BuildabilityAbout
What the land can hold, cited to the record.
Before you buy land, plan a home or lend against a lot, you need to know what it can hold. Buildability gathers the public record, cites each piece, and names what’s missing.
Who builds it
Landon Reid, founder and CEO, and Carson Reid, co-founder and CTO. A father-son team in Utah, building through Galax Studios, their family venture builder.
How it works
The Score stands on seven federal agencies, plus parcel and city zoning records.
Nine factors, one formula, a number from 0 to 100, with no model inside it. The method is versioned, so a Score you’ve seen doesn’t move.
- CensusGeocoding · TIGER boundaries · block groups (opens in a new tab)
- FEMANFHL flood zones · SFHA designations (opens in a new tab)
- USGSSeismic hazard · 3DEP terrain and slope (opens in a new tab)
- EPARadon zones · community water systems (opens in a new tab)
- USDASSURGO soils · suitability ratings (opens in a new tab)
- USFSWildfire Hazard Potential (opens in a new tab)
- USFWSNational Wetlands Inventory (opens in a new tab)
The full report reads from 31 datasets: federal, local and commercial. Local layers answer only where coverage reaches. Contamination is not screened.
What we won’t do
- Invent a numberEvery figure in the Score and the report comes from the engine or a named source.
- Fill a gap with a guessA missing record drops out of the Score instead of counting as zero or as fine. A regional estimate is labeled Estimated.
- Stand in for the authorityWe don’t apply for, issue or guarantee permits, or give legal, engineering, architectural or financial advice.
- We don’t replace direct consultation with professionals.
- We don’t accept liability for decisions based on our reports.
Buildability reads public records. Records can be wrong or out of date. Verify before you act. We are the shortcut to the facts, not the final authority.
Go deeper
Method, sources and limits
The weights, the formula, every source and the legal lines, as the product has them.
Nine factors, seven weighted
Seven factors carry the weights below. Seismic and radon are regional context: fetched, scored and cited on the report, but not weighted. Florida, California and Texas use tuned weights; every other state uses the national default.
| Factor | National | Florida | California | Texas |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Terrain | 20% | 11% | 25% | 15% |
| Zoning | 16% | 14% | 22% | 14% |
| Flood | 16% | 25% | 10% | 14% |
| Soil | 12% | 14% | 9% | 12% |
| Wildfire | 12% | 13% | 20% | 12% |
| Utilities | 12% | 12% | 5% | 24% |
| Lot geometry | 11% | 13% | 10% | 10% |
| Seismic | Context | — | — | — |
| Radon | Context | — | — | — |
Rounded to whole percent, so a column may not add to exactly 100%.
What a Score comes with
- A number
- From 0 to 100, with a full factor breakdown you can audit.
- A letter grade
- A+ at 90 or above, then A, A−, B+, B, B−, C+, C and C− in five-point steps down to 50. D from 30, F below 30.
- A confidence line
- A confidence rating and how many of the nine factors answered: “N of M factors available”. Regional-context factors count toward coverage.
- The formula
- Score = min(weighted composite, every landmine cap). A cap can only pull a Score down, and missing data never triggers one.
The method
A weighted overlay of constraint layers (slope, soil, hydrology, hazard, zoning) to judge whether land suits a use. Ian McHarg formalized it in Design with Nature in 1969. Its modern name is GIS-MCDA, and the math is a weighted linear combination. Buildability applies its landmine caps on top.
The method is published and refereed. The Score itself is not peer reviewed; see how we test it.
SourceTechnology · Method
Coverage, speed and price
It works the same whether you are weighing a single ADU, a small multifamily infill site or a master-planned community. The engine is asset-agnostic.
- All 50 states, with 6,743 city pages live
- About 20 seconds from address to a cited answer
- Free to score. The Property Report is $99.
Where the rest of the data comes from
Beyond the seven agencies behind the Score, the report reads more federal datasets and these local, open and licensed sources. Local layers answer only where coverage reaches.
- More federal datasets
- Census ACS and Opportunity Zone tracts; HUD QCT, DDA, Low/Mod and CDBG; FCC broadband; FHWA traffic counts; NOAA Atlas 14 and NWS alerts; NPS historic register; Treasury Opportunity Zones 2.0
- County assessors
- Published parcel layers, tried before any paid parcel call
- Municipal GIS
- Zoning district layers, where a city publishes one
- Published ordinances
- Our own read of each city’s code by BuildabilityBot: height, FAR, coverage, setbacks and minimum lot, cited to the section
- National Zoning Atlas
- Housing types allowed by right in the district
- OpenStreetMap
- Infrastructure, utilities and amenities, and road frontage
- Open-Meteo
- Weather and air quality
- U.S. Drought Monitor
- Current drought status
- Regrid
- Parcel records: boundaries, ownership, assessed value, sale and tax
- RentCast
- Property records, valuation, rent and comparable sales
- ATTOM
- Fallback only: valuation where RentCast has none, parcel identity where Regrid fails
SourceDocs · Data·Technology
How each record is read
Federal records come from the agencies’ own services, parcels and values from licensed providers, and zoning from each city’s published code, read by BuildabilityBot, which obeys robots.txt. Every read carries its date.
Federal sources are queried live on every fresh run. Successful lookups are cached server-side for up to 7 days, so repeat lookups are instant and don't re-query paid data partners.
SourceTechnology
Security
Addresses go only to the processors listed on the compliance page, Mapbox for geocoding and map tiles among them, each with its purpose, region and the data it receives. Your data never trains a model.
- In transit: HTTPS only, TLS 1.2 minimum and 1.3 preferred, with HSTS
- At rest: AES-256
- Hosting: United States (Supabase US, Netlify CDN with US origin)
- CCPA: compliant, with opt-out and access rights honored
- SOC 2: not held
SourceSecurity & Compliance
Legal disclaimer
- Buildability provides informational property intelligence only.
- Data comes from public government, licensed commercial and city sources. Report explanations and Geo answers are written with AI; the Score itself has no model inside it.
- All content is provided “as is”, without warranties of accuracy or completeness.
- It is not a substitute for professional advice or official approvals.
- Always consult experts and authorities before making decisions.
SourceTerms of Service
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