When is a subdivision plat required in Austin?

Under Texas Local Government Code §212.004, as applied by the City of Austin, a plat is required when an owner inside the city limits or its extraterritorial jurisdiction divides a tract into two or more parts for the purpose of sale, development, or extension of utilities. Combining platted lots, adjusting lot lines between legal lots (amended plat), and further dividing a recorded plat (resubdivision or replat) also run through the subdivision process. Some unplatted tracts qualify for an exception through a Land Status Determination under Land Development Code §25-4-2; the city responds to those applications within ten business days.

How long does it take to subdivide land in Austin?

State law (HB 3167, effective September 1, 2019) requires the city to approve, approve with conditions, or disapprove with reasons within 30 calendar days of a complete application, and to act on each update within 15 calendar days; no new comments may be raised after the initial 30-day review. Before the formal clock starts, Austin runs a completeness check that returns results within 10 business days and must be resolved within 45 days. After approval, fiscal security is due within 90 days of the update deadline and the plat must be recorded within 80 business days of approval. In practice a project that needs both a preliminary plan and a final plat, plus subdivision construction plans for new streets or utilities, runs many months; a simple final plat with no new right-of-way is materially faster.

How much does it cost to subdivide land in Austin?

City of Austin FY2025-26 subdivision plan review fees (effective October 1, 2025) are $11,367.80 plus $77.93 per acre for a preliminary plan, $7,739.11 plus $78.52 per acre for a final plat out of a preliminary plan, and $8,596.55 plus $77.89 per acre for a final plat without a preliminary plan. Each application also carries a $990.79 completeness check fee, county recordation fees, and partner-department review fees (Austin Water, Parks, Transportation and Public Works, Fire, and Austin Energy) that can add several thousand dollars. Those are review fees only; survey, civil engineering, parkland fees for residential lots, and the cost of building the streets and utilities the plat commits you to are the larger numbers and are project-specific.

Should I subdivide my land before selling it to a developer?

Usually not the whole way. A developer buying a tract will design the subdivision around its own product, so a seller-filed preliminary plan often gets redrawn. What a seller can do cheaply is remove uncertainty: confirm jurisdiction, obtain a Land Status Determination or platting-exemption letter if the tract may qualify, resolve legal-lot status, order a survey, and document utility service availability. Where a seller wants to carve off and keep a piece, or sell one tract to two buyers, a plat is unavoidable and should be started early because it gates closing.

Land Use · September 14, 2026 · Steven Owen

Subdividing land in Austin & Travis County: process, costs & timeline

If you divide a tract into two or more parts for sale, development, or utility service anywhere in Austin’s city limits or ETJ, Texas law requires a recorded plat. The City of Austin process runs completeness check → formal review → approval → fiscal posting → recordation, with state-mandated clocks of 30 calendar days for the initial decision and 15 days for each update. City review fees for FY2025-26 start at $11,367.80 + $77.93/acre for a preliminary plan and $7,739.11–$8,596.55 + ~$78/acre for a final plat, plus a $990.79 completeness check and partner-department fees. Those fees are the small number; the survey, civil engineering, and the streets and utilities the plat commits you to build are the large ones. For a land seller the strategic question is not “can I subdivide” but “how much of this should I do before I sell” — and the answer is usually less than owners expect.

When a plat is required — and when it isn’t

The trigger is statutory. Under Texas Local Government Code §212.004, as the City of Austin applies it, subdivision is required when an owner inside the city limits or extraterritorial jurisdiction divides a tract into two or more parts for the purpose of sale, development, or extension of utilities. Combining lots by resubdivision, moving a lot line between legal lots by amended plat, and vacating a plat are also subdivision actions. State law prohibits connecting utility service to a lot that is not legally platted, and Austin’s Land Development Code requires subdivision approval before a site plan or building permit issues. The city’s own framing is worth repeating to buyers: a subdivision is not zoning and does not change permitted uses, and it is not a site plan or building permit.

