at the building setback line rather than at the curb, and Houston's Chapter 42 treats a corner lot's frontage as its shortest side unless the plat says otherwise. A lot purchase contract should define it explicitly.

Why do developers price builder lots per front foot?

One rate prices lots of different widths consistently, so a community that mixes 40-, 50- and 60-foot product needs one negotiation instead of one per width. It also makes a wider lot cost proportionally more. Some markets set a higher rate for wider lots, so check whether the rate is flat or tiered.

What is the 4-3-2-1 depth rule?

An assessor's rule of thumb that the front quarter of a lot's depth holds 40% of its value, the next quarter 30%, the next 20% and the rear quarter 10%. New Jersey's assessor manual uses it as the basis for depth tables, so a 150-foot-deep lot is worth about 1.17 times a 100-foot standard lot, not 1.5 times.

Front-Foot Pricing: How Price Per Front Foot Works

A lot is a three-dimensional problem priced with one number. Its width decides which house plans fit, its depth decides the yard, and its frontage decides how it shows from the street. Front-foot pricing reduces all of that to a rate per foot of frontage, which is why developers, assessors, lakefront brokers and city engineers have used it for more than a century.

It is simple until the lot is not a rectangle. Here is how price per front foot works, how frontage is measured on the lots that matter most, how depth changes the answer, and how to write it into a contract so the arithmetic does not become an argument.

QUICK TAKEAWAY

Price per front foot is the lot price divided by its frontage, and lot value is frontage times the rate, adjusted for depth and shape. It suits communities that mix lot widths, because one rate prices every width. The contract has to say where frontage is measured on cul-de-sac and corner lots, whether the rate is flat or tiered by width, and how it escalates over a takedown schedule.

What a front foot is

A front foot is one foot of frontage, the side of a lot that faces the street or the water. The International Association of Assessing Officers defines it as the unit of linear measure used in measuring frontage. Illinois' assessor training course puts it more physically: a strip of land one foot wide, running from the front of the lot to the rear.

That second definition explains the method. If a lot is a stack of one-foot strips, its value is the number of strips times the value of one strip. Everything else is an adjustment.

The arithmetic

The formula has two directions:

Rate from a sale: price ÷ frontage. Illinois' example is $24,000 ÷ 80 feet = $300 per front foot.
Value from a rate: front feet × rate × a factor for depth or shape. New Jersey's assessor manual works it as 100 front feet × $700 × 1.00 = $70,000.

As a round illustration, not market data: at $1,000 a front foot, a 50-foot lot is $50,000 and a 60-foot lot is $60,000. That proportionality is the whole appeal. It is also the whole risk, because a buyer may not value the extra ten feet at exactly the same rate.

Our front-foot price calculator works out the rate for any lot from its price and frontage.

Why developers price builder lots per front foot

A community rarely has one lot width. A 2025 bond document for Harris County MUD No. 572 shows Pulte building on 40-, 45- and 50-foot lots in the same district. Pricing each width separately means three negotiations and three numbers to escalate. A single rate per front foot prices all of them at once and keeps the relationship between widths fixed.

Public examples exist, though they are rare. In a 2015 investor presentation, iStar reported the first phase of Naples Reserve in Florida contracted at $2,000 per front foot, plus profit participation, across about 70,000 front feet. A small Texas company's 2020 annual report listed an expected $955 per front foot for 56-foot lots in Johnson County, a deal it later rescinded.

The rate is not always flat. Kansas City's homebuilders association described lots at about $75,000 for 60-foot widths and up to $200,000 for 80- to 100-foot widths in 2024. By our arithmetic, that is roughly $1,250 a front foot for the narrow lots and $2,000 to $2,500 for the wide ones. Wider lots can command a higher rate, not just more feet.

Measuring frontage on irregular lots

Rectangles are easy. The lots that cause disputes are the others:

Cul-de-sac lots. A pie-shaped lot can be narrow at the curb and wide at the back. Some zoning codes measure the width of a lot on a curved street at the building setback line rather than at the curb; Buffalo's says so directly.
Corner lots. Houston's Chapter 42 says a lot on more than one street has frontage on only one, deemed to be the side with the shortest dimension unless the plat indicates otherwise.
Tapering lots. Iowa's assessor manual uses a one-third / two-thirds rule: a lot 30 feet wide at the front and zero at the rear counts as 20 effective front feet.
Triangles. New Jersey values a triangular lot with its base on the street at 65% of the matching rectangle, and one with its point on the street at 35%.

For builder lots, none of these is automatic. If the contract does not say where frontage is measured, it will be measured however each party prefers.

Depth: the 4-3-2-1 rule

Two 60-foot lots with different depths are not worth the same, but the extra depth is worth less than the front. Assessors capture that with depth tables, and the classic basis is the 4-3-2-1 rule: the front quarter of the depth holds 40% of the value, the next quarter 30%, then 20%, then 10%.

