Can your lot be split?

The city's Chapter 540 built-form rules set the smallest new lot on Urban Neighborhood ground at 5,000 sq ft and 40 ft wide (Table 540-15). A lot can be split in two when it has twice both: 10,000 sq ft and 80 ft along the street. On big-lot blocks in Interior 1 and 2 the minimum rises to the average lot within 350 ft (footnote 1); 59 of the passing lots sit on such blocks and were checked against that higher line. Lot area is the county assessor's. Width is read off the county parcel polygon, so a plat may differ by a foot or two; a corner lot is measured along its longer street.

This is a rule check on public dimensions, not a survey, a plat approval or legal advice. The house's position on the lot is not in any public layer, so a passing lot may still need the house moved or removed. The city's subdivision review (Chapter 598) decides.

What a split is worth is read off the county's own land values, not sales. Within a ZIP, Minneapolis land value grows slower than lot size: across 61,995 homes on lots of 5,062 to 22,670 sq ft, doubling the lot raises its land value by about 61% (land value rises with area to the power 0.69). So two half-lots carry about 24% more land value than the one lot they came from. That is the county's land value, not a price a buyer would pay.

Sources: City of Minneapolis Assessing Department Parcel Data 2026; City of Minneapolis Planning_Zoning_Built_Form overlay (edited 2026-10-16); Hennepin County parcel polygons; Hennepin County recorded sales through September 2026. Lots owned by public bodies, and lots the city maps as Parks or Production built form, pass the arithmetic but are left off the list (113). 16 lots on the list are over an acre; sort by size to find them or skip them. From Aidan Jude at Brick & Mortar (aidan@brickandmortar.dev).