The State Can Change the Deal
A local zoning label is only the first layer of the investment. A qualifying state pathway can change the use, density, parking and approval process attached to the same parcel. So before you divide an asking price by a unit count, find out which layer is setting the count.
Here is the decision. A seller wants $1 million for one acre of commercial land on an 80-foot corridor, and you want to build rental apartments. The commercial label carries no apartment number, so on the label alone the price has nothing to divide by. One way in is a rezoning, and nothing in this record prices its odds or its timing. The other is a state pathway: a statute that lets qualifying housing onto commercial land without one. I lay three of them over the same acre.
The whole mechanism fits in one sentence. Every city already has its own top residential number, and a state pathway adds density only where the state’s floor is higher than that number; where the city’s number is higher, the state adds no units at all and instead lets the city’s number onto commercial land without a rezoning, in exchange for its conditions. To see that cleanly, the comparison holds one invented city number fixed, first at 24 units an acre and then at 60, and lets only the state layer move. The statute detail below is what each state reads and what it charges.
Texas’s SB 840 prevents qualifying cities from imposing a density limit below the greater of 36 homes per acre or the city’s highest residential density. It also prohibits municipal floor-area-ratio limits under the pathway and caps required parking at one space a unit, and it adds no affordable-unit requirement of its own. That can materially change the development option.
Florida and California offer different bargains. Their selected commercial-housing pathways attach affordable housing obligations; California also imposes construction labor standards. Florida’s Live Local pathway has no fixed density floor. It reads the city’s highest eligible residential density and requires at least 40 percent of the homes to be affordable rentals for 30 years. California’s AB 2011 reads the base density on the site, with a floor of 40 units an acre on this 80-foot corridor and 80 within half a mile of major transit. I chose its rental option, 15 percent of the homes for lower-income households for 55 years, and the whole building is built at prevailing wages, with apprenticeship and worker-healthcare conditions at 50 units or more. Put those conditions next to the rights before dividing acquisition price by a unit allowance.
One definition. The density allowance is the most units a rule lets you propose on the acre. It is not a count of units that fit, and the land price divided by it is a land basis per potential unit, nothing more.
The control: one city number
The three statutes don’t read the same number. Here is why one shared number is a simplification. Texas reads the highest residential density allowed anywhere in the city. Florida reads the eligible citywide maximum, now or on July 1, 2023, whichever is less restrictive, and leaves out bonus densities. California reads the base density allowed on the site itself. To make only the state layer move, the comparison sets all three inputs to one shared number, which I’ll call the city’s number, and holds it at 24 units an acre. Later it raises it to 60. That is the control. It is also an artifice: in a real city those three inputs differ, and one number stands in for all of them.
At 24 units an acre, the floors decide
Texas. The greater of 36 or the city’s 24 is 36. $1,000,000 ÷ 36 = $27,778 of land a unit, and the pathway restricts none of them.
Florida. No fixed floor, so the city’s 24: $41,667 of land a unit. Forty percent of 24 is 9.6, so 10 homes are restricted for 30 years, leaving 14 unrestricted.
California. The greater of 24 or 40 is 40: $25,000 of land a unit. Fifteen percent of 40 is 6 lower-income rentals for 55 years, leaving 34.
On the allowance alone, California is the cheapest acre. Add the conditions and count only unrestricted homes, and the order flips: Texas $27,778 a home (36 of them), California $29,412 (34), Florida $71,429 (14). That’s before anyone prices California’s prevailing wages, which this comparison doesn’t. Land per unrestricted home overstates what the restricted homes cost you, because they still pay rent, just less of it. I read the real figure as somewhere between the two columns.
At 60, the floors drop out
Raise the city’s number to 60 and every pathway reads it: 60 units in all three states, $16,667 of land a unit. The 36 and 40 floors sit under the city’s number and add nothing. What’s left is the conditions. Texas takes none. California takes 9 homes for 55 years, leaving 51 at $19,608 of land each, plus prevailing wages and, because 60 is over its 50-unit line, the apprenticeship and worker-healthcare conditions. Florida takes 24 for 30 years, leaving 36 at $27,778. Where the city’s number is already high, the state isn’t selling you density. It’s letting the city’s own number onto commercial land by right, and the conditions are the price of not asking for a rezoning.
Near transit, only California moves
Put the acre within half a mile of a qualifying major-transit stop, outside the coastal zone, with the city still at 60. California’s floor doubles to 80: $12,500 of land a unit, 12 restricted, 68 unrestricted at $14,706 each, the cheapest unrestricted home in the whole comparison. The apprenticeship and worker-healthcare conditions still apply; they started at 50 units, so they were already in force at 60. Texas and Florida don’t key density to transit here, so they stay at 60. Florida’s transit provisions touch parking, which the comparison doesn’t model.
What the comparison below shows
The applet holds the acre, the $1 million and the plan fixed: new rental housing, each state’s pathway assumed to apply, no density bonus. Press Play and it adds one layer at a time, then moves the control. Step one is the commercial label alone; the bars are dashed and empty because there is no apartment number. Step two lays on each state’s density with the city at 24: blue is the allowance, the gold tick is the state’s floor, and the dashed line is the city’s number. Step three adds the conditions: orange is the restricted rentals, and the cards add land per unrestricted home. Step four raises the city to 60. Step five moves the acre near transit. You can also pick any step yourself. Each card says which number set its allowance.
Watch the gold ticks. Where a tick sits right of the dashed line, the state is giving you density the city wouldn’t. Where it sits left, the floor does nothing, and on the bar the only thing the pathway adds is orange.
The limit of the record
The record behind this page is a summary of three statutes, each checked against its text on October 11, 2026. It is not a parcel record. It doesn’t know this acre exists.
It certifies no eligibility. Texas needs a city over 150,000 people in a county over 300,000, no heavy industry within 1,000 feet, no airport or military base within 3,000 feet, and a project initiated on or after September 1, 2025. Florida screens out airport, working-waterfront, conservation and protected land, and requires mixed use in cities where less than 20 percent of the land is commercial or industrial. California needs a metropolitan urban infill site on a corridor 70 to 150 feet wide, with at least 50 feet of frontage. The comparison assumes every one of these and lists them under the applet.
The city’s number is invented. 24 and 60 are not any city’s figures; they are the control. In a real city the number each state reads is different and often missing. The same comparison run on Austin, Orlando and Los Angeles records finds a Texas number that may be too low, a Florida number that may include a bonus, and a California commercial row with no base density at all.
It prices land, not the building. Construction, wages, financing, rents, taxes and operating costs are out. So is geometry: an allowance doesn’t say the units fit. Density bonuses are out, as are local California rules that can raise the 15 percent and Florida’s parking relief near transit. And the rezoning, the other way in, has no price at all, so the comparison can’t tell you whether the conditions cost more than the alternative.
So what does the state change?
It changes the density only where its floor beats the city’s number, and it charges for the change wherever it applies. At 24, Texas turns a label with no number into 36 units with no strings, the cleanest right in the comparison. California gives more units and takes some back. Florida, in a city that tops out at 24, brings the city’s 24 onto commercial land and no more, and takes 10 of them for 30 years. At 60 the floors are irrelevant, and every pathway is a trade of conditions for skipping a rezoning. My judgment: read the city’s number first, because it decides whether the state is selling you density or just a shortcut. Then subtract the homes the conditions take back. Only then divide the $1 million.