This includes the surface lots that are peppered throughout cities, a vestige of a time decades ago when car ownership had surged and mass transit use had declined. Surface lots bloomed throughout the country, in big and small markets. Now, these lots are becoming more valuable.

“It’s like when you’re playing Monopoly, and you get your ticket for Boardwalk — that’s how rare it is,” said Gina Farruggio , a broker with Fox & Roach Realtors who recently listed a one-acre parking lot just off the boardwalk in Ocean City, N.J., for $4.5 million. The lot is ripe for development, possibly as a hotel or condos, Ms. Farruggio said.

In Atlanta, a parking lot roughly a 10-minute walk from the Jimmy Carter Presidential Museum and Library has given way to a 16-unit townhome development. At least a half-dozen surface lots have been reborn in Charlotte, N.C., including one at the former headquarters of The Charlotte Observer and another across from the Charlotte Transportation Center, which White Point Partners and Dart Interests bought for $10.9 million in June.

Such sales hint at the potential developers see in the lots — and the money it takes to wrest them from owners, said Jay Levell , a co-founder of White Point.

“There have been some parking lots in Charlotte that have been operating for decades,” Mr. Levell said. “If you think about what they paid for it back then and the income coming in now, it’s absurd. It’s hard for them to give it up.”

Because of the increase in demand, the owners of these lots can command high prices.

A lot on Newbury Street, the popular Boston shopping destination, that the same family had owned for more than a century sold for $40 million in July. L3 Capital, a Chicago firm that specializes in retail development, bought the site, the last surface lot along Newbury.