Ascero AI Research · measured July 2026
The median trade-business building footprint across 428 measured buildings in 11 US metros is ~10,400 sq ft. About 61% of roofs are low-slope, and metro medians vary 6.5× — from 3,336 sq ft in New Orleans to 21,666 sq ft in Charlotte. This is first-party data: we measured every building ourselves.
Buildings belong to roofing, HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and landscaping businesses sourced from public listings. Published as aggregates only — no named businesses. Free to cite (CC BY 4.0).
All 11 metros with at least 10 measured buildings — 423 of the 428 total; the remaining 5 buildings sit in smaller metros and are omitted from the table. Pitch mix is the count of buildings whose predominant roof slope is low (flat or near-flat), standard, or steep.
| Metro | Buildings (n) | Median footprint (sq ft) | Median facets | Pitch mix (low / standard / steep) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Houston TX | 157 | 10,229 | 5 | 95 / 48 / 14 |
| Dallas TX | 103 | 14,535 | 8 | 60 / 38 / 5 |
| Austin TX | 48 | 10,118 | 5 | 36 / 10 / 2 |
| Raleigh NC | 23 | 5,126 | 4 | 11 / 5 / 7 |
| Atlanta GA | 16 | 18,399 | 22 | 10 / 3 / 3 |
| San Antonio TX | 15 | 8,163 | 5 | 9 / 3 / 3 |
| Fort Worth TX | 14 | 5,794 | 8 | 9 / 5 / 0 |
| Nashville TN | 13 | 7,384 | 7 | 6 / 5 / 2 |
| Memphis TN | 12 | 14,472 | 5 | 9 / 1 / 2 |
| Charlotte NC | 12 | 21,666 | 7 | 10 / 1 / 1 |
| New Orleans LA | 10 | 3,336 | 6 | 1 / 9 / 0 |
| All tabulated metros | 423 | — | — | 256 / 128 / 39 |
Full sample: 428 buildings. Measurement confidence mix: 117 high / 174 medium / 137 low.
In July 2026 we measured the primary business address of 428 trade businesses (roofing, HVAC, plumbing, electrical, landscaping) sourced from public business listings. The primary measurement source is the Google Solar API building insights endpoint (building footprint, roof segments, per-segment pitch). Where Solar API coverage was missing or ambiguous, we fell back to OpenStreetMap building footprints and Esri imagery. A roof’s pitch bucket is assigned by its predominant segment: low (flat or near-flat), standard, or steep. Facets are distinct roof planes.
The confidence caveat, stated plainly: all figures are satellite estimates, not site surveys. Of the 428 measurements, 117 carry high confidence, 174 medium, and 137 low — roughly a quarter are high-confidence. Treat metro medians as directional. Underlying imagery vintages are predominantly 2023, and aerial imagery in public and commercial basemaps is refreshed on multi-year cycles (see NOAA Digital Coast for how agencies catalog imagery by acquisition date), so a building modified since acquisition will measure as its older self.
We publish aggregates only: metro-level medians and counts, never individual buildings or named businesses. The 11 tabulated metros cover 423 of the 428 buildings; the remaining 5 fall in metros with fewer than 10 measurements each.
Research presented at KDD 2024 found that pages dense with statistics, quotations, and citations gain roughly 30-40% more visibility in generative-engine answers (Aggarwal et al., “GEO: Generative Engine Optimization,” arXiv:2311.09735). Most companies respond by decorating thin content with borrowed numbers. We think the honest version is better: measure something yourself, publish the table, and state the error bars.
Free to cite and share under CC BY 4.0. Suggested citation:
More: All Ascero AI research
Across 428 trade-business buildings (roofing, HVAC, plumbing, electrical, landscaping) measured from satellite in 11 US metros, the median footprint is roughly 10,400 sq ft. Metro medians range from 3,336 sq ft (New Orleans) to 21,666 sq ft (Charlotte), so local context matters more than the national figure.
Mostly flat. Of the 423 buildings in the 11 tabulated metros, 61% have a predominantly low-slope (flat or near-flat) roof, 30% standard pitch, and 9% steep. The one outlier is New Orleans, where 9 of 10 measured buildings are standard-pitch.
Google Solar API building insights (footprint, roof segments, pitch) as the primary source, with OpenStreetMap building footprints and Esri imagery as fallbacks where Solar API coverage was missing. Imagery vintages are predominantly 2023. Addresses came from public business listings; only aggregates are published, never named businesses.
Directionally useful, not survey-grade. In this dataset, 117 of 428 measurements (27%) carry high confidence, 174 medium, and 137 low — driven mostly by imagery quality, tree cover, and building-footprint ambiguity. Treat the metro medians as directional estimates, and verify any single building with current imagery or an on-site measurement before quoting work on it.
The same satellite pipeline that produced this dataset — footprint, facets, pitch, confidence — runs on any US address on demand. See it on yours.