Decimal-Acre Reference / Sheet 0.06
0.06 Acres = 2,614 sq ft
Six hundredths of an acre, the lot size at the boundary between an attached townhouse and a small-lot detached house. The dominant parcel size in the Charleston peninsula, common in Phoenix and Las Vegas infill, and recurring in Houston subdivisions. The math is exact: 0.06 multiplied by 43,560 equals 2,613.6 square feet.
Square Feet
2,613.6
international ft2
Square Metres
242.81
m2
Hectares
0.0243
ha
Derivation: 0.06 acres × 43,560 sq ft per acre = 2,613.6 sq ft, exactly. International acre, 1959 IYPA standard.
Sheet 02 · The Sun-Belt Infill Class
The 2,614-square-foot threshold
0.06 acres is the parcel size where US lot mathematics changes. Below 0.05 acres a detached single-family house is essentially impossible to build under any conventional zoning code. Above 0.06 acres, several Sun-Belt cities permit detached single-family on a small lot. The line is set by zoning policy more than by physics: a 1,200 sq ft house with a single-car driveway can be built on 2,000 sq ft of land, but the zoning code in most cities will not permit it without a specific small-lot variance.
Phoenix is the most prolific producer of small-lot single-family detached. The R1-2 zoning district was created in 2014 specifically to permit 2,000 sq ft lots in central-city infill, and Phoenix has issued thousands of building permits in that district since then. The typical R1-2 build is a 1,400 to 1,800 sq ft two-storey house with attached garage, on a 30 ft by 80 ft lot (2,400 sq ft). A 0.06-acre lot exceeds the R1-2 minimum by 30 percent and gives the builder room for a slightly larger garage or rear yard. Charleston, by contrast, locks in the 0.06-acre parcel size through historic-district preservation rules that prohibit further subdivision but also bar consolidation, freezing the historic block grid as it was platted in the 1700s.
Houston has neither zoning nor historic preservation in any meaningful sense. Lot size in Houston is governed by deed restrictions written into the original subdivision plat, and many recent-vintage Houston subdivisions specifically allow lots from 2,000 sq ft. The Houston townhouse boom from 1995 through 2015 produced tens of thousands of fee-simple parcels in the 2,000 to 3,000 sq ft range, often platted in clusters where 4 to 8 lots share a private driveway. A 0.06-acre Houston lot is typical for these developments.
On the cost side, Phoenix small-lot infill in 2025 was building roughly $300 to $400 per sq ft of livable area, putting a 1,500 sq ft house on a 2,614 sq ft lot at a $450,000 to $600,000 build cost. The lot itself in central Phoenix in 2025 traded at roughly $180 to $250 per sq ft (per Maricopa County recorder data), making a 0.06-acre raw lot worth approximately $470,000 to $650,000 before any building. The total finished package is roughly $920,000 to $1,250,000 in central Phoenix infill, putting these projects squarely in the upper-middle segment of the local housing market.