11,125 buildable parcels covering about 265,937 acres, every one with slope, flood, soil, access, ownership and an AI verdict on file. These are the county-wide numbers.
Shelby County sits directly south of Birmingham and takes the metro's growth on its northern edge while its southern half stays timber and pasture. That split shows in the data: small infill lots near Pelham and Alabaster, big timber tracts around Columbiana and Wilsonville, and a wide band of rural homesites in between.
Most of the county's undeveloped land is gentle. Steep ground clusters along the ridges of Oak Mountain and the Cahaba valley walls. Flood risk follows the Cahaba and Coosa rivers and their creeks; away from them, Zone X is the norm.
Sale prices in Alabama are recorded with the deed at the probate office, but no public database collects them. The values below are what the county appraises the land at, per acre, which runs well under market for most tracts but is consistent across the county and moves in the right direction: small lots near town appraise highest per acre, large timber tracts lowest.
| Parcel size | Parcels | Median appraised land value per acre |
|---|---|---|
| Under 5 acres | 2,283 | $14,299 |
| 5 to 20 acres | 2,406 | $8,990 |
| 20 to 50 acres | 1,604 | $6,785 |
| 50 to 100 acres | 581 | $6,309 |
| 100 acres and up | 515 | $5,360 |
By deal type: 5,243 rural homesite (281 strong buy), 1,169 commercial pad (336 strong buy), 827 infill lot (40 strong buy), 612 timber/recreation tract (1 strong buy), 399 development assembly (147 strong buy), 389 not a market parcel.
Samples are described by their physical facts only. Sign in to see the parcels, their owners of record and the full reasoning.
16,727 parcels carry no improvement value on the Shelby County tax roll as of 2026-10-01. After removing rights-of-way, slivers, utility strips and parcels that already have a structure by the federal building footprints, 11,125 are buildable land totalling about 265,937 acres.
10% of buildable parcels touch a FEMA special flood hazard area (zones A, AE or similar). 90% are entirely in Zone X, the minimal-risk designation. Mapped wetlands appear on 5%.
Septic needs a county health department permit and a soil evaluation on the actual site. As a screen, 94% of buildable parcels sit on soils the USDA survey classes as well drained or better. Hydric soils, which usually fail, appear only as small inclusions along creeks and bottomland here; the survey does not map a mostly-hydric unit under any buildable parcel.
Alabama records sale prices with the deed, but there is no searchable database of them. The county's appraised land value per acre, which is what LandScout shows, has a median of $8,990 for 5 to 20 acre tracts and $5,360 for tracts over 100 acres. Market prices run higher; appraisal is a floor and a comparison tool, not an asking price.
65% individual, 21% llc, 11% corporation, 2% trust. 17% of owners have a mailing address outside the county. 21% of parcels have not changed hands in over twenty years.
Parcel boundaries, owners of record and appraised values are from the Shelby County assessor's GIS. Flood zones are FEMA, slope is derived from USGS elevation, soils are the USDA soil survey, wetlands the National Wetlands Inventory, timber the Forest Service FIA, structures the FEMA USA Structures dataset, and roads, power lines, ponds and developed land OpenStreetMap (© OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL). Verdicts are written by an AI model from those fields. Data as of 2026-10-01.
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