Business Data & Benchmarks · United States

Land Subdivision Revenue Benchmark

Dividing and improving raw land into building lots, then selling them to builders or buyers.

NAICS 237210, 2022 editionUnited States data by defaultSources and dates shown

Average Land Subdivision Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census

The 2022 Economic Census counts every land subdivision business with paid employees and publishes their combined annual receipts. Dividing one by the other gives the average annual revenue per employer establishment below.

≈$4,283,000 /year

Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment

4,165

Employer establishments in the United States, 2022

as published $17.8 billion

Combined annual gross revenue of employer establishments, 2022

How this is calculated: about $17.8 billion in combined annual receipts divided by 4,165 employer establishments works out to an average annual revenue of $4,283,000 per employer establishment. Revenue arrives when lots sell rather than as work proceeds, so a single year can look very different from the one before it.

Scope: Land Subdivision, NAICS 237210. Nothing outside that code is counted on this page.

Source US Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census, Summary Statistics (ECNBASIC): ESTAB, RCPTOT and PAYANN by NAICS · Vintage 2022 Economic Census · Calculation BusinessNES · Accessed July 2026

Employer Establishments at Year Five Smaller cohort

Land Subdivision, NAICS 2372, the 2018 starting count compared with the count of five-year-old establishments in 2023.

48.8%the year-five count as a share of the starting count

Five-year establishment continuation benchmarkLine chart of industry continuation: 69.2 percent at 1 year, 61.9 percent at 2 years, 58.8 percent at 3 years, 57.4 percent at 4 years, 48.8 percent at 5 years. 289 establishments first reported paid employment in 2018; BusinessNES calculation from Census BDS.100%75%50%25%0%2014-2018 cohort range: 48.8 to 57.5 percentStart: 100 percent, the starting count1 year: 69.2 percent of the starting count2 years: 61.9 percent of the starting count3 years: 58.8 percent of the starting count4 years: 57.4 percent of the starting count5 years: 48.8 percent of the starting count69.261.958.857.448.8Start1 year2 years3 years4 years5 years289 establishments first reported paid employment in 2018; BusinessNES calculation from Census BDS.
Five years on, this industry group counted about 49 establishments aged five for every 100 that first reported paid employment in 2018. Census compares counts by age rather than following the same businesses, so read it as a broad continuation indicator for the industry group, not as a tracked survival rate.

Across the 2014 to 2018 cohorts, five-year results ranged from 48.8 to 57.5 percent. This category is effectively the whole group: 4,165 of the 4,165 employer establishments in it, so the group figure and the category figure describe nearly the same population. A count by age is not a survival rate, because the figures compare two headcounts rather than follow one set of businesses.

Payroll as a Share of Revenue Official data

Payroll divided by receipts, both as published for the same year.

MeasureValue
Annual payroll share of receipts, United States≈12%

Payroll share of receipts, Land Subdivision, United States, 2022 Economic Census.

Approximately 12.0 percent of every revenue dollar goes to annual payroll, which is low because the land and its improvement, not staff time, are what the receipts pay for.

Payroll here excludes benefits, employer taxes, payments to engineering and site contractors and owner compensation, and it excludes the land itself, which dominates this business.

Business Scale and Ownership Structure Official data

How large the average establishment is, and whether the population is independent operators or multi-site companies.

MeasureValue
Paid employees per employer establishment6
Employer establishments per firm1.03

Scale and ownership, Land Subdivision, United States, 2022 Economic Census.

The average establishment employed about 6.0 people, and the industry counted 1.0 employer establishments per firm.

These are arithmetic industry averages. They state the size of the average establishment and show that multi-establishment ownership exists. They do not show the distribution of business sizes and they do not measure market concentration.

Questions Worth Asking BusinessNES analysis

Land Subdivision: the risks behind a tidy average.

Before you rely on this benchmark

  • How long is the money committed before a lot sells? Land is bought, entitled and improved years before the first sale, and a single year of receipts says nothing about the capital tied up behind them.
  • What is the entitlement risk? Approvals can be delayed or refused, and a project that never gets permitted still consumed the money spent on it.
  • Who buys the lots? Selling to a national builder and selling to individual buyers produce different pricing, different pace and different exposure to the housing cycle.
  • How is the project financed? Interest on development finance accrues whether or not lots move, which makes carrying cost the quiet determinant of the result.
  • What happens if absorption slows? Lots sell at a pace the market sets, and a development that assumed faster absorption pays interest on the difference until it corrects.
  • How are common areas handed over? Roads, drainage and open space usually transfer to a municipality or an association, and the terms of that handover can hold up final sales.

Explore More on BusinessNES

Neighbouring benchmark pages built from the same verified data, plus BusinessNES guides on the same subject.

Data Source Notice

This product uses the Census Bureau Data API but is not endorsed or certified by the Census Bureau.

Figures above are from the 2022 Economic Census reference year, released by the Census Bureau in 2024 and 2025; markets have moved since.

Sources and Methodology

Revenue, establishment counts, payroll, employment and firm counts on this page come from the 2022 Economic Census, Summary Statistics, published by the US Census Bureau. Averages and shares are BusinessNES calculations from those published totals, and each one names the two figures it divides.

The Census counts employer establishments, meaning each office with paid staff rather than each subdivision or project entity.