Flag lot
A flag lot is a lot whose main body sits back from the road, often behind another lot, and reaches the road by a narrow strip of land called the pole. The strip gives the lot its access and its frontage, and Floyd County's ordinance also files the shape under panhandle and pipestem lots.
A pole down to the road, a flag of land behind it
Draw the lot on paper and the name explains itself. A thin strip runs back from the road like a flagpole, and the usable ground opens out at the far end of it like the flag.
Carroll County's subdivision ordinance names both parts. It defines the lot this way:
FLAG LOT - A tract or parcel of property connected to the state maintained road by a narrow strip of property known as the FLAG POLE.
Carroll County Subdivision of Land ordinance (county-hosted copy with April 14, 2014 amendments)
Floyd County's Land Division Ordinance draws the same picture in its own words, and then files two more names under it. Its list of lot definitions carries entries for panhandle lots and pipestem lots, and each entry simply points the reader back to the flag lot definition. In Floyd's terms, a seller who hears panhandle from one person and pipestem from another is hearing about the same shape.
| County | Where the main body sits | What the strip does |
|---|---|---|
| Carroll | Not placed by the definition | A narrow strip, named the flag pole, connecting the tract to the state maintained road |
| Floyd | Widest point set back from the road | A thin strip of land connecting to the road to provide access and frontage |
| Pulaski | Widest point set back from the road at the rear of another lot | A thin strip of land connecting to the road to provide legal access and frontage |
The differences are small but real. Carroll's wording ties the pole to a state maintained road. Pulaski's places the flag at the rear of another lot and says the strip provides legal access. Floyd's and Pulaski's both say the strip provides frontage, which is the point of the shape: the pole is how a lot that sits back from the road still touches it.
Not a limited access lot, and not a lot without a road
A flag lot reaches the road through its own strip of land. That single fact separates it from two terms it is often confused with.
Floyd County's ordinance has a separate category, the Limited Access Lot, defined as a lot that is unable to meet the ordinance's road frontage requirements and allowed only as part of a Large Lot division. A flag lot is not that. Its pole is its frontage. A lot with no strip to the road and no recorded way to one is a different problem again, the one described under landlocked.
Because the pole is part of the lot, it is the natural place for the lot's driveway. When that strip carries a drive for more than one home, the questions shift to entrances and shared use, which are taken up in whether two parcels can share a driveway.
The shape is also regulated, not just named. Carroll's ordinance limits how many flag lots a division may create and sets a minimum width and maximum length for the pole, and Pulaski's requires flag lots to be spaced apart; the figures, and when a flag lot can be created at all, are on what a flag lot is and when one can be created. How frontage rules work more broadly, flag lots included, is in road frontage explained.
Selling a lot that reaches the road by a narrow strip?
A plat or a tax map number is enough to start. Lowell will point out how the pole, the frontage and the drive shape what a buyer sees. No cost, no obligation.
Got it. Thank you.
We'll be in touch shortly with an honest read.
Questions about this term
Is a panhandle lot the same thing as a flag lot?
In Floyd County's Land Division Ordinance, yes. The ordinance lists both panhandle and pipestem lots as terms and points each of them to its definition of a flag lot. Elsewhere, the ordinance of the locality where the land lies is the one whose definition governs.
Is a flag lot the same as a limited access lot in Floyd County?
No. Floyd's ordinance treats them as different lots. A flag lot reaches the road by a thin strip that provides access and frontage. A Limited Access Lot is one unable to meet the ordinance's road frontage requirements, and it is allowed only as part of a Large Lot division.
Where this page's facts come from
Every rule, office and figure above traces to one of these. Rules change; check the office before you act on one.