Envelope
Zoning, height, floor space ratio or plot ratio, setbacks and overlays decide how much building the site can physically hold. This is the hard ceiling on floor area, and every other number is built on top of it.
Most apartment deals die on the second pass, not the first. A parcel looks promising, someone builds a spreadsheet, and three weeks later the yield, the floor space ratio and the build cost finally line up to say the number never worked. The pain in early-stage apartment development is not a lack of sites. It is the time it takes to prove that a site is worth a proper feasibility, and the deals you never see because you were busy modelling one that was always going to fail.
GoSiteHunt collapses that first pass into seconds. Type an address and you get the zoning and what you can build, an indicative dwelling yield, a development feasibility, a residual land value, the most you should rationally pay for the land, and a plain GO or NO-GO screen. It is instant, affordable, and it works globally rather than in a single market, so an acquisition manager can screen a shortlist across cities and countries before lunch instead of over a fortnight.
What apartment feasibility actually measures
Apartment feasibility is a test with three legs. Break any one and the deal falls over, no matter how good the other two look.
End value
Achievable apartment sale values set the revenue ceiling. A tall envelope in a soft submarket produces a lot of floor area you cannot sell at a price that pays for building it.
Cost, finance and margin
Multi-storey construction, professional fees, statutory contributions, holding costs, finance and the developer's required profit all sit between revenue and land. They routinely kill deals that look fine on zoning alone.
The point of an early screen is not precision. It is triage. You want to know, quickly and cheaply, which of the three legs is the weak one so you can walk away, negotiate harder, or greenlight a deeper model. GoSiteHunt is built for exactly that triage step.
From site area to yield: GFA, FSR and net sellable area
Apartment yield starts with gross floor area. GFA is usually the site area multiplied by the permitted floor space ratio, sometimes called plot ratio depending on the jurisdiction. A 1,200 m² site with an FSR of 2.5:1 supports roughly 3,000 m² of GFA before you account for height limits, setbacks and overshadowing that may pull the achievable figure lower.
Not all of that GFA is sellable. Cores, corridors, lift lobbies, plant and common areas absorb a share, so net sellable area typically lands somewhere around 80 to 85 percent of GFA in a well-planned building. Divide net sellable area by an average apartment size and you get an indicative dwelling count. That count, multiplied by an achievable price per apartment, is your gross realisation, the revenue ceiling everything else is measured against.
The reason this matters for screening is that small changes in FSR, height or efficiency swing the dwelling count hard, and the dwelling count swings revenue. Getting an instant, defensible first estimate of yield is the difference between chasing a real opportunity and burning a week on one that never had the floor area to work.
Residual land value: the number that decides the deal
Residual land value is the discipline that separates developers from optimists. Instead of asking what the land costs and hoping the project pays for it, you work backwards from the finished building. Estimate the total apartment sales, then strip out everything it takes to deliver them, construction, professional and statutory fees, selling and marketing costs, finance, and the profit margin you require for taking the risk. Whatever is left is the residual land value, the maximum you can pay for the site and still hit your target return.
Pay more than the residual and you are funding your margin out of your own pocket. The residual is therefore the single most useful number in early feasibility, because it converts a wall of assumptions into one decision: this is the most this dirt is worth to me.
An illustrative worked example
The table below is a simplified residual land value walk-through for a small apartment project. The numbers are placeholders chosen to show the logic, not a market appraisal of any real site, and margins, costs and values vary widely by location and cycle.
| Line item | Illustrative basis | Illustrative amount |
|---|---|---|
| Site area | 1,200 m² | — |
| Gross floor area (FSR 2.5:1) | 1,200 × 2.5 | 3,000 m² |
| Net sellable area (82%) | 3,000 × 0.82 | 2,460 m² |
| Indicative apartments (avg 70 m²) | 2,460 ÷ 70 | ~35 dwellings |
| Gross realisation (sales) | 2,460 m² × $9,000/m² | $22,140,000 |
| Construction cost | 3,000 m² GFA × $4,200/m² | −$12,600,000 |
| Professional & statutory fees | ~12% of build | −$1,512,000 |
| Selling & marketing | ~4% of sales | −$885,600 |
| Finance & holding | illustrative allowance | −$1,400,000 |
| Developer margin | ~20% of sales | −$4,428,000 |
| Residual land value | what is left for the land | ~$1,314,000 |
Illustrative only. Figures are placeholders to demonstrate method and are not a valuation of any site. Real projects require verified costs, market evidence and professional review.
Read the bottom line as a ceiling, not a target. If the parcel is being marketed at or below the residual, it deserves a deeper look. If the asking price is well above it, either a lever has to move, a higher FSR, stronger sales, a leaner build, or you pass. That single comparison is what a good screening tool gives you in seconds.
Inputs and outputs at a glance
Screening is only as fast as the data you have to gather. The value of an instant tool is that it assembles the planning and yield inputs for you and returns the decisions you actually care about.
| What goes in | What you get back |
|---|---|
| Address (35+ countries) | Zoning and what you can build |
| Site area and planning controls | Indicative dwelling and lot yield |
| Height, FSR / plot ratio, overlays | Development feasibility summary |
| Cost and sales assumptions | Residual land value (max land price) |
| — | GO / NO-GO screen |
How GoSiteHunt helps
GoSiteHunt is end-to-end: it finds sites, assesses them, prices the land and gives you a GO or NO-GO, where most rivals do one of those and one country. Here is how the pieces fit an apartment workflow.
Assess any address instantly
Run zoning, yield, feasibility and residual land value for a single site in seconds with the core feasibility software. A site report is one credit.
Find candidate apartment sites
Use the development site finder to surface apartment and mixed-use parcels by suburb and type, then scan whole areas instead of checking one address at a time.
Price the land properly
Pressure-test your maximum land price with the residual land value calculator, and read the method in the RLV guide.
Confirm the envelope
Check controls with the zoning lookup, test subdivision potential, and for lower-density comparisons see how many townhouses fit.
If you want the wider picture, the guide to finding development sites covers sourcing, the software comparison shows where GoSiteHunt sits against other tools, and Australian users can start from a market page such as Adelaide. New to the platform? The how it works page walks through a full run.
You start free with 50 trial credits, enough for dozens of site reports, since a report is one credit and an area scan is five. Paid products sit alongside the free tier when you need them, including a $49 vendor's report, Deal Flow alerts from $49 per month, and a DocFlow planning report at $249 instant or $990 planner-reviewed. There is no enterprise gate to get a first answer.
Screening, not sign-off. GoSiteHunt outputs are indicative screening only. They are not a valuation and not planning, financial or legal advice. Use them to decide which sites deserve deeper work, then confirm planning controls, market evidence and costs with qualified professionals before committing to a purchase.
Frequently asked questions
- What is apartment development feasibility?
- It is the early test of whether a site can physically hold enough sellable apartment floor area, and whether the revenue from those apartments covers land, construction, fees, finance and a developer's margin. It combines the planning envelope with a yield estimate and a residual land value that tells you the most you should pay for the land.
- How do you calculate residual land value for an apartment site?
- Work backwards from the finished project. Estimate gross realisation from apartment sales, subtract construction cost, professional and statutory fees, selling and marketing, finance and a required profit margin. What remains is the residual land value, the maximum you can pay and still hit your target return. GoSiteHunt produces an indicative residual for any address in seconds.
- What is GFA and how does it drive apartment yield?
- GFA, or gross floor area, is the total built floor area a site can support, usually site area multiplied by the floor space ratio or plot ratio. Net sellable area is a share of GFA after cores and common space. Net sellable area divided by average apartment size gives an indicative dwelling yield, the starting point for revenue.
- Does GoSiteHunt work outside Australia?
- Yes. It returns zoning, buildable use, dwelling and lot yield, feasibility, residual land value and a GO or NO-GO screen for addresses across 35+ countries, so teams can screen sites in multiple markets with one tool rather than one country at a time.
- Is a GoSiteHunt feasibility report a valuation?
- No. Outputs are indicative screening only. They are not a valuation and not planning, financial or legal advice. Use them to prioritise sites, then confirm the detail with qualified professionals before committing.
- How much does it cost to run an apartment feasibility check?
- You can start free with 50 trial credits. A site report costs one credit and an area scan costs five, so the trial covers dozens of checks. Paid products sit alongside the free tier, including a $49 vendor's report, Deal Flow alerts from $49 per month and a DocFlow planning report from $249.
- Can GoSiteHunt help me find apartment sites, not just assess one?
- Yes. Alongside single-address feasibility it finds candidate sites by suburb and type, including apartment and mixed-use, scans whole areas, checks subdivision potential, watches development applications near an address, and has an owner side for selling sites off-market direct to developers with no agent and no commission.
Screen your next apartment site now
Stop building spreadsheets for deals that were never going to work. Run zoning, yield, feasibility and residual land value on any address, decide GO or NO-GO in seconds, and spend your modelling time only on the sites that survive the screen.
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