We ran RunEnvelope’s zoning engine over 276,106 tax lots in Brooklyn. 1,221 privately owned sites have at least 20,000 square feet of as-of-right room for housing and are built to half of it or less.
square feet across 1,221 sites. 76.7M of it needs no affordability program.
The unit count of the largest apartment scheme on each site, minus the 4,609 homes there today. A ceiling, not a forecast.
of the room for housing on the 3,451 lots analyzed sits on 1,040 lots built to less than a quarter of their largest housing scheme, or not built at all.
Commercial and office holds the most room for housing in Brooklyn: 40.4M square feet on 1,019 lots, 38% of the total.
City Planning land use codes as recorded in PLUTO.
Built floor area as a share of the lot’s largest housing scheme.
| Built to | Lots | Room for housing |
|---|---|---|
| Nothing built | 257 | 23.7M sf |
| Under 25% | 783 | 43.8M sf |
| 25 to 50% | 466 | 23.5M sf |
| 50 to 75% | 317 | 11.5M sf |
| 75 to 100% | 107 | 1.6M sf |
| At or above 100% | 15 | 0M sf |
Brooklyn Community District 5 leads with 19M square feet of room for housing and 139 sites.
| Community district | Lots | Room for housing | Sites |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brooklyn Community District 5 | 359 | 19M sf | 139 |
| Brooklyn Community District 1 | 577 | 13.8M sf | 96 |
| Brooklyn Community District 2 | 188 | 9.1M sf | 117 |
| Brooklyn Community District 13 | 165 | 7.3M sf | 80 |
| Brooklyn Community District 17 | 296 | 6.2M sf | 81 |
| Brooklyn Community District 9 | 198 | 5.6M sf | 54 |
| Brooklyn Community District 8 | 168 | 5.2M sf | 62 |
| Brooklyn Community District 14 | 127 | 5M sf | 91 |
| Brooklyn Community District 15 | 118 | 4.8M sf | 83 |
| Brooklyn Community District 18 | 175 | 4.7M sf | 64 |
| District family | Room | Sites |
|---|---|---|
| Residential (R) | 65.4M sf | 798 |
| Commercial (C) | 31.5M sf | 329 |
| Mixed manufacturing and residential (MX) | 7M sf | 91 |
| Manufacturing (M) | 0.3M sf | 3 |
Counted by the lot’s zoning district. Manufacturing districts mostly do not allow housing, so their room is small by definition. District reference.
The quick way to underwrite a lot is to multiply its area by the residential FAR in PLUTO. On the 1,898 analyzed lots where both allow housing, that gives 108.8M square feet. The engine’s largest residential-only building, with no affordability program, comes to 115.8M: 6% more in total. The total hides the lot-by-lot picture: the engine lands within 10% of the simple number on 1,287 lots, more than 10% above it on 549, and more than 10% below it on 62.
More can come from rules PLUTO’s single figure does not capture, such as the higher FAR on a wide street or a commercial district’s residential equivalent. Less can come from a lot too small or narrow for the height and setback rules to fit the full FAR. Each example below links to the lot’s page with its scenarios.
| Lot | PLUTO FAR x area | Engine |
|---|---|---|
| 2837 Coney Island Avenue R4 · 20,425 sf lot · wide street | 20,425 sf FAR 1 | 30,638 sf Max Apartments |
| 2940 Cropsey Avenue R4 · 19,958 sf lot · wide street | 19,958 sf FAR 1 | 29,937 sf Max Apartments |
| 1535 Rockaway Parkway R5 · 21,891 sf lot · wide street | 32,836 sf FAR 1.5 | 43,782 sf Max Apartments |
| Lot | PLUTO FAR x area | Engine |
|---|---|---|
| 158 3 Avenue M1-4/R7X · 17,390 sf lot · narrow street | 86,950 sf FAR 5 | 65,580 sf Shared Housing (SRO) |
| 215 3 Avenue M1-4/R7X · 9,783 sf lot · narrow street | 48,915 sf FAR 5 | 37,220 sf Shared Housing (SRO) |
| 1182 Broadway C4-4L · 8,393 sf lot · wide street | 33,572 sf FAR 4 | 27,422 sf Shared Housing (SRO) |
Examples are drawn from our published Brooklyn lot pages, which pass extra data quality checks, and ranked by the ratio of the two numbers. Each is a single screening result: open the lot page for its scenarios, and treat it as a reason to look closer, not a conclusion.
Our soft sites study counted 1,021 sites in Brooklyn from PLUTO alone. The engine assessed 814 of them (the rest are public, missing a built area, or failed a check). PLUTO puts their unused residential floor area at 48.8M square feet. The engine finds 52.5M for residential-only buildings, 62.9M once mixed-use schemes with homes count, and 70.8M with the affordable and senior housing schemes.
RunEnvelope precomputes its zoning analysis for every tax lot in PLUTO 26v2: the same engine as a report, run in screening mode from the City’s recorded lot dimensions rather than a surveyed outline. For each lot we use:
| Engine could not compute (error, or no zoning district) | 1,427 |
|---|---|
| Public, institutional or open space | 12,381 |
| Condominium or co-op | 7,474 |
| Buildings present but no built floor area recorded | 1,604 |
| Largest scheme above the district's maximum FAR | 477 |
| Less unused floor area than the floor | 249,292 |
| Analyzed: one and two family homes | 192 |
| Analyzed: all other private lots | 3,259 |
| Tax lots in Brooklyn | 276,106 |
Each lot is counted once, in the first class that applies, top to bottom. Public and institutional land, condominiums and co-ops follow the same rules as the soft sites study.
It counts what the zoning permits, not what will be built. Landmarked buildings and lots in historic districts are included in these totals (the lot pages leave them out). It cannot see who lives or works on a lot, leases, ground conditions, financing or whether anyone wants to sell. PLUTO’s built floor area comes from tax records and is least reliable on large, irregular lots. Treat any single lot as a lead worth checking.
Computed October 25, 2026 against PLUTO 26v2 by scripts_seo/borough_research.py. Reuse with attribution and a link to this page.