Glossary

The vocabulary behind parcel and land-ownership data, defined the way county records actually use it.

• Parcel

  The fundamental unit of land ownership in county records: a contiguous area of land under one ownership, identified by a unique parcel ID (serial number) assigned by the county recorder. All analysis on this site is parcel-level.

• Parcel ID

  The unique identifier the county assigns each parcel (in Salt Lake County, a 14-digit serial number). It encodes book/page/parcel references from the recorder's plat system and is the join key across assessor, recorder, and treasurer records.

• Improvement Value

  The assessor's market valuation of everything built on a parcel — buildings, not land. A $0 improvement value alongside zero building square footage is the standard signal that a parcel is vacant, with the caveat that fully tax-exempt parcels are sometimes carried at $0 regardless.

• Land Market Value

  The assessor's valuation of the land itself, exclusive of structures. Total parcel value = land value + improvement value.

• Vacant Parcel

  On this site: a parcel with $0 assessor improvement value and zero recorded building square footage. Roughly 11% of Salt Lake City parcels meet this definition.

• Zoning District

  A mapped area where a municipality applies one set of land-use rules — permitted uses, height, setbacks, density. Salt Lake City has dozens of districts (R-1-5000 single-family through D-1 downtown and M-1/M-2 manufacturing); 46 appear among parcels in this analysis.

• Owner of Record

  The ownership name recorded with the county for tax purposes. Government ownership analysis on this site classifies every recorded spelling variant of an entity and distinguishes component agencies from similarly named but legally separate bodies.

• Tax District

  The bundle of overlapping taxing entities (city, school district, water, mosquito abatement, etc.) that levy on a parcel. The county publishes a code per parcel; it is a useful proxy for which city a parcel sits in.

• Tax-Exempt Property

  Property excused from property tax — government, religious, charitable, and certain other uses. Exemption often zeroes the assessed improvement value in public rolls, which can mask structures on government land.

• Tax Deed

  The instrument by which a county takes title to property after prolonged property-tax delinquency. Parcels recorded to 'Salt Lake County (Tax Deed)' entered county ownership this way and are often candidates for surplus sale.

• LIR (Land Information Record)

  Utah's statewide standardized parcel attribute schema published by UGRC — acreage, values, property class — but notably without owner names, which is why county assessor services remain essential for ownership analysis.

• UGRC

  Utah Geospatial Resource Center, the state's GIS authority. Publishes certified municipal boundaries, statewide parcel layers, and hundreds of other authoritative datasets.

• Municipal Boundary

  The legal limit of a city, certified through the Lt. Governor's office from county recorder filings. Determines which parcels are 'inside' a city for this site's analyses.

• Unincorporated County

  Land outside every municipal boundary, where the county government is the direct land-use authority. Salt Lake County's unincorporated area shrank dramatically as Millcreek, the metro townships, and others incorporated.

• Metro Township

  A municipal form created by Utah in 2015 for communities like Magna, Kearns, and White City — incorporated status with limited powers, counted as municipalities in boundary analysis.

• Watershed Jurisdiction (Utah Code § 10-8-15)

  Utah's grant of extraterritorial power letting a city enforce watershed-protection ordinances beyond its limits — 15 miles upstream and 300 feet either side of a stream for most cities, and the entire watershed for first-class cities like Salt Lake City. The legal basis for SLC's canyon land ordinances since Salt Lake City v. Young (1915).

• City of the First Class

  Utah's statutory designation for cities over 100,000 population. Salt Lake City's first-class status is what expands its watershed jurisdiction from the standard 15-mile rule to the entire watershed.

• Flood Control Parcel

  County-owned land along creeks and channels held for stormwater and flood management. The largest single category of Salt Lake County holdings inside incorporated cities.

• Representative Point

  A point guaranteed to fall inside a polygon, used for point-in-polygon spatial joins. This site assigns each parcel to a zoning district and municipality by testing its representative point.

• Point-in-Polygon

  The GIS operation testing whether a point falls inside a polygon — the workhorse behind assigning 67,578 parcels to zoning districts and boundaries in this analysis.

• PMTiles

  A single-file, cloud-optimized format for map vector tiles that lets a browser fetch only the tiles it needs over HTTP range requests — no tile server. It's how this site serves 69,000+ parcels from a static file.

• Vector Tiles

  Map data cut into zoom-level tiles as raw geometry rather than images, so the browser styles parcels on the fly — coloring by zoning district or filtering to vacant-only without new server requests.

• Redevelopment Agency (RDA/CRA)

  A city's redevelopment arm — in Salt Lake City, now the Community Reinvestment Agency — which acquires and repositions property in project areas. A component of city government, so its parcels count as city-owned here.

• Municipal Building Authority

  A financing entity cities and counties create to issue lease-revenue bonds for public buildings. Title often sits with the authority, so government ownership analysis must include it to be complete.

• Greenbelt (FAA Act)

  Utah's Farmland Assessment Act program taxing agricultural land on productive value rather than market value. Greenbelt acreage appears in assessor records and can flag large, lightly developed holdings.

• Right-of-Way (ROW)

  Land dedicated to streets, utilities, or rail. ROW slivers explain most parcels that fall in zoning-map gaps, and they are rarely developable despite showing as vacant.

• Assessment-Grade Boundaries

  Parcel geometry maintained for taxation, not surveying. Good enough for analysis and mapping; never a substitute for a licensed survey in a transaction.

• Surplus Property

  Government-owned land no longer needed for a public purpose, eligible for sale or lease. Tax-deed parcels and obsolete utility remnants are the classic candidates — and the interesting screen in government ownership data.