Answers · Site cover
What is site cover, and why does it matter for industrial property?
Direct answer
Site cover is the proportion of a site's total land area occupied by the building's footprint, usually expressed as a percentage, with the remainder left as yard, hardstand, parking or landscaping. Lower site cover generally suits operators needing substantial outdoor space; higher cover suits those wanting maximum building area on a constrained block.
Site cover is a simple ratio, but it tells you a lot about what a property is set up for. A business that primarily needs covered floor area — light manufacturing, indoor storage, showrooms — is usually best served by a site with higher cover, maximising building on the available land. A business that needs to park a fleet, store materials outdoors, handle containers or manoeuvre large vehicles needs the opposite: enough uncovered yard to actually operate, which means accepting lower site cover even if it means a smaller building for the same land size.
Planning schemes typically cap maximum site cover for a given zone, which limits how much building a given block can support regardless of what an occupier might want. That interacts with other yard requirements — a site with generous land but constrained by heritage, easements or setback rules can end up with less usable yard than its raw size suggests.
When comparing sites, it's worth looking past total land area to how that area is split between building and yard, because two sites with similar totals can suit completely different operations depending on their cover ratio.
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