Start a Garden Apartment Site Plan in Minutes
Start from a prototypical garden community of three-story buildings with surface parking, fitted to your parcel. You get a first read on units and parking before you choose a product.
How Many Garden Apartments Will My Site Hold?
TestFit is real estate feasibility software that generates site plans on your parcel and calculates what they yield. For a garden community, the answer comes down to three things that are hard to judge from a parcel map.
Parking sets the count
Surface parking competes with the buildings for the same land. Where the stalls go decides how many units the site can carry.
Parcel shape decides the rows
Garden buildings line up along drive aisles. A narrow or angled parcel can leave room for parking but not the building behind it.
Product comes later
Early on you need a defensible unit count before the product is set. A prototype gives you that number while the product is still open.
From Your Parcel to a Deal You Can Underwrite
Start from the garden community your team would build, tune it to your standards, and finish with one model for the site, plan, tabulation and pro forma.
Your parcel and its constraints
- Site boundary: pick the parcel from built-in parcel data with current owner info, draw it, enter metes and bounds, or import a KML/KMZ file
- Setbacks and frontage: front, side and rear setbacks set to the parcel edges
- Zoning: FAR, building and impervious coverage, height limits and parking ratios, pulled in for your parcel so you don't have to dig through the zoning code
- Easements: areas the layout keeps buildings out of
- Site conditions: flood zones, wetlands and topography from Site Intelligence
Every layout starts inside your site's real constraints.
Your product, fine-tuned on the site
- Product: 3-story prototypical garden buildings, 11.5 ft floor to floor (34.5 ft), studio to 2 BR units with unit floor plans
- Site layout: surface parking around the buildings
- Your edits: unit mix, unit sizes, buildings, parking and drives
You see the building your team would propose, on your parcel.
A source of truth for the deal
- Site plan geometry: buildings, courts, parking and drives drawn to the parcel
- Tabulation for this product: building sf, dock doors, trailer and car stalls against what's required, site coverage and FAR
- Earthwork: cut and fill for the layout
- Financials: the geometry turned into development costs, revenue and returns
- Shareable results: a link or PDF report for your team, partners and other stakeholders
You know whether the deal works, with numbers to back it.
We made a goal to seek out more multi-family work, and TestFit has allowed us to win over developer partners while saving over $200k in labor hours. We can easily provide our clients with quick studies as they vet out sites to see if the sites are the right fit for them based on the data we can find in TestFit like cost of yield, number of units, square footage and more
Garden Prototype Site Planning FAQ
What is a garden-style apartment?
A low-rise apartment community, usually two to four stories, with several buildings spread across a larger site and surface parking around them. Garden product is common in suburban and Sun Belt markets.
When should I use the prototype instead of a specific product?
At the first look at a site, before the product is set. Switch to a walkup, elevator or 55+ layout once you know the market.
How much land does a garden apartment community need?
Parking usually needs more land than the buildings. Load your parcel in TestFit with this layout to see how many units fit.
What unit mix does this layout use?
Studio, one- and two-bedroom units, each with a unit floor plan. You can underlay images of your own unit floor plans and change the mix after the layout generates.
Can I change the layout after it generates?
Yes. Start from this layout, then edit the unit mix, buildings, parking and drives in TestFit. The site plan and yield recalculate as you go.
Find it in TestFit
Test This Layout on Your Next Garden Site
Load your parcel and get the site plan, yield, and costs in one place.