From Fedora Project Wiki
BuildRoot tag
The RPM in Fedora 10 defines a default buildroot so in Fedora 10 and above it is no longer necessary to define a buildroot tag. Fedora < 10 and EPEL 5 or less still need to have the tag.
The BuildRoot value MUST be below %{_tmppath}/ and MUST contain at least %{name}, %{version} and %{release}. It may invoke mktemp since this is guaranteed to exist on every system. From there, packagers are expected to use a sane BuildRoot.
The recommended values for the BuildRoot tag are (in descending order of preference) :
%(mktemp -ud %{_tmppath}/%{name}-%{version}-%{release}-XXXXXX)
%{_tmppath}/%{name}-%{version}-%{release}-root-%(%{__id_u} -n)
%{_tmppath}/%{name}-%{version}-%{release}-root
At one point, the second was a mandatory value, but it is now left to the packager to decide. If unsure, simply pick the first.