Guide · Development sites

Site selection in Florida from public data: a filter sequence, tried on Polk County

Start with every parcel in the county and cut in a fixed order: the use codes that mean raw land, a minimum size, outside the floodplain, little or no mapped wetland, then the future land use your project needs. In Polk County that sequence takes 119,958 parcels to 5,592 dry tracts of five acres or more, and to 818 planned for homes or mixed use. Each survivor then needs checks no filter can make: sewer service, traffic, zoning and the owner.

Map Views · 1 November 2026 · Sources: the 2026 Polk County roll, FEMA, the National Wetlands Inventory, the Florida future land use compilation, the Florida Department of Health, FDOT

The sequence, step by step

1. Where. Pick the county. Polk has 435,650 parcels on its 2026 roll.
2. Raw land, by state use code. Vacant residential (000), vacant commercial (010), vacant industrial (040) and acreage not zoned agricultural (099), plus the two farm codes that hold the most large tracts in Polk: grazing land (060) and groves (066). That leaves 119,958 parcels. Leave out the farm codes and you lose most of the big pieces: of the parcels of five acres or more, 6,434 of 11,490 (56.0%) are pasture or grove.
3. Size. Acres at least 5: 11,490.
4. Floodplain. 100-year floodplain set to Outside it: 8,016.
5. Wetlands. Wetland % at most 10: 5,592.
6. Planned use. Future land use set to the classes the project needs. The residential and mixed-use classes keep 818; commercial, industrial and office keep 476.
7. Zoning last. Once a county is picked, the Zoning code list offers each jurisdiction's districts with their parcel counts. Use it to split the survivors, not to start: the plan sets the ceiling, and the zoning has to stay consistent with it.

The funnel in numbers

The biggest group at the end is still planned for agriculture, 65.1% of the 5,592. Those are not dead ends, but each needs a plan amendment before the zoning can follow; future land use vs zoning explains the order. By size, 2,625 of the 5,592 are 5 to 10 acres, and 628 are 40 acres or more.

What each filter misses

• The floodplain filter reads one point. It asks whether the parcel's centre falls in FEMA's 100-year floodplain. A big tract can pass with water along one side: 1,944 of the 5,592 survivors (34.8%) have some floodplain on their outline, 815 on a tenth or more, and one on 83.6%. Open the report, which gives each flood zone's share of the lot.
• Wetland share is a screen. It is the part of the outline mapped as wetland in the National Wetlands Inventory, drawn from aerial photos, not a line set on the ground. Building near wetlands covers who draws the real one.
• The use code is the appraiser's. It records how the land was classed for tax, not what may be built there, and a vacant code says nothing about access or a road.

Checks to make by hand on each survivor

1. Sewer and water. The report's Sewer, water line comes from the state health department's inventory, parcel by parcel. On raw land it rarely answers: 4,731 of the 5,592 (84.6%) read NA, and only 41 read known sewer. Ask the utility which provider serves the site and how far the nearest main is.
2. Traffic. Turn on Traffic counts (AADT) for the roads in front. Several years of FDOT counts are drawn on top of each other, so read the year in the popup; reading FDOT's counts has the details.
3. Soils. For a site without sewer, the soil map unit decides what a septic system needs. The soil map for septic.
4. The owner. 3,350 of the survivors (59.9%) have a company name on the roll, and 2,218 are matched to a Sunbiz filing that names its managers. 654 owners mail their bill outside Florida. The Owner filters (name has, Owner outside Florida) narrow the list further if that matters to how you approach them.

On Map Views

Every filter above is in the search panel beside the map, and the count at its top updates after each change, so the funnel builds itself as you go. Show results lists the parcels with owner, acres, use, value and last sale, ready to export. Save the search and it reruns on fresh data later. For a site made of several tracts, check them and save them as a site, then follow assembling adjacent parcels.

Every layer here is a public record or a public map meant for a first look: the county appraiser for use and acres, FEMA's rate map for the floodplain, the federal wetland inventory, the local comprehensive plan for land use. None replaces a survey, a wetland delineation, a utility's letter of service or a planning office's written answer.