Size a Garden Site Before Anyone Draws a Floor Plan
Start from three-story garden massing blocks placed along the drives, with surface parking, fitted to your parcel. You get unit counts and parking without drawing a floor plan.
How Much Garden Product Can My Site Hold?
TestFit is real estate feasibility software that generates site plans on your parcel and calculates what they yield. For a garden massing study, the answer comes down to three things that are hard to judge from a parcel map.
Counts before floor plans
Early on you need a unit count you can defend before anyone draws a floor plan. Massing blocks give you units from building area and an average unit size.
Parking still sets the count
Surface parking competes with the blocks for the same land. Where the stalls go decides how much building the site can carry.
Parcel shape decides the blocks
Blocks line up along the drive aisles. Parcel shape decides how many fit before parking and setbacks run out.
From Your Parcel to a Deal You Can Underwrite
Start from the garden massing study 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 garden massing blocks, 10.5 ft floor to floor (31.5 ft), unit counts by unit type without floor plans
- Site layout: surface parking courts on fire-access drive aisles
- 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.
It’s completely changed the way we think. Instead of parking first, we’re thinking about building first.
Garden Massing Study Site Planning FAQ
What is a massing study?
A quick test of how much building fits on a site, using simple blocks instead of designed buildings. It answers how many units and stalls before any architecture is drawn.
How are units counted without floor plans?
The study reports unit counts and mix by type from the massing, so you can size the deal before any units are drawn.
Who places the blocks?
TestFit places them along the drives for you. You can move and edit them after the layout generates.
When should I switch to a specific product?
Once the site looks viable. Move to a walkup, elevator or 55+ layout to test a real building type.
Can I change the layout after it generates?
Yes. Start from this layout, then edit the blocks, unit mix, 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.