Builders keep saying the lot should be 20 to 25 percent of the house price

The ratio is an output, and builders quote it as an input because it's the fastest sanity check they have. What actually sets the number a builder can pay is a residual: expected retail price, minus vertical construction cost, minus sales and marketing, minus financing, minus their required margin. Whatever is left is the lot budget. The percentage falls out of that arithmetic, so it moves with construction cost and with how steep the retail price is in that submarket.

That's why your 14 and your 31 both make sense. High retail price with normal stick cost gives you a fat residual and a high lot ratio. Affordable product where the house costs nearly the same to build but sells for $310k gives you a thin residual, and the lot has to be cheap or the deal doesn't exist. Townhouse programs sit in an odd spot because land cost per unit drops with density while the vertical cost per square foot goes up.

If your residual and the builder's stated 22 percent disagree, one of you has the wrong retail comp or the wrong vertical cost. Ask the builder what base price they're modeling and what their direct cost per foot is. Some will tell you, and the answer tells you whether your finished lot price is real or aspirational.

The part that kills deals in this range with no warning is fees. Impact, tap, park, school, and offsite reimbursement obligations can be $15k to $40k per lot depending on the jurisdiction, and those are usually the developer's cost inside the lot price rather than the builder's. Two parcels ten miles apart in different municipalities can produce completely different ratios on identical dirt. Pull the current fee schedule in writing before you trust either number.