New Jersey's manual turns that into factors against a 100-foot standard depth:

50 feet: 0.70
120 feet: 1.08
150 feet: 1.17
200 feet: 1.27

Iowa's chart is similar, with a 50-foot lot at 72% and a 150-foot lot at about 112%. Iowa also notes that depth charts are chosen from the most common depth in the area being appraised. A front-foot rate quietly assumes a standard depth, so it needs one of these adjustments once depths vary.

Front-foot pricing in the wild

Market	Example	Figure	Source
Builder lots	Naples Reserve, Florida, 2015	$2,000 per front foot, plus profit participation	iStar investor presentation
Lakefront	Geneva Lake, Wisconsin, 2024	$72,896 average across 17 sales	Local brokerage review
Lakefront	Houghton Lake area, Michigan, 2025	$2,929 applied, from 15 sales	Roscommon Township study
Retail	Fifth Avenue, New York, 2014	Up to $11.7 million	Vornado shareholder letter
Street assessment	St. Paul, Minnesota, 2022	$82.98 per frontage foot	City project notice

The range is the point. The unit is the same; what a foot of frontage is worth depends entirely on what it fronts. On waterfront it is the standard: a 2025 Minnesota survey found front foot the most widely used method for valuing lakeshore, in 35% of counties surveyed. The Geneva Lake figure comes from a local brokerage's 2024 market review.

Premiums on top of the rate

Frontage prices the width of a lot. It does not price what the lot backs onto or which way it faces. Builders and developers usually handle those as premiums on top of the base rate: corners, cul-de-sacs, greenbelt or water views, oversized depth. Assessors often do not; Iowa's manual tells its appraisers not to apply a corner influence to residential property at all.

Keep the two separate in a contract. The rate covers frontage, and the lot premium guide covers how to price the attributes on top of it.

Escalators over a takedown schedule

A builder buying in tranches pays later lots at a higher price, and public lot contracts show how. A Landsea finished-lot form from 2022 increases the per-lot price at 6% a year, simple interest, until closing. A Pure Cycle contract with KB Home in Colorado escalates a deferred portion at 4% a year. Green Brick Partners describes its lot options as typically including escalations over time.

We found no public contract that escalates a per-front-foot rate directly, but the mechanics carry over: escalate the rate, not each lot price. The takedown schedule guide covers the rest of the terms.

Front-foot assessments: when the city bills by the foot

Front-foot pricing also runs the other way, as a charge. Texas Transportation Code §313.044 apportions street paving costs on abutting property by the front foot rule, unless that would be unjust. A city can assess up to nine-tenths of paving costs this way, and the entire cost of curbs, gutters and sidewalks. Florida's special assessment statute prorates benefits by foot frontage, and St. Paul, Minnesota, charged $82.98 per frontage foot for a 2022 street reconstruction.

In Frederick County, Maryland, a front foot benefit charge runs as a 30-year annual assessment that reimburses a developer for water and sewer, a cousin of the Texas MUD. The Texas MUD guide covers how that works here.

Where per-lot pricing is better

Front-foot pricing rests on a premise: frontage contributes to value. New Jersey's manual says a per-lot price fits when the market shows no difference in value between lot sizes, and Iowa's notes that front foot works best where lot sizes are uniform. In a phase of identical lots, a per-lot price is simpler and leaves less to dispute.

It is also what most public lot contracts use. The lot purchase agreements public builders file with the SEC usually state the price per lot, with the number redacted, and a full-text search of SEC filings since 2001 finds "per front foot" in only a handful of them.

How to write front-foot pricing into a contract

The rate, and whether it is flat or tiered by width band
Where frontage is measured: property line or setback line, and the rule for cul-de-sac and corner lots
The record of measurement: the recorded plat or a surveyor's lot schedule, never a sales map
Rounding, to the foot or the tenth of a foot
Depth, if lots vary: a standard depth and an adjustment, or a statement that none applies
Premiums, listed separately from the rate
The escalator, applied to the rate per front foot

The guide to selling lots to builders covers the rest of the agreement.

Where a map fits

Front-foot pricing is a lot-by-lot calculation, and a builder reading a lot schedule has to match each width to each lot on a separate plat. On a map, the frontage sits on the lot.

An interactive plat map built from the recorded plat can show every lot's measured frontage, its width band and its premium attributes on the lot itself. The land developer view puts each phase's lots and status on one page, so the arithmetic and the geometry stay in the same place.

The Bottom Line

Price per front foot is the fairest simple way to price lots of different widths, and the easiest to dispute when the contract is vague. The formula takes one line. The work is in defining frontage on the irregular lots, adjusting for depth, keeping premiums separate and escalating the rate cleanly.

Settle those terms before the first takedown, and one number can price an entire community.

Front-Foot Pricing: How Lots Are Priced by the Foot