The exception is the Land Status Determination under LDC §25-4-2 — an official finding that an unplatted or illegally platted tract is exempt from the platting requirement. Austin publishes a free online tool to screen eligibility; if the tract qualifies, the application is filed through the AB+C portal and staff respond within ten business days. For a seller this is the cheapest piece of diligence on the list, because a tract with a clean determination in hand closes without a platting contingency. Legal-lot status matters in the other direction too: an unplatted tract that does not qualify cannot be developed until it is platted, which a buyer will price in.

The steps, in order

Step	What happens	Clock (City of Austin, 2026)
Project Assessment (optional)	High-level code-compliance review; binding staff recommendation on variances and waivers	Recommendation valid 180 days; 25% discount on later formal fees if next application filed within 180 days
Completeness Check	Staff verify all required administrative and technical items are in the file	Results letter within 10 business days; must be deemed complete within 45 days of filing
Formal application	File within 45 calendar days of the Completeness Check Certification Letter and pay formal fees	Filing Date = 1 business day after invoice paid
Initial formal review	Approve, approve with conditions, or disapprove with reasons	30 calendar days after Filing Date (HB 3167); no new comments after this review
Update reviews	Applicant responds to Master Comment Report; up to two updates before a new application is required	15 calendar days per update; updates due within 180 days of Filing Date
Fiscal posting	Engineer’s sealed cost estimate and Subdivision Construction Agreement; security posted	Due 90 calendar days from the update deadline
Recordation	Case manager records the plat with the County Clerk	All items due within 80 business days of plat approval
Subdivision Construction Permit	Streets, drainage, and utilities built to approved construction plans	Permit expires 3 years from approval if construction has not started

Whether you need a preliminary plan before the final plat depends on infrastructure. Austin’s Development Services Department lists the common triggers as new public or private right-of-way or the extension of existing right-of-way (LDC §25-4-51); widening an existing street can be handled by dedication on the plat. A final plat out of an approved preliminary plan must be recorded before the preliminary plan expires. Minor lot-line shifts that do not add density are processed with the final plat; adding streets or lots requires a revised preliminary plan and fee. If the tract is in Austin’s ETJ in Travis County, LDC Chapter 30 governs and a single submittal is reviewed jointly by the city and Travis County, with county-specific parkland requirements, possible Commissioners Court approval, and — for Travis County ETJ only — an approved Traffic Impact Analysis where required. In the Hays County portion of the ETJ, Hays County must approve the plat before the city will accept it, and separate applications are required for each jurisdiction. For what the jurisdiction label itself changes, see Austin full-purpose vs. limited-purpose vs. ETJ.

The state clocks: HB 3167 and HB 3699

Two Texas bills reshaped the timeline. HB 3167 (86th Legislature, effective September 1, 2019) imposed a uniform 30-calendar-day deadline for the city to approve, approve with conditions, or disapprove with reasons, a 15-calendar-day deadline for action on each subsequent update, automatic approval if the city misses either deadline, and a prohibition on raising new review comments after the initial 30-day review. HB 3699 (88th Legislature, effective September 1, 2023) removed subdivision construction plans from Chapter 212, expanded administrative approval authority, regulated the studies and documents a city may require, and required cities to publish a complete list of application materials — which is why Austin now runs the completeness check as a separate, front-loaded gate. The practical effect: the formal review is fast and predictable, and the schedule risk has moved to the front (assembling a complete application) and the back (fiscal, construction, and recordation).

What it costs

City of Austin fee (FY2025-26, effective Oct. 1, 2025)	Amount
Preliminary plan — Development Services review	$11,367.80 + $77.93 per acre
Final plat with preliminary plan	$7,739.11 + $78.52 per acre
Final plat without preliminary plan	$8,596.55 + $77.89 per acre
Completeness check (each application)	$990.79
Subdivision Project Assessment	$10,762.21 (under 2 ac) to $11,688.19 + $109.58 per acre over 10 ac
Partner-department reviews (per preliminary plan)	Austin Water UDS $248.23 · Parks $916.02 · Transportation & Public Works $5,860.00 · Fire $375.00 · Austin Energy $295.00
County recordation (preliminary / final)	$1,069.43 / $847.74

Worked example: a 40-acre commercial tract needing a preliminary plan and one final plat would pay roughly $11,368 + $3,117 for the preliminary, $7,739 + $3,141 for the final, two completeness checks at $991 each, and partner-department and recordation fees on both applications — on the order of $40,000 in city review fees before a surveyor or engineer is paid. Additional watershed and transportation engineering review fees may apply, and fees are subject to annual adjustment. Travis County charges its own development-related fees for the ETJ under its FY2026 schedule (effective January 1, 2026). The bigger line items are outside the fee schedule: boundary and topographic survey, civil engineering for the plan set, drainage and water-quality controls, any Traffic Impact Analysis, and the actual construction of streets and utilities you post fiscal security against. Parkland dedication is now residential-only: HB 1526 (2023) bars the city from imposing parkland requirements on commercial development, and for multifamily the city’s per-unit fee runs $2,427.65 (CBD), $4,676.52 (urban), or $2,544.94 (suburban) for applications filed after October 1, 2024, updated annually. A Parkland Early Determination is required before completeness check for any subdivision with multifamily or mixed-use lots, is free, and can take up to 30 days — start it three weeks ahead.

Should a seller subdivide before selling?

This is the question we get from landowners who have read that developers pay more for “shovel-ready” land, and the honest answer is: partially. A developer buying 40 acres will lay out lots, streets, and drainage around its own product type and its own engineer, so a seller-designed preliminary plan is frequently redrawn and the fee is sunk. What a seller should do is eliminate the unknowns that make a buyer discount the price or stretch the feasibility period: confirm jurisdiction, obtain a Land Status Determination or platting-exemption letter where the tract may qualify, resolve any illegal-subdivision history, order a current survey, document water and wastewater availability with a will-serve or CCN letter, and pull the floodplain and environmental constraints the city will find anyway. Those items cost a fraction of a plat and let a buyer underwrite with confidence — which is where the price comes from, as we explain in how much your land is worth to a developer. The case for a seller actually platting is narrower: you are keeping a homestead or an income-producing piece and selling the rest, you are selling one tract to two buyers, or you are selling a small out-parcel off a larger holding. In each of those the plat gates closing, so it belongs at the front of the timeline, not the end.

How SCORE helps

Steven Owen approaches a land sale the way an engineer with an NYU Stern finance MBA would: identify the gating items, price the cost and time of clearing each one, and only spend the seller’s money where it moves the buyer’s number. SCORE runs the jurisdiction, legal-lot, utility, and floodplain screen on every listing before it goes to market, coordinates surveyors and civil engineers when a plat is required, and markets tracts to a network of more than 1,300 developers and investors who tell us what they need to close. See development land and our guide to selling raw land to a developer in Austin.

Thinking about dividing or selling a tract?

Send us the address and what you want to keep. We’ll tell you whether a plat, a land status determination, or neither is the right first step — and what it does to the price.

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Fees and timelines are dated as noted: City of Austin Development Services, “Subdivision Application Process” (accessed September 14, 2026) and “Subdivision Plan Review Fees” FY2025-26 schedule (effective October 1, 2025); Austin Parks and Recreation, “Parkland Dedication” fee tables (applications filed on or after October 1, 2024); Travis County Transportation and Natural Resources, FY2026 Development Related Fees Schedule (effective January 1, 2026); Texas Local Government Code Chapter 212, HB 3167 (86R) and HB 3699 (88R) as summarized by the City of Austin. The worked example applies published fee formulas and is illustrative only. This is general information, not legal, engineering, or investment advice; confirm current fees and requirements with the City of Austin and the applicable county before relying on them. Related: Development Land · How much is my land worth to a developer? · Selling raw land to a developer · Buying land in the Austin ETJ · What multifamily developers look for.