The method · one lot, all the way
This is how we take a single San Jose parcel from "which one" to a pitch deck - selection, verification, envelope, yield, pro forma, drawings, package. Every figure below is from the real run on 2165 The Alameda, including the one that says the deal does not work.
Run 2026-09-15 · page rebuilt 2026-09-16
Site selection
Every main-street parcel in the study area is ranked by latent capacity - what the rules permit minus what is standing on it now. Anything carrying a live development application is excluded, because the point is to show what could happen, not to redraw somebody's file.
Goes in
County parcel fabric, General Plan designation, building footprints, the city's live application register
Comes out
A ranked shortlist, each with its own capacity gap
San Jose
2165 The Alameda, APN 23018033 - 2,164 m², 30 m of frontage, 74% built today, no file against it
Verification
The published vacant-land inventory cannot be trusted on its own. Every candidate is re-resolved point-in-parcel against the live county layer and then looked at on orthoimagery before it is used. This step is the whole difference between a lead magnet and an embarrassment.
Goes in
The shortlist, the live county fabric, current aerial imagery
Comes out
A verified boundary, or the candidate is dropped
San Jose
The city's inventory named APN 28211036, which no longer exists in the county fabric; three of its Bascom Ave "vacant" lots are visibly built on. 94 of 96 candidates re-resolved.
What the rules allow
Setbacks applied by what each edge actually faces, the stepback where it triggers, the rear plane where there is one, height and floor area ratio together. Then the question that decides the deal: which line binds first.
Goes in
Zoning and General Plan standards, the verified polygon
Comes out
A buildable envelope, and the binding constraint named
San Jose
3 storeys, 4,203 m² gross. Floor area ratio binds at 2.0 with the height allowance unused - 23 m permitted, 10.40 m built.
Yield
Plates are subdivided into a real unit mix, not a density assumption. Upper floors are cut to a 20 m habitable bar, because a double-loaded corridor deeper than that leaves rooms without a window - daylight sets plate depth, not zoning.
Goes in
The envelope, a unit-size schedule, circulation and core
Comes out
Unit count and mix, retail area, the measured plate
San Jose
35 homes over 426 m² of shops. 9 studios, 18 one-beds, 8 two-beds. The daylight rule took the plate from 1,598 to 1,303 m².
Pro forma
Rents, costs, fees and cap rate, every single input carrying the source string it came from. A number with no source does not enter the model, and the count of verified versus assumed inputs is printed on the output so the reader can weigh it.
Goes in
Market rents, cost benchmarks, fees, exit assumptions - each sourced
Comes out
Yield on cost against cap rate, profit, and the sensitivity that moves it
San Jose
4.34% yield on cost against a 4.65% cap - minus 31 basis points. It does not clear. At a floor area ratio of 2.54 it breaks even. 5 inputs verified, 4 modelled, 22 assumed.
Plans, section, massing
Site plan, ground floor, typical floor, section and massing, generated from the same polygons the pro forma counted. The drawing and the number come from one geometry, so they cannot disagree - which is the failure mode of every feasibility deck assembled by hand.
Goes in
The measured envelope and the unit schedule
Comes out
A drawing set and a massing model, dimensionally tied to the numbers
San Jose
Two modelling errors were caught this way and are on the record: a 28 m-deep slab with windowless back rooms, and upper floors that flared wider than the ones below them on a trapezoidal lot.
Deck and campaign
The site chapter, the envelope, the yield, the pro forma and the drawings become one document - and then the sequence that delivers it, one step per email, to the people who own land on that street.
Goes in
Everything above, plus the aerial and the site photograph
Comes out
A pitch deck, and the seven-step sequence it arrives through
San Jose
The deck is blue on white, the same brand as this page. A study that arrives in a different livery from the site it links to reads as two companies.
The part most studies leave out
Minus 31 basis points. The building stops at three storeys because it exhausts a 2.0 floor area ratio with its height allowance unused - a policy number, not a market one. That is a concrete, checkable statement about why so much of this city's pipeline is entitled and not building, and it is worth more to a developer here than a study that said yes.
We read San Jose's register every fortnight and we build on one of its lots in public. You can follow either, or both.
Every second Monday
One page on what the register actually did this fortnight.
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One step at a time
One real San Jose lot taken the whole way, with the arithmetic shown at every step.
Free · seven steps · then it stops