Lot size vs lawn size: which number to price from
The lot size on Zillow or the county record is the quickest number to find, and the wrong one to price mowing or fertilizer from. It measures the whole parcel. You only mow and treat the grass.
What the lot size actually measures
The lot size is the area inside the property lines. It is a legal record of the parcel, not a picture of what is on it. The house and garage, the driveway, the walks and patio, the beds, the gravel side yard and the shed are all inside that number, and none of them gets mowed or fertilized.
It can also miss grass you do mow. The strip between the sidewalk and the curb often sits outside the lot line, in the city's right of way, and a corner lot can have two of them.
A worked example
Here is a made-up property at 7301 Clarity Loop, Centennial, CO (the address is fictional) on a 10,000 square foot lot. The numbers are round to keep the math easy. They illustrate the gap; they are not typical of any real neighborhood.
| Part of the lot | Square feet |
|---|---|
| Whole lot, from the county record | 10,000 |
| House and attached garage | 2,400 |
| Driveway | 800 |
| Front walk and back patio | 500 |
| Beds, shrubs and mulch rings | 1,300 |
| Gravel side yard, AC pad and shed | 1,000 |
| Lawn you actually mow and treat | 4,000 |
The lawn is 4,000 square feet, 40 percent of the lot. Now price it both ways.
Fertilizer
Say you charge $10 per 1,000 square feet for one fertilizer application. That rate is made up to keep the math simple; use your own.
| Quantity | From the lot | From the lawn |
|---|---|---|
| Square feet | 10,000 | 4,000 |
| One application | $100 | $40 |
| Five-round program | $500 | $200 |
Quote from the lot and you ask two and a half times the right price. A competitor who measured the grass wins the job. The product math goes wrong the same way: if a bag covers 5,000 square feet, the lot says two bags per application, and the lawn needs less than one.
Mowing
If you price mowing by size bracket, the lot number puts this yard in your 10,000 square foot bracket when it belongs in the 4,000 one. If you price by time on site, it overstates how long the crew will be there.
When the lot number comes in low
The mistake can run the other way, and then you are the one who underbids.
- Curb strips outside the lot line that you still mow.
- A home built across two parcels, where the record you looked at shows only one of them.
- Grass on the next parcel that the owner asks you to include, like a shared side yard.
When the lot number is still useful
- As a ceiling. Apart from curb strips, the lawn cannot be bigger than the lot, so a lawn number above it tells you something went wrong.
- For sorting requests. It tells you at a glance whether you are looking at a small city lot or acreage.
How to get the lawn number instead
Measure the grass itself. How to measure a lawn's square footage covers a measuring wheel, tracing on Google Earth and satellite measuring tools. Clarity Measure traces the turf from the address in about a minute and shows the house, paving and beds it left out, so you can see what the number includes before you quote it.
Compare it with one of your own yards
Pick a property you have measured by hand and run it through Clarity Measure's Free plan, which includes 5 searches a month with no card. Then put the lot size, your number and ours side by side.
Measure